Dorm rooms are fairly small, even smaller than many studio apartments. The accommodations typically allocated to first-year college students aren't really what you would define as “luxurious” or even “accommodating” really. Often, you won't find much more than a pair of beds, a closet or two and a pair of nondescript wooden desks. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find a mini-fridge and a microwave too. But despite how small these rooms are, they can get messy pretty quickly. If you fall behind on cleaning your dorm room, you'll be surprised how fast the dirty clothes pile up and the empty food wrappers get swept under the bed.
The good part about how small dorm rooms are though is that it makes it a lot easier to clean when that time comes. If you can manage to stay on top of your regular cleaning duties, you can keep your dorm room sparkling all semester and you won't have to worry about brushing an army of ants off your desk while you're trying to cram for that last biology final. With a few simple household cleaning supplies and a shared commitment to keeping your dorm room mess-free, you and your roommate can achieve a rare college feat: a clean dorm room.
How to clean your dorm room
Since your parents won't be around to pick your clothes up off the floor and take care of the cleaning duties once you get to college, you're going to have to take care of it all by yourself. Here are a few helpful tips and pieces of advice to help you keep your dorm room clean so it's one less thing you have to stress over during the semester.
- Cleanliness starts from day one. Your path to maintaining a clean dorm room will start as soon as you begin unpacking your things on move-in day. The key to making sure your room stays neat and organized is by organizing and arranging all of your things when you unpack them, giving everything a designated spot. If you leave your clothes still packed in a bag on your floor for weeks after you move in, things are going to get messy and unorganized quickly. Make sure that everything you unpack has a place to go, and your room will stay neat for longer.
- Make a schedule for your laundry. When school starts and you have classes and papers and tests to worry about, it will be easy to forget to do your laundry for a few days (or weeks) and soon the dirty clothes will begin piling up. Don't let that happen though - make yourself a laundry schedule and plan to do your laundry at least once a week. Plan it for a time when you know you have no classes scheduled and no other obligations, this way you'll always have time to do it.
- Keep your laundry in one spot. Instead of stowing your dirty clothes in a pile in the corner of the room, in a pile under your bed or scattered about the room like a tornado hit it, you should place one of those pop-up foldable hampers in a convenient spot in your room and place all of your laundry in there. You'll be surprised at how much cleaner your room will be if you just eliminate the dirty laundry littering every available space.
Clean out your refrigerator regularly. Even if you don't keep a lot of food in the refrigerator in your dorm room, make sure you remember to clean it out regularly. Old leftovers from dinner and fast food takeout can go back pretty quickly and it doesn't take much to make a room that small smell pretty badly. After each weekend you should make it a point to clean out your refrigerator and take inventory of what is in there and what needs to go. If you don't have a refrigerator, make sure you don't keep any perishable food items around your room for too long. Also stay away from leaving opened cans of soda or any open containers of food lying around your room, as this can attract bugs or rodents.- Try to make your bed. Did you make your bed every day when you lived at home? Probably not. So why would you make your bed when you're away at college? Well, because at school your dorm room is not only your dorm room - it's also your bedroom, your living room, your dining room and your kitchen. When you're not sleeping and you're just sitting around watching TV or hanging out with friends, a made bed looks a lot neater, cleaner and more inviting than a mess of blankets and sheets thrown about.
- Buy a garbage can and use it. The important part about keeping a garbage can in your dorm room is to make sure that the garbage ends up inside of the can instead of around it or beside it. Place plastic shopping bags inside the garbage can so that when it's full you can simply tie a knot in the top of the bag and dispose of it easily. Plus, the shopping bag will prevent the inside of the can from getting dirty.
- Clean your room often. Finally, you should make time in your schedule each week to actually clean the room. Even an hour a week should be enough and all you'll need to do is dust around your bed area and your desk, sweep the floors, clean under your bed and pick up any garbage or dirty laundry that managed to miss the garbage can/hamper. As long as you keep up with your weekly cleaning, your room will never get too messy to handle.