Column: Clean Those Stinkin' Dishes

It's safe to take those moldy dishes out of the closet and dump them back in the sink. Dig the dirty laundry out from under the bed and let it pile it up until Thanksgiving. Dishes, laundry and cleanliness in general do not seem to rank highly on some students' lists of priorities. We're very busy people; too busy, some of us claim, to take the time to keep up minimal standards of cleanliness. We pressure ourselves to keep up our GPAs so we'll get into a top grad school or get a good job after graduation, and we attempt to join activities and maintain a social life as well. All of the above tend to be more important than minor hassles such as keeping our rooms and ourselves clean. And that's how it should be -- to a certain extent. But being "too busy" is no excuse when lack of personal hygiene becomes a health hazard or disgusts and repels the people around us. During my freshman year, my room reeked so badly of my roommate's dirty laundry that my friends were reluctant to come visit. During the second semester, my roommate did not wash her clothes until after Spring Break. She continually offered to pay me to do her laundry (I declined), called her mom every few weeks to ask for more underwear, and let her dirty clothes pile up on the floor of our room. I sprayed them with Lysol, but she didn't get the hint; her attitude was "if I wear perfume, no one will know." My friend's roommate was a laundry procrastinator as well; she would smell her laundry at night and, depending on the result, would either drop it in her laundry basket or put it back in the drawer and wear it again the next morning. This laundry aversion does not just apply to clothing; several students I know admit that they do not wash their sheets all semester. A freshman said that he saw no point to it since he had only one set of sheets and would end up putting them back on his bed anyway. Another student said that she never sweated, so she was clean when she went to bed and didn't need to worry about it. Yes, cleanliness can be overdone; one of my roommates washes and irons everything once a week. That's frightening. However, isn't it better to go overboard than to have people clear a path away from you as you go down the Walk? Neglect of laundry isn't the only pitfall of being away from home; many people, perhaps to avoid the greenish-brown crust growing in the bathtubs they never clean, seem to think they can skip showering and no one will notice. They can't. An acquaintance of mine says that he never washes his feet, since he doesn't want to slip in the shower; he figures the soapy water runs down on them, and that's enough. Whenever two of my friends have a major test or paper due, they "don't have time" to wash their hair, so they wear a hat. Also, a lot of people don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom; whatever happened to "all I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarten"? If people don't take care of their bodies, why take care of their dishes and rooms? Some don't, especially in the high rises, where some people are off meal plan and there are more rooms to clean. Dishes collect in the sinks until food residue growns green. After a friend of mine uses his hot pot, he fills it with water but doesn't actually wash it. "I only use it to make ravioli," he says, "so I can just dump out the water and use it again." A student who lived in a high rise last year had three roommates who refused to clean. They spilled spaghetti sauce on the stove in September, and it was still there when she moved out in January. Another student has a bathroom carpeted with empty toilet paper tubes and economy-size hair balls. Yet another student in a high rise has muddy footprints and gray fuzz growing on his bathroom floor; since one of his roommates wouldn't clean, the others refused to do it as well. Yes, we're all busy, but no one can work twenty-four hours a day; there has to be time to keep ourselves and our rooms minimally clean. Some -- hopefully, most -- of us do; maybe I happen to know especially unclean people. I'm not suggesting that we keep our rooms picked-up and spotless; a mess is fine, for people who like it that way. However, wearing the same dirty clothes over and over, re-using dirty dishes, and maintaining a growth of fungus in the bathtub are taking things too far. Those of us who won't keep clean for health, personal reasons or to look better could at least do it for friends', roommates' and classmates' health. Make Mom and Dad proud. Bonnie Fitzpatrick is a junior English and Psychology major from Flushing, New York. My Barbaric Yawp appears alternate Tuesdays.

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