Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Cleaning

I made it through the final weeks of the semester and even though I might not be overly thrilled with how my grades ended up, I can say that I made it through the toughest five months of my life. I will never have the opportunity to relive my sophomore year of college but I can't say that I really want to. I think that everything I have done in these past few months has been a learning experience.

My most recent learning experience came with the realization that some people don't know how to survive in the real world. I will preface with the fact that I in no means have my life figured out. I feel like I should be responsible enough to pay some of my bills or live on my own but then again it is just too easy to not have to worry about those things. I will say though that my parents taught me the right way to treat my surroundings. Even though I didn't like the fact that we got rid of our maid in my teenage years, I understand the importance of cleaning up after myself and consistently cleaning the room that surrounds me. How would I ever survive in the real world if I didn't understand those basic concepts? I got to see how some people do it by cleaning out a very large house over the weekend. We had a maid come on Friday afternoon and by Saturday evening there was two times the trash piled up on the back porch then what the maid had taken care of the day before. My mother would of been horrified if I had left my room in such a disarray. I hope other mothers would feel the same way if they saw what I had to clean up over the weekend. I guess it just shows me that having a little bit of respect for your surroundings can make a difference in the long run. Hopefully I can convey to people next year that respect for their surroundings is something that is expected not a happy accident.

Yes, that whole incident was a learning experience on my part and one that I will take with me if and when I get my own place but I am also learning the importance of purging your belongings. I don't really think I cleaned out my room last summer. I kind of moved stuff around to make room for some the things I brought home from college but mostly I just kept everything in the living room downstairs to be moved back to Athens in the fall. This year I decided that in the fall I am moving back to Athens with a minimalistic attitude. I also got home on Sunday night and realized that I no longer had enough room in my closet for all my clothes. Well after three days of looking through all my belongings I have about four trash bags worth of stuff to get rid of and still not enough space on my bookshelf or closet. How did I accumulate all of these things? I have enough t-shirts from my sorority to get me through a month without repeating. I am over stuff. There is too much of it but yet I know that I am still tied to it in some way. Everything has a meaning and it is not until that meaning completely wears out that I can get rid of something. I have been working for three straight days trying to get my room in order and it will still probably take at least two more to be completely finished. Hopefully after this purging session, I will be good for a while but who knows how much I can accumulate within the year.

Cleaning is a necessary part of life. One that has become more apparent to me within the last week. I know from now on I will make myself take care of my surroundings and question myself more often when I want to buy something because I would really prefer not to have to get rid of something that still has the tag on it three years later. It's a skill that needs to be learned by everyone and one that I seem to be mastering pretty quickly. Oh the simple things in life :)

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