Entropy

Life takes work. If we want to sit back and go with the flow, chaos will follow as night follows day. If we are not striving to go forward, we will go backward. This lesson was driven home to me in the past month as I grew sick of the state of the apartment I share with a friend of mine.

We've lived together amicably for years, in part because we're both generally carefree people. But two carefree bachelors is not a recipe for an apartment you'd care to show your mother... or anyone else, for that matter. It took rather a lot to get us to clean, and even that was usually to address a given problem, like your shoes coming off your feet when they stick to the kitchen floor.

I was talking about the layout of my apartment with a friend about a month ago, who said something to the effect of "I'd like to see it sometime." I demurred, speaking of what happens when two bachelors are living together but the frank truth is that the thought horrified me. I've had people see the apartment in an un-dressed-up state, and it actually shocked them. And I was ashamed of it.

With that thought in my head for some time, I decided I no longer wanted to be ashamed of the place I lived. I started with the living room - using a carpet cleaner we've had lying dormant in our laundry room to suck some of the dirt out of the carpet, picking up the various knick-knacks that had accumulated in the corners, and tidying up. I took out several loads of trash, over a hundred pounds of years-old newspapers, piled my roommate's stuff in the hall, and banished mine to my room. I cleared off a table in our entryway, originally meant as a place for keys and such, but which followed the rule of every flat surface in the house (it accumulates junk). When the guys came over that Friday, that alone made a significant impact.

Following that, I hit my bathroom and the laundry room. Though my bathroom is attached to my room and my roommate's is probably "meant" to serve as the guest bathroom, I had decided to only deal with the things I either exclusively used, or which I shared with him. And I wanted a clean bathroom for any guests to use. This meant cleaning beard trimmings from the counter, banishing unopened mail to my bedroom, emptying still more trash, putting away various chargers scattered on the sink, cleaning the mirrors, and scraping some old candle wax off the counter. The laundry room involved... still more trash, namely old boxes of detergent, lint, bottles, and more. I organized the shelf above the washer and dryer, took everything littering the top of the dryer to a better home, and scrubbed what I think was an old soap spill that had gotten wet and re-dried off the floor.

The next weekend I moved on to my room. I got started on my laundry, which had served as an improvised carpet in my room so long the color of the carpet was noticeably different from other parts of the apartment. I took out several more loads of trash, and picked up everything off the floor. This is still a work in progress, as it's the repository for anything that I have to clean up from the other rooms. But the floor is clean, my laundry is all (1) on my body, (2) in my hamper, (3) folded in my dresser, or (4) hanging in the closet.

The kitchen got done this last weekend. The sink and counters were scrubbed, and I followed up on some work my roommate had done on the microwave and stove. It isn't perfect, but it's vastly improved.

For perhaps the first time in years, I could vacuum the whole living room, my side of the hallway, and my room with less than 5 minutes tidying up (as I did on Sunday). I can walk around without stepping on anything. And I could have people over without apologizing for the state of the apartment (well, except for the pile of my roommate's stuff in the hall... but there are extenuating circumstances in his life right now).

But it takes work. Every day when I come home, instead of collapsing, I have to tidy up. re-folding blankets that have been used. Putting away food that was taken out. Putting the TV remote back on the coffee table. But I know that if I don't spend those 10 minutes tidying up, they will build into a month-long all-encompassing monster that devours a month's worth of days off.

Maintaining the place is a daily task, and one that must be addressed or it will only get worse. When I got home tonight, the dishwasher was still full of clean dishes from the day before. because it was full, the dirty dishes were piling up on the counter and in the sink. If I don't take the trash out when it fills up, trash will just get left on the counters. It's the little things that start to pile up, until you find yourself hurling a discarded pizza box into the "trash pile" in the corner of the kitchen that is composed of half-filled bags of trash, empty soda boxes, and things you were too lazy to dispose of properly the days and weeks before (true story).

But because of that little daily effort, I'm no longer ashamed to have people see the apartment. And that is a good feeling.