Grunion: Keeping it Clean

The Paperman interviews students and they reflect on the cleanliness of their room, in honor of National Clean Your Room Day.

by Paperman

ILLUSTRATION BY NINA WALKER

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a huge strain in our lives making it difficult to do simple day-to-day tasks such as cleaning your room.

National Clean Your Room Day was first established in May of 2010 and lives on to this day as a reminder to everyone that cleaning our rooms is important. This applies now more than ever seeing as many students are holed up in their roomdens most of the day for online schooling. I took the time to interview a variety of students from LBSU on the cleanliness of their rooms.

The Interviews

I first spoke to Chad who is a first-year business student who moved out this year. How have you kept your room clean?

“I honestly haven’t, I usually rely on my mom to do most of the cleaning but she’s back home — It’s cool that we have a day to clean our room though. Sounds like a hassle to clean every week.”

You plan on only cleaning your room once a year?

“Most of the time I’m too busy doing business stuff and networking with my bros, so yeah it’s kind of hard to do that. Hey dude are you looking for a lucrative business opportunity?”

I then spoke to a third-year public relations student named Linda on the cleanliness of their windows. How have your windows looked recently?

“My windows? Oh they’re horrid. Tons of streaks on them from when I tried to clean them a few months ago but ultimately gave up because my arm got tired. To be honest, I’m too busy trying to explain what exactly my major entails to my friends and family to be worrying about cleaning the dead fly I killed on my windowsill a year ago.”

So what does your major entail?

“Well, you know, it’s kind of a combination between communication, journalism, marketing alignment, SERPs, SEOs… [they continue to list public relations buzzwords for approximately two solid minutes].”

“Yes! It’s actually a replica of the LBSU fountain. What with covid, I’m pretty scared of going on campus so I thought I’d get creative and take my graduation photo next to my own fountain.”

I decided to dip my toe into the world of STEM and asked Isabelle, a fourth-year computer science student, about if and how she’s kept her room clean.

“I’ve been so busy coding and looking smugly down at other majors that I’ve forgotten to clean my pillowcases for the past few years.”

Are you insane? You just rest your face on a slobber-soaked pillow case?

“All I see is numbers. I see past the physical manifestation we call reality. My reality lies within the binary.”

Next I asked a fourth-year art student named Mikey if they keep trash in their room or if they take it out as the trash is made.

“I’ve kept my overflowing trash can and dirty laundry pile in the same corner in my room. It’s actually starting to combine and coagulate so I’ve been molding it into a statue.”

That’s very charming to say the least, may I ask what it’s a statue of? Finally, I asked a first-year philosophy student named Obediah about the dust accumulation in their room and how they handle it.

“Dust? Well I keep it mostly under control. Although I don’t clean the dust off of my ceiling fan. If a tree falls and no one is around, does it make a sound? To put it simply as Socrates once said, ‘why worry if my dust makes no noise?’”

I don’t think the saying about the tree falling means what you think it means. Did Socrates even say that?

“Excuse you? I’m the one who’s taken a single philosophy course, I think I know a bit more than you do, pal.”

The Conclusion

From all of these interviews, I think I can safely say I am scared about our future. Maybe LBSU should offer a humanities course on keeping your room clean. Remember Beach, the clutter in your room could cause you more stress than a global pandemic so please keep your room clean.