I have an obsession with maintaining a clean and organized living environment. My boyfriend jokes around that I have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) when it comes to neatness and organization; and quite frankly, although I have never been formerly diagnosed, I wouldn t doubt it. That being said, while you don t have to be a neat freak like me, you should want to maintain a clean home. After all, you never know who might pop by unexpectedly, and the last thing that you want is for someone to walk in the door and see dishes piled up in the sink, books strewn about and other food items left out on the kitchen counters.
I will never forget one of the times when I went to visit my boyfriend when he used to share a town home with his older brother. I walked in the door and there were three huge black garbage bags filled to the brim with dirty laundry. By the television, there were a bunch of DVDs and CDs mixed together, some out of the cases just thrown on the ground, and in the kitchen....Oh my....there were dirty dishes. These weren t just dirty dishes though. These were dirty dishes that were piled up and OVERFLOWING out of the sink. There were particles of food that had molded onto the plates....it was indescribable. At the time, I hadn t officially started dating my boyfriend, but I remember thinking, “How could anyone live like this? How could you not care enough about yourself to let things get so out of control?”
Regardless of whether or not you are a college aged guy or a young woman, there is really no excuse for a mess like that. Growing up, my mother always had the rule: If you put in the sink, wash it and put it away right then and there. It really is that simple; and when I asked my boyfriend how things had gotten so bad at his apartment with his brother, he simply told me that they had been too busy to wash the dishes. He also claimed, of course, that none of those dishes were his. If you live with a roommate, there should always be some sort of ground rules laid out for sharing a living space. It s one thing if your bedroom is a mess because that is a personal space that only you go into. However, if you are sharing a common area such as a dining room, living room and/or kitchen, these are areas that should be spotless because this is where guests will be entertained and where food will have to be prepared, etc. Sometimes you have to think outside of the box and put yourself into the shoes of other people who might be visiting you. What would you expect to find in someone s house? What would offend you?
So, what did ever end up with those dishes that were pile up, overflowing and more or less rotting in the kitchen sink of my boyfriend and my brother? They threw every last one of those dishes in the dumpster.
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