Tiding up the room

Aini and Etsuko

Aini's room on Friday

Aini's room on Monday

Are you a tidy person? How often do you tide up your room? My friend aini told a story about her tiding up her room. Aini is a medical assistant student in her twenties. She lives with her parents and three younger siblings in Seatle. She is becoming a medical assistant but thinking about nursing, ophthalmology or obstetrics for her future career. She is very busy with school on weekdays but is going to finish her final semester in two weeks and then start her clinical practice. She’s worried about her first clinical practice.

Aini lives in a room by herself that has a bed, a desk for her computer, two side tables, a big drawer, and a closet. In the early morning, she wakes up, enjoys stretching and yoga to get refreshed. She has breakfast and drives to school. After school, she gets back home and has lunch. In the afternoon, she finishes reading assignments and studies for small tests in her classes. She would like to organize her room before she goes to bed every night, but she actually doesn’t do so as often as she wants.

Aini was not born to be a clean freak. She didn’t care that her clothes and books were scattered everywhere. At 16 years old, however, aini started sharing her room with her auntie. She was an extreme neat freak. She always explained to aini how important it is to keep their room neat and tidy. She also warned aini to return her books every time she finished reading and to keep her table clean.  Aini was taught how to clean the room and how to organize stuff by her auntie.

At the beginning of the week, aini’s room is clean and tidy but, as the week goes by, aini would get busy and have no time to keep it clean and tidy anymore. Later in the weekend, aini’s neat and tidy switch turns on. When she finds her clothes sticking out from her drawers, she can’t stop picking them out to separate into jeans, shirts with long sleeves and ones with short sleeves. When she finds her laundry basket full, she can’t relax and wants to start washing. When she finds her table messy or books scattered on the floor, her cleaning switch also turns on. Aini feels she can’t go ahead if her room is messy.

Aini spends 2-4 hours to do her laundry and to clean and organize her room on a weekend. She vacuums the floor, wipes up the closet and the tables well. The most important thing is to organize the books and the handouts for her classes meticulously. Before she leaves home in the morning, she would find the exact books and the handouts for the classes and bring them to her classes. She would pick up the right books and the handouts for her class out of many similar books and papers in her room. If she chooses the wrong ones, she would have troubles in the class. That totally doesn’t make sense. So, aini should organize the books and the handouts during the weekend. Meanwhile, her younger brother, a 5-year-old rascal likes to pick up aini’s belongings and to move them somewhere in the house.  She could get in trouble because her items are not available when she needs them. Aini searches for her missing items that the little rascal hid somewhere in the house, and returns them back to the right place in her room. Her stuff should be ready when she wants. 

Done with cleaning and organizing her room, aini feels that she’s back to a normal mode, so she could be ready for the next week, another step in her life.