Davis Hall might seem like a roach-infested, old, thin-walled dumpster fire (and it is), but it’s my dumpster fire. This place will always be my first home, or the first place I’ve lived without my parents. Like I always say, home is where all my trinkets are. And I truly believe in that.
I am a maximalist. So I’m just a low-level hoarder. I just have a lot of things, okay? With two fresh empty sides of concrete wall, I thought a lot about how I was going to decorate them. I had tapestries, decorated CDs, paintings, pictures, sentimental cards, etc. I was really going for the “random shit taped to my wall” aesthetic. I’m just actively trying to put fun and colorful things that make me happy on my wall, and whether that be a rubber duck or a whole packaged cookie, it’s going on the wall.
My room is a really good indicator of my mental state. Makeup strewn everywhere, clothes overflowing my hamper and covering my ottoman, and dirty dishes serve as the physical representation of my mind. My attention span makes it really difficult to follow through with tasks if they don’t have an immediate “reward.” Things are always cluttered and scattered, and it’s hard to prioritize tasks. If my parents saw my room at its worst, firstly, they would nag at me in Cantonese, then try to help me clean up. But this is something I have to learn myself. At home, if I was overwhelmed, stressed, or depressed, my room would become chaotic. But now that my dorm room serves as my study, bedroom, laundry, and kitchen, it matters a lot more to my overall mental state that it isn’t a biohazard.
A method that seems to work quite well for me is setting aside a day to do a full clean. I live on Davis’ fifth floor, and if you didn’t know, Davis has no elevators. I have to go back and forth from the fifth to the first-floor basement about six times to fully do my laundry, so I really do need a full day to do laundry and clean. I’m usually rushing in the morning so I leave my room in disarray and come back too tired to do anything about it. When I come back to my room, I usually just pass out, and my stuff accumulates throughout the week. By dedicating the day with my least amount of classes to cleaning, I can maintain somewhat habitable living quarters. I just need to find the effort in myself to actually keep to this system as I navigate trying to live on my own.
Here I leave you with the beautiful New York skyline view from my window and a snippet of my wall decor.
