Why are you living in your own filth?

We all read those patronising, out-dated articles about how to prepare for uni life before we got here.

“Make sure you learn how to use the washing machine.”

“Practice washing and drying-up before you go.”

“Check you know which buttons to press the hoover on and off.”

And oh how we laughed. How stupid does the media think we are. Of course we know how to run a house, we’re not animals.

But now it’s five months into the year and I’m beginning to think they had a point.

HALLWAY

The evidence that some of us are incapable of living like normal, functioning adults is apparent the second you walk in the door. Though in a previous, pre-uni life junk mail was just seen as a minor irritation which was barely acknowledged, now Dominoes’ leaflets seem to have become the standard alternative to carpet. Why does no-one ever just chuck it away? They all expired 13 weeks ago.

KITCHEN

The scenes of devastation only get worse when you walk into the kitchen.

For some, the chance to take on this daily battle with grim causes them a Monica-from-Friends style level of excitement. They don their marigolds with glee and get to work bleaching the kitchen cupboards with the sort of enthusiasm most save for a Two-for-Tuesdays Dominoes.

Yet not everyone has reached this level of grown-up-ness. Some are still using their time at uni to learn about their actual degree, rather than becoming enlightened about the bleak furture before you. So I’ll let you into a secret:

There are no Aggy and Kim to come and rescue you, the microwave isn’t going to clean itself and that Mr Muscle doesn’t just exist to piss you off when those badly mimed adverts come on the TV.

Does this look clean to you?

And to those people who leave their washing up in the sink, there is a special place in hell reserved for you. Just because you’ve put the bowl near the sink, it doesn’t mean it is washed up. Similarly, eating all the food off your plate doesn’t count either. Just wash the thing up. Please.

However, if you’re someone that claims you do all your washing up and therefore don’t need to help tidying the kitchen, you’re even worse. Why do you think new forms of life started growing on the hob? Where do you think that pile of crap on the floor came from? Did the table getting that sticky on its own? Last time I check it didn’t have the ability to self-lubricate after all.

The answer, my friend, is that it was you and your food preparation that got everyone into this mess, so get off your moral high horse and fetch a dust pan and brush now; you’re no better than the rest of us.

BATHROOM

There is a certain beautiful irony in the room in which you come to clean yourself being the dirtiest in your house. But this is not a good enough reason to leave it in the prison-like conditions it is currently in.

Ok so none of us realised that you actually had to throw toilet-roll holders away after you’d finished with them if you didn’t want them to represent some sort of abstract art feature on your bathroom floor.  Admittedly it always nice to have that constant reminder that you were responsible enough to actually go out and buy the loo roll for once,  but the time has come for someone to step up and take action. To free those holders from months of festering behind your pipes, to save the world and recycle them.

The same goes for shampoo bottles. No, it isn’t normal for your shower to resemble a shelf at Boots. Yes, it is annoying for everyone else when you decide that stepping over the evidence is as good as cleaning it up. It’s not.

Moreover, it is not normal for your once white toilet and sink to be covered in a layer of black fluff. That isn’t your loo’s winter coat, it’s dirt. Dirt that shouldn’t be there. Dirt that is calling out for you to fish out that packet of J-cloths and bottle of bleach that your mum bought you and soldier into battle with it.

So I’m warning you now, take a look at your house and think ‘Is this really what a home should be?’ Because no-one is coming to save you. The dirt will build, the dust will rise and the hob will become so covered in unidentifiable substances you won’t be able to remember what colour it originally was. And you’ll have no-one to blame but yourself.