I think my web editors are getting a little frustrated with me – I’m usually great with deadlines, but there was a special circumstance tonight, alright?

The shower was open.

I repeat: the shower was open.

Many of you may share bathrooms with family members. I’m lucky enough that my brother and I split a Jack-and-Jill type bathroom, so he has his own space and I have mine; he’s also still in that age where he really doesn’t care too much about bathing accoutrements. He uses that Bath & Body Works soap that’s both a shampoo and a body wash, for Pete’s sake.

That’s great for me, because that means I can basically take over the bathroom with a sizable spread of body washes, shampoos, conditioners and other soaps. I call a trip to Lush a serious investment, and not because I seriously deserve to be a shareholder at this point. Come on, how many bath bombs does one girl have to buy to get a seat at the boardroom table, Lush?

I like my space, that’s all. So it has seriously been a challenge to get used to my space consisting of my one-square-foot shower caddy and my bright pink laundry bag. Was it worth it to have to ask for a last-minute extension because I actually got to shower a) before midnight and b) with hot water? Uh, totally.

There’s something pretty calming about showering late at night, though. The middle of the night is one of the only times the dorm is totally silent, so other than getting work done it can be a really nice time just to collect your thoughts and take your sweet time conditioning.

Actually, I take that “totally silent” thing back. It seems the washing machine is always running in this dorm. That makes sense, seeing as we go through a crazy amount of clothes in a week, what with dressing up to meet speakers, having evidence of a driving rain on the way home matted into our jackets or just our daily workout.

This constant wash cycle, though, causes two problems. The first is mostly for my three roommates and me, because the washing machine is right outside our room. That means that we can hear every churn of the water, every time a sock gets swallowed by the dryer.

I honestly do not have words to describe the horrible buzzer that goes off whenever the wash is finished. Nothing jars me out of sleep faster than that – I’m pretty sure I’ll be back in Dallas trying to sleep and it will startle me out of my slumber.

Also, I definitely have so many socks in my drawer that are…not my socks. I don’t understand. Nobody understands how the dryer chooses its victims – the dryer giveth and the dryer taketh away.

The second problem caused by people always washing their clothes is that we’ve had to make a schedule. Which sounds alright except for the fact that by Tuesday I am always, somehow, down to exactly no pieces of my favorite clothes and that also the weekends have been dubbed “free-for-all” time, and let me tell you: it is. We’ve moved on past rock, paper, scissors to literally waiting on the floor for an inordinate amount of time just to throw our towels into the wash as the buzzer goes off.

It’s been an adjustment, that’s for sure – having to clean our own bathrooms adds to that, and I’ll talk about that in a future blog post because I now know how to clean a toilet in two and a half minutes flat and I’m seriously proud of that.

That’s all for now, folks – in Ela we trust. Until next week,

Maria Katsulos
(Who Was Met With Thunderous Applause After Exclaiming She Had Washed Her Hair AND Shaved Her Legs In A Five-Minute Long Shower)