The mountain of dishes in the sink. The gross bathrooms. The stained carpet. All of it cleaned by yours truly. And kept clean too. At least for the two weeks of the experiment. Even though I had three roommates fighting against me at every step. This effort on my part was immense to keep up with the filth. I felt like a maid. A maid to a bunch of slobs at that. So why did I do it? I wanted to learn, if perhaps I could influence at least one of the slobs to be slightly less slovenly. Perhaps if I led by example and kept things clean (if I could handle the task), they would clean too. Or then again there was always the other possibility. That I was setting too good of an example. That they wouldn’t clean anything and keep expecting me to continue to do it (surely I couldn’t keep it up forever).

At first there was nothing. Or at least almost nothing. The only response was the occasional thank you. It wasn’t even a regular thing. Pretty much, only when they saw me cleaning something is when they would say thank you. It was pretty depressing really. In most apartments it probably wouldn’t be too much work. However, in my apartment it was a lot of extra work to only get a handful of “thank yous” here and there.

I wanted more from this experiment. So far it was turning out to be a dud. I wasn’t doing all this cleaning to find out how good my roommates’ manners’ were. I wanted this experiment to help make things a little cleanlier around the apartment. I didn’t want to be the only one who would ever clean in the apartment. I wanted to inspire my peers.

Still I kept toiling though. For a couple more days I traded chores for kind words and smiles. I kept the apartment clean for my own sanity. Did all the bictchwork in what seemed like a hopeless attempt to change my roommates’ ways. Surely they continued to appreciate it. I seemed to get thank yous more often once they figured out who was doing most of the cleaning. But too me the thank yous just weren’t enough. The thank yous weren’t why I was doing this work.

The thank yous did help however. The fact that they said thanks at all shows the appreciation for the fact that at least one of us is cleaning. Then when they started to increase the amount they were saying thank you I knew they had to really appreciate the way things were starting to be kept clean around the apartment. But how could I get them to help out? That really was the sole purpose of this experiment. To find a way to make everybody pitch in and keep the apartment clean.

In the end I could find no alternative solution. When my roommates didn’t follow what was my attempt to lead by example, I had to find another way to change their habits. I couldn’t come up with any clever new twists to add to the experiment that would change any of the results I was getting. So instead I had to be a little less subtle. For lack of better any better ideas.

What I decided to do was to let one of my roommates in on the experiment. I knew this could mess up everything I had worked for. But what choice did I have? What I was doing was clearly not ever going to create change and nothing else came to mind on how to inspire these people to clean. Could the roommate I had chosen just tell the rest of the apartment that I had been treating them as some type of lab rats? Surely he could if he took offense and that would ruin everything I had done so far. Therefore I had to make my choice of roommates carefully.

I had three options to choose from and I had to be sure to choose well. I thought about which roommate would be the most reasonable. Who wanted things to be clean like I did? Well surely everyone, but one of them must want it more than others. I thought about things for a bit. Real deep like, it was pretty intense. Then I had it! Eric. My roommate, the one who sleeps in the same room as me. I could get him to sympathize with my cause.

I figured if I would be able to convince any of them to help then it would be my roommate. Also Eric seemed to be the roommate who noticed the most when I cleaned things. Perhaps this was just coincidental and he was just around a lot when I was doing the cleaning, and he simply said his thanks. Or perhaps he was just the best mannered out of the group. I could’ve believed either of those. But I chose not to. Well really I didn’t have a choice. I needed some way to move this experiment along. I put my faith in the fact that Eric had a wish for cleanliness too.

I let Eric in on the plan. I explained to him why I had suddenly became the Consuela of our apartment. That was the easy part. He didn’t even think to tell the rest of the apartment as I had thought he might. He didn’t care if they knew. He didn’t care that I hadn’t told him about it. He just wanted me to keep cleaning. Eric realized that telling the rest of the apartment would probably end the experiment. He also knew that with the death of the experiment surely the cleanliness of the apartment would die as well.

The hard part was getting him in on it. Of course he understood why. Why I was doing it. Why I needed his help. He got all that. That didn’t make him want to help any more though. For each of my proposals asking for his help to change our roommates’ ways, I was met with a sarcastic proposal of his own. “But why don’t you just keep cleaning?” The apartment has been clean lately, we don’t need to change anything.

Just what I had feared in the beginning of the experiment. Eric was so used to me cleaning at this point that he simply expected me to keep going. Especially once I told him it was for an experiment. I was asking for his help but all he had really heard was that I needed to keep things clean around the apartment for almost another full week. I couldn’t let his thinking stay like that. He needed to be persuaded somehow.

In the end I pretty much guilted him into it. I kept reminding him of the end result that I wanted to achieve. Also I reminded him that I would still be cleaning too. Really all he had to do was clean here and there, preferably in front of the other roommates. It could even just be his own dishes, I explained to him. He finally agreed. I think he was planning on agreeing the whole time and had just making me work for it. He told me he would do it for the extent of the experiment.

Mixed results there. I got the help that I wanted and needed for this experiment. However now the experiment seemed to be over even though it was only halfway through. Maybe letting one of the studied specimen in on the plan wasn’t the best idea after all. Now the one other person who knows about the experiment is going to clean for a week and that’s it. Just because I asked him to help me with my school project. No other reason. If he really cared he’d keep cleaning after it was over. I don’t think he was planning on doing that however. I’d have to come up with a way to combat this later if I wanted this experiment to be truly successful.

Letting Eric in on the experiment changed the outcome of the experiment dramatically. It only took one day after Eric was cleaning up his own messes for me to notice the same thing start to happen with Shray. With Gavin, it took a little longer. Maybe he didn’t notice the switch from me doing everything, to everyone cleaning their own stuff. Maybe he just wanted to pretend like he didn’t notice and receive a few more days of maid service by myself. Either way it took Gavin about three days to after Eric started cleaning, for him to pick up after himself.

This was it. This was the dream. The experiment had filled its purpose. But for how long? Eric had been cleaning for 4 days already. That put a time limit of about two days on everyone cleaning their own stuff and just having an overall clean apartment. Because in two days Eric knew the experiment would be over and so would be his duties to clean. But once he stopped, surely the others would stop as well. I needed to prevent this from happening. I needed to make sure all this time and effort paid off with the reward of a clean apartment.

It is said to take three weeks to form a habit. Well great. Only problem was I had 48 hours not three weeks. How could I make sure everything didn’t unravel almost as soon as it had started working? I could have another talk with Eric and try to get him to keep it up after the experiment. Maybe I could even convince him that I extended the experiment to four years. Perhaps not. I don’t think he would have been so gullible to go along with that. I needed a different solution. Not only that but I needed it fast. My solution was part of the experiment so I really only had one day. One day to implement a solution and one more day to see and record the results.

Well by now the charade is up. You all know my solutions aren’t always the cleverest, like how I had to bring Eric in on the experiment for lack of a better plan. This solution was pretty much the same in its bluntness. What had I decided? I had decided to propose a rule to all of my roommates. We clean up after ourselves and we never stack dishes in the sink (this had been our biggest problem). We clean them right away and that’s that.

What if we don’t clean them right away though? That was what I was asked almost immediately into proposing this rule. Well shit. I hadn’t thought that through. What consequence would make these people continue to clean? It didn’t matter in the end anyway. I wasn’t the one who came up with the solution. Shray did. Shray came up with the most viable solution there is to any college guys. What was his answer? We’ll fight you of course. Anybody who puts dishes in the sink will be fought by the other three roommates. Seems a little extreme. A bit drastic for someone to potentially be hospitalized over a dirty fork. However I endorsed the rule right away.

This little conversation made me think that perhaps I had brought the wrong roommate in on the experiment. Shray seemed pretty concentrated on keeping the apartment clean now that it was clean. Shray was pretty much the reason the experiment worked out anyway. So maybe it was actually good that I kept him on the outside. Either way at least I had another roommate literally fighting for my cause.

I wasn’t afraid of being fought. I was the only one cleaning for over a week until I asked for Eric’s help. If I could keep up with everybody’s dishes than surely I could clean my own when I’m done with them. So if we needed threats to keep the rest of the apartment doing their own dishes, then I guess that’s just the way that it will be. Still better than me cleaning everything.

So that’s that. We’ve had this rule in place for a day now. So far nobody has been attacked for any dirty dishes but I can’t imagine that that will remain true. I wonder if the rules will change after the first bloody nose or dented wall. I hope not. The stupid rule doesn’t matter to me. But if that consequence will keep people cleaning, then it works for me. It would be a nice end to the experiment. Even if they aren’t keeping the whole apartment clean. If they just keep the sink clean, I can manage to vacuum and do most everything else at least occasionally. And if we keep up the teamwork (if you can call it teamwork) we can live in a place that is not covered in filth, and that makes this experiment successful. Our social norms apparently aren’t social norms. How do we solve that? Well apparently violence does fix some things.