When I moved to college, the bathroom that was used, at one time, by four children, finally made its way down to one user: my now twenty-one-year-old brother.

My twenty-one-year-old brother doesn’t care much about having a clean bathroom. I don’t, either, for the most part, but he obviously cares less. Cleaning the bathroom has been his job since my sister moved out, but my dad doesn’t seem to care anymore, and neither does my brother, so it goes uncleaned.

I don’t clean things often. My room is a testament to that.

But tonight, after almost three weeks of living in a bathroom that obviously belonged to a twenty-one-year-old boy, I decided to make it decent. By no means did I clean it well, but I cleaned a few layers of dust and general muck off of the counter and countless toothpaste or shaving cream spatters off of the mirror.

And, oh, is it satisfying to run my hand across that counter. It’s an old, scratched up counter, but compared to what it looked like a few hours ago, it’s shining, and it’s beautiful.

Tomorrow, it’ll probably be gross again, but tonight, it’s beautiful. And those several hours during which a newly cleaned thing remains clean are absolutely wonderful. I’ll tell myself they wouldn’t be so wonderful if they happened more often. That’s my excuse.

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