Freshers’ Week is now over and thousands of first years are settling into university life.
For many first year students, the greatest challenge of living independently is facing the tedious reality of cooking and cleaning.
The British cleaning technology company Kärcher have recently unveiled an independent study detailing that eight per cent of freshers seldom clean their room.
However, not all first year students have completely neglected the idea of cleanliness with 35 per cent cleaning their room once week and 25 per cent attempting the activity once a month.
The Student spoke to past and current freshers to uncover the cleaning habits of the University of Edinburgh’s student body and discover just how accurate the stereotypical descriptions of rooms filled with half-opened snack packs, dirty laundry and empty vodka bottles, really are.
Viktoria, a second-year law student, said, “I lived in Pollock Halls last year so I didn’t really do a lot of cleaning myself.
“The cleaning ladies came once a week, but I’d be horrible at cleaning my room at other times so when the cleaners came, they would sometimes give up on the messiness of my room and not clean it.
“I’d say my cleaning habits were very horrible.”
Hadrien, also a past resident of Pollock Halls and law student, said, “I’m a clean dude, so I probably cleaned once or twice a week. But there was a period where I didn’t clean anything for like two weeks because in February, when it got dark, I didn’t feel like cleaning so I just stayed in my bed.
“I remember finding Dorito flakes from a week ago in my bed, and that’s when I decided that I had to change my life and become more clean”.
From a self-catered point of view, fresher Sarah told The Student, “I tidy my room every day to straighten things out and I properly clean it weekly. I have also changed my sheets and ironed them twice since I got here two weeks ago.”
Emma, another cleaner fresher, relayed, “I try to hoover my floor and wipe down any surfaces once a week, but can have dirty dishes in my room at any one time.
“The communal areas get cleaned once a week, but I can’t face dealing with the now 2-foot-high stack of plates and bowls by the sink. I also object to how often I have to rinse the shower floor of its last occupant’s hair.”
Eva, also living as a self-catered fresher in Sciennes accommodation, seemed a better fit to Kärcher statistics with the simple comment that her cleaning habits are, “fucking awful.”
Freshers at the University of Edinburgh seem both capable of and willing to clean despite their cleaning habits not being perfected quite just yet.
Specifically, Sarah, with the art of ironing under her belt, is already lightyears ahead of her fellow freshers.