A week ago, I cleaned my room, and for 48 hours, everything was golden.

I was forced to begin the cleaning process last Sunday night after being cruelly reminded that we had a house showing the next day. For hours I gave it my all: I swept, threw away garbage, and recycled. I even made my bed. Sort of.

What is truly sad is that my room was in such a state of disrepair I didn’t even know where to begin. In fact, I probably would never have begun without the external motivation of a stranger coming and peering in at all my crapjunk.

Having a messy room is miserable. When it happens to me, I stop feeling like a human being and start feeling more like some sort of basement-dwelling gremlin.

It’s not great to sit in your horrifying living space feeling like a grimy mythical beast.

When the room was finally clean (after literal hours of pure dedication fueled only by my fear of strangers’ opinions — not by any desire to actually help myself), it felt great. The days following were also great.

I felt like the responsible, put-together version of Faith was even closer to breaking through the surface.

Unfortunately, the room was back to being a mess after about two days. It’s not at the same level as before, of course, because that kind of mess takes painstaking months of strategic piling to build. But it’s getting there.

A tip for those of you trying to live in a clean space: give yourself five minutes a day to clean it. Pick one day to do a deeper clean, such as Sunday.

My goal for the following week is threefold: Continue meal prepping (success! In one area!), take five minutes per day to tidy my room and to effectively manage my time on my upcoming projects.

In the coming week, I have so much work to do it isn’t even funny. My dark side, Evil Faith, has been convincing me to procrastinate. No longer. I don’t have the time for it anymore.

I assume the average college kid also needs to learn how to stop procrastinating. Maybe you aren’t convinced you need to stop. I wasn’t either two years ago.

However, speaking as someone about to be birthed into true adulthood — by that I mean getting a job with health insurance and paying my own phone bill — it’s pretty important to do things earlier than you have to, if only to improve the quality of your final product, along with your quality of life.

Having this base-intellectual understanding that time management is important hasn’t helped me, however, as I’m still the worst procrastinator I know. Yesterday I spent three hours watching “The Great British Baking Show” and eating pie with my roommate instead of doing literally anything else.

No longer. This week will be the most productive week of my semester.

Once again, I will accept any and all thoughts, prayers, and financial gifts. I encourage everyone to get their lives together as well, so that, as one, we can defeat our inner monsters and emerge like a phoenix from the ashes.

Hultman can be reached at [email protected]