I love cooking. I love making dinner for my friends and sister. I love baking cakes for birthdays. I love reading cookbooks and watching the Food Network. Whenever someone travels or goes on a date, I always ask: what’d you eat? Food has always been a huge part of my family. So naturally, the kitchen is a place where I gravitate and hang out.

Most people I know don’t usually make chicken and asparagus risotto or chocolate covered strawberries at school. It tends to be a place to zap Ramen or popcorn. Or pour Honey Nut Cheerios. It’s where we take a few (albeit throwback) drinks before heading to the bars. Some students, especially those in residence halls, don’t even have the luxury of a full kitchen.

So when I finally got one my junior year (after living in LAR freshman year and the ADPi house sophomore year), I thought it would be the greatest. Little did I know how little the kitchens are. Or that one drawer always doesn’t quite shut. Or that- despite all the bleach, Clorox wipes, Swiffer, cleaner or fire— no amount of scrubbing will remove the sticky reside from years of jungle juice past.

Or mice. The biggest kitchen disaster I’ve ever dealt with came after Thanksgiving break as a junior. Before leaving for break, thinking like thousands of other apartment-dwellers on campus, my roommates and I left our apartment “clean.” We threw away our rotting apples and a tomato that had turned to soup in the bottom of the fridge drawer; tossed all the food storage bowls, none of which we could find the lids for … but couldn’t bear to throw out, neatly into the cabinet; wiped down the counters; took out the trash. Little did we know that we had left a bag of chips on the top of the fridge.

So needless to go into a million-tiny-feces-infested details, we returned to mice. Not just in the kitchen, but all over the house. Perhaps I should mention, I am a typically rational person and able to handle bugs, spiders, blood, zombies, etc., except when it comes to mice. I am paralyzingly afraid of the rodents. And my room was right next to the kitchen. I could hear their gnawing and scurrying in the walls after dark. I didn’t sleep for weeks in fear they would crawl on me in the night. Every noise I heard, I was convinced was them. My roommates, except the one who lived on the first floor with me, thought I was crazy to call the TLC Pest control daily, clean incessantly and teach myself how to lay traps.

And, the girl who once lived in the kitchen was no more. There is nothing like hearing the pitter-patter of the feet of a family of mice to ruin your appetite for the entire semester. Or having one run across your kitchen table. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed as loud in my entire life. So, to all those students with kitchens, or will have a kitchen in the future: Even if you think you’re clean, you have no idea what’s on the top of your kitchen freezer. You should really should clean it out and organize it. And by clean out and organize it, I mean just throw it all out. It’s so much better to bring home that bag of Tostitos than months upon months of mice, roaches, rats or [insert your dwelling, germ-infesting rodent and biggest fear here]. Whether you cook or not, we all live in the area and it’s so much harder to get rid of rodents than call your realtor to fix your leaky faucet. And we only live in these apartments for a short time, but there’s nothing worse than dreading coming home and actually not being able to make EasyMac.

Liz Kalkowski is a senior in Media.