Before starting this course, I never knew about the existence of the field of “discard studies.” These first few sets of readings for the course have been very interesting for me because they have made me aware of how important and interdisciplinary this field is: the abundance of in-depth research and fieldwork conducted in this area of study is something that I never would have imagined prior to this semester. The thorough explanations of concepts and case studies presented in the readings have also made me think much more closely about my own practices of cleaning. In particular, I have come to realize that I certainly keep my living spaces (both in my home and in my dorm room) clean and organized from a visual standpoint. Like many of us, one reason why I do this is so that in the event of other people visiting my space, it does not look dirty, and so I will be less likely to be perceived as a messy and “unclean” person. However, this is not the only reason: I also keep my spaces clean because it makes me feel better about myself, irrespective of how other people perceive me. Having a clean room seems to help me focus whenever I am doing work for my classes in this space: if my room is untidy, I will feel a sense of guilt and regret, almost as if there is something else that I must do (that is, clean) before I start doing my work. For me, there is something rewarding about the feeling that my work space is neat and orderly, even with regard to the surrounding objects that are not directly on my desk (e.g. my bed being made). If something in my room is obviously cluttered or dirty, I will have the thought constantly hanging over my head of “I really need to clean that soon,” which can serve as a mental distraction while I am trying to work. When my room is mostly clean, though, I tend not to have these kinds of thoughts, which allows me to concentrate on my work better. However, while I put a lot of care into keeping my spaces outwardly clean, the readings have made me think about just how much more cleaning there would be to do in order to kill as many of the “bad germs” – which, of course, we cannot see – as possible. As we discussed in class, our spaces could always be cleaner, and I sometimes question whether I should wipe objects down more and use more products designed to kill bad germs, in order to keep my spaces not only “outwardly” (visually) clean but also “inwardly” (at the level we cannot see) clean as well. But even if I did this more, we can still never see all of the germs, and new germs will inevitably appear in the spots where I cleaned, so eliminating all bad germs permanently is an impossible task. Thus, moving forward, I need to figure out how I can “strike a balance,” cleaning my objects enough to make me satisfied and killing as many bad germs as I reasonably can, while also not obsessing about trying to kill every bad germ, because this realistically would never get accomplished.