You didn't know rap music could be so unifying, did you?

On my mission, there was a sense of order and a schedule. We always had time on P-day to clean the apartment and take care of ourselves. After the mission, that order and schedule disappeared. One minute, you’re wearing the nametag, and the next minute, it’s gone. There was a hollow feeling on my chest for a few weeks because I missed my planner being in my shirt pocket.

The pool at Glenwood. Trust me, the apartments aren't that nice.

After my mission, I went and lived with five other random guys at Glenwood Apartments. They were a fun group of guys, and I’m still good friends with them. However, we discovered that living without that schedule was pretty difficult to start out. 

After only a few days of us all being moved in to the apartment, there were a few pizza boxes in the living room, a full trash bag sitting outside next to the apartment door, and quite a few dishes sitting in the sink. Sardi Carnot was right: entropy did exist, and disorder was everywhere!

After about two weeks of everyone doing the minimum required to keep the apartment livable, we all got together and decided to create a chore chart. Without someone to enforce the chore chart, however, it didn’t work. Once one person didn’t do their job, everyone else now had an excuse not to do theirs.

On one particularly bad day, I started cleaning the kitchen while listening to some rap music. One by one, the roommates who were there came out and started helping. Very much by accident, we developed a system. Whenever one roommate wanted the apartment clean, he would start cleaning and playing rap music. Everyone else knew to drop what they were doing and come help clean when that rap music came on: Someone had a date that night!