My Roommate and I made a “To Do” Jar

At the end of Fall quarter, my roommate and I got a little sentimental about how long we had been in college for, and how little time we had left. She is originally from Pakistan, and I’m originally from a very, very small town in California that no one seems to know of. Both of us loved coming to college in LA because of all of the opportunities it offered, both on UCLA’s campus and in the magical place known as Los Angeles. There are so many things that she and I have done since we first came here three years ago, but there is still quite a long list of things that we have yet to do. This is the dilemma that caused us to write down everything that we wanted to do onto little green strips of paper, and put them in an old peanut butter jar. We named it out “Roomie ‘To Do’ Jar”, and we pull something to do out of it every weekend (and sometimes, even more than once). We decided that as long as we had the jar, then there would be no excuse for not going to do something that we wanted to on the weekends, so that way we would be sure to make the most of it.

My roommate and I are similar and different in many ways, so, naturally, what we put in the jar varies immensely. She runs a secretive foodie passion blog, so she wrote down a bunch of restaurants and coffee shops she wanted to experience. I’m an English major and a very devout bookworm, so I wrote down all of the bookstores that I wanted to visit. There were things that we both wanted to do, though, like hike to the Hollywood sign (again), go to Runyon Canyon, ice skating, things like that. There’s a good mixture of interests and adventures to come for us from the jar. Since we’re currently heading into week 5 of Winter quarter, my roommate and I have already headed out on a few adventures: Nekter Juice Bar, Noah’s Bagels, Book Soup, Ice skating in Santa Monica, Diddy Riese, Peet’s Coffee, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Sometimes we realize that we have time during the week to do one of the small things, which leads to spontaneous ice cream runs at 10 o’clock at night, or takes us to a place with great coffee and new study space.

There are so many green slips of paper in the jar that neither of us have any idea how long it will take us to actually finish all of them. The estimated amount of time it would take is constantly changing, because for just about every green slip we take out, we put one in with something new that we just thought of. I guess it doesn’t matter, because we have a little over a year left until we graduate, and that means plenty of eventful weekends in our futures. It has become a tradition for us, pulling a green slip out of the jar every Friday after both of us have finished with classes for the week. We know exactly what we have to look forward to. Our jar is a promise of all of the excitement and enjoyment we have to come. It represents parts of ourselves, what we love, and how we want to make the most of our time. Carpe diem, people, and if you can’t seize the day, then at least seize the weekend.

In case you are planning on starting your own “Roomie ‘To Do’ Jar”, here is a list of different types of things that we put in ours.

For you Foodie Gals

• Saffron and Rose

• House of Meatballs

• Cafe Stella

• B Sweet Dessert Bar

For you Travel Bugs

• The Queen Mary

• The Art District and Little Tokyo

• Museum of Contemporary Art

For you Bookworms

• The Last Bookstore

• Small World Books

• Larry Edmunds Bookshop

For you Thrifties

• Out of the Closet

• Global Kindness Thrift Shop

• Melrose Trading Post

For Lazy Weekends In

• The Office Marathon

• Spongebob Marathon

• Stan’s Doughnuts and Coffee

Photos courtesy of myself and my roomie, Shezereh Hussain

• adventure
• los angeles
• roommates
• things to do
• travel
• weekends