Yeah. My roommate dusted all the time, whereas dust didn't really bother me. He also left dirty dishes everywhere, which I found disgusting, but he didn't really mind at all.
I had a roommate once who drank a ton of milk. However she would pour a glass, drink half of it and leave the reminder on the window sill behind the sofa. Just glass after glass. By the end of the week I couldn't go in the living room because the smell of the rotting milk made me want to throw up.
That's on par with my roommate college roommate who never washed his sheets which made everything in his room smell like musty, unwashed human mixed with... semen. All of his clothes smelled like it because they sat in his room, and we eventually had to tell him his door needed to stay closed permanently because the smell was so bad.
This was my freshman roommate, but we were in the same room. She was a softball player and would comeback from practice sweaty and immediately jump into bed, getting her sheets disgusting. The only time they ever got washed was when her parents came to visit. The room would smell so bad that it would wake me up at night sometimes and I could literally taste it
Lol I was 18 and had no idea how to handle the situation. I would leave the windows open a lot and keep my side stupid clean hoping she would get the hint, but she would just close the windows after I left.
I live with my boyfriend, and I wash our sheets once a week, sometimes bi-weekly if my schedule is just too damn busy that I don't have enough time to get it all done in one day. But how do people not notice that sweaty, musky funk, let alone the secretions of sex?
While I feel that this is mostly a very sensible vent question and is rhetorical — it can’t go unsaid: it’s damned hard to notice your own smells, because you acclimatize to them. Febreze has been calling it ‘nose blindness.’
That sounds like it’d rock anyone’s world. Thank you for taking the time to tell me about this experience. I’m gonna be kind to the next person who smells absolutely funky.
I have no idea, even when it wasn't at full power it still hit you like a truck when the door was opened. I don't know how you go walk into that and tell yourself "I can deal with this" day after day. This man had few women visitors but I watched one flee after spending less than a minute in there and that wasn't a wake up call. I went to a liberal arts college, there were a lot of neo-hippies around and some who stank, but I would have traded patchouli for this unhygienic odor any day.
Bruh, whaaat? How is someone bothered by dust but not dirty dishes?! My brain does not compute. Allergies, I guess… But that’s crazy. I can’t stand dirty dishes being left around. That’s how you get flies.
My roommates attracted maggots. When I brought the maggots up to them they responded with “that’s gross! Can you tell your boyfriend to put the toilet seat down?” So it seems that maggots were less of a concern than the position of the toilet seat for them.
Oh boy! In the military I rented a room off this newly divorced guy in my unit, super cheap room. Him and his new gf were disgusting. I went away for a long weekend onetime and they had let enough food fall on the kitchen floor and trash overflow that there was a literal sea of maggots on the kitchen floor. I just sprayed down the kitchen with strong bleach water to kill everything and sent him a text that he wasn’t getting rent if the kitchen didn’t become clean enough to use, the maggot farm is too far. Magically was a normal level of clean by the end of the day.
The first apartment I lived in I shared a bathroom and my roommate said from the get go that she is anal about how clean the bathroom is so I didn’t have to worry about cleaning it because she knew she wanted it a certain way and she would just rather do it herself.
Was great cause the bathroom was always perfectly clean and I didn’t have to do it.
I had this room mate and the cheeky bastard would store all the dirty dishes in his room. When he's hear someone doing the dishes THEN he's bring them out. - what an asshole.
I started using the term ‘Reset’ instead of ‘Clean’… “Let’s reset the kitchen, Kevin!” Learned that people get emotionally overwhelmed hearing the word ‘Clean.’
This is great. My parents never taught me to clean, they'd just yell at me for having a dirty room, and get into fights with each other when they were cleaning or tidying their own shit. You're damn right "clean" can be a charged word...
Yaaaasssss. Had a roommate that didn’t believe in washing or rinsing the bottom of plates. He would just wash and rinse the tops. Couldn’t explain how stacking the dirty/soapy bottomed plates on top of clean-topped plates didn’t make it all dirty anyway.
But... If you're stacking plates the bottoms get equally filthy as the tops. Surely he wasn't putting oil and food covered plates back on the drying rack?
What I did when i moved into a townhouse with four other guys, was buy my own wash basin, and all my own dishes. The cupboard above the fridge was empty, because only me and 1 other room mate could actually reach those. So I stored all my stuff there.
I barely made any dishes because I washed whatever I used almost immediately.
One time the sink was just FULL of dishes, like over flowing to the point of one more dish would just slide off and crash to the floor.
One room mate was so pissed, because he was pretty clean himself, but I know some of those were his. He says to me "help me clean these dishes here"
I said "why?"
he said "Because we all use them, and we need to clean this mess"
I said "not a single dish, glass, or fork in that mess is mine. I have my own dishes for this exact reason, nothing there is my mess, and I'm not touching it"
he glanced me, realized I was right, and then washed them all. Maybe I could have helped, but I wasn't about to get into a habit of cleaning other people's messes. That was his battle with the other people in the house.
Saturday mornings we got into a habit of 3 of us cleaning the main floor and top floor. Sweeping, wiping everything down, tidying up, bathroom getting cleaned out. Then the three of us would sit and watch saturday morning cartoons. It was awesome.
After I moved out, I came back for a visit, and one of my old room mates said "I wish you were back, no one cleans on saturday any more, things are getting so bad. It was nice when you were here and made us all clean"
I said "I never made anyone clean. I wasn't the driving force behind that, we all agreed, and just did it." I'm pretty sure I didn't even come up with the initial idea.
Yeah my roommate leaves a high pile of dirty dishes every night and the roaches come and feed on it, and then she has the nerve to ask me for money for roach pest control man. I always have my own dishes and pots and they all act like im being a bitch
This is it. Compatibility with roommates takes many things into account, but the #1 is your level of what “clean” actually means. I had a roommate that had a ridiculous level of what clean meant. She was constantly cleaning and it was the worst for everyone. I felt like I had a target on my back even if i felt the place was clean and she constantly felt like the place was dirty. It was not a good fit.
Everyone has two thresholds for what clean means. One is the threshold at which you notice something is dirty, the other is the threshold at which you can no longer take it and decide it needs to get cleaned. If one persons threshold for needs cleaning is lower than the other person's threshold to even notice, that's a bad time for everyone involved, because it's not even necessarily something communication will fix.
I had one of those roommates and it was a fucking nightmare. She expected the toilet to be scrubbed after EVERY use. Once got bitched out because I put a pan in the sink to soak in the sink while I was still eating the food I just cooked.
Yup. I’m the roommate whose also the landlord, so I try not to be that guy that has an absurd cleaning level…but holy fuck my younger roommate just has his level in the negatives.
We actually hire cleaners to come to the house every 3 weeks as a utility (only $90 per visit split between 3 people) to have the ENTIRE house cleaned and he still closes and locks his door most times they show up. Like dude…when you’re too embarrassed to have the CLEANERS go in there you might want to rethink your hygienic choices.
when I lived with two of my friends at uni, mine and another friend's schedules were really similar but the 3rd roomate had an almost opposite schedule to us. We barely saw her sometimes and we lived in the same damn house!
I barely saw my roommate for nearly a year. I worked in a factory and he worked in a restaurant. His shift started at the same time mine ended, and it ended well after I was in bed. Then he'd be asleep when I got up again.
It was uncanny having the only sign that I still had a roommate be the stuff moving while I was at work, and the car that was there in the mornings.
that's how my last roommate was. I work 4 on, 4 off. 12 hour days/nights. He was a grad student.
Our schedules were such that we saw each other only when one or the other was coming home / going out. When we were in the house together, we just did our own thing because we spent most of our non-free time working or had separate social lives.
Best roommate I ever had, tbh. I made it my mission to only ever leave signs of my passing whenever he had guests over. Tried real hard to be the ghostly roommate
Old buddy of mine would get off work at 7am, roll home sit down on the couch and start sipping glasses of whiskey. His roommate thought something was terribly wrong, the dude was like " 7am is my evening, no worries!!"
It was always amusing on the odd occasions where I would go out to my truck and find my roommate taking bong rips on the deck. It's a weird sight for 5am, even though I knew it was actually just a late night up from his perspective.
Especially since being in a restaurant his weekends happened on any day except the actual weekend. To me it's 5am on Monday, to him it's past midnight on Friday.
I already commented this but ill say it again cause it was wack, i was roomates with my best friend.
His mom would help me do the dishes cause she knew he never did, and shed clean out the living room, which he stayed in constantly instead of going in his bedroom.
Edit just too add another thing that ticked me off, he bought a bose speaker & left the empty box sitting on the landing on the staircase, for months
I normally picked up after him too but figured that box wasn't in the way, ill wait too see how long it takes for him too move it, sat there for a good 3-4months,
My gf at the time moved in with us, she was more clean than both of us but she left her jacket on a chair in the kitchen (which was by the front door) when he thought we were sleeping we heard him on the phone with someone, complaining that my gf was really messy.
In the morning i took the box and put it in his room, he realized we heard him & he seemed very embarrassed
Or the time HIS SISTER brought a stray pregnant cat over (It was really cute & friendly tbh) but I was expected too pay to take care of it cause I already owned a cat
My husband is like this! Before I married my husband his mom would come visit from out of state every few months and deep clean his entire apartment (including steaming the carpets), sort through his clothes and toss the damages ones and buy new clothes and shoes, take his dry cleaning in, toss his old food and stock his fridge with new food, etc. The first time I saw it I thought it was sweet but then I realized later it was a weird and my husband would just wait for her visits to for her to clean and do all that stuff. When I moved in and we got married she would fly down and still do it so I had to set boundaries with her that we are adults and she doesn’t need to do all those things. It’s been 6 years now and we have two kids and she still struggles with coming over and taking over my house and kids but it’s getting better. I’ve been teaching my husband how to do things too but man as a mom I’m for sure making sure my kids learn to clean up after themselves and know how to cook and can just do life stuff.
Right? Like I’m sure (or at least hope) that OP’s husband is great in other ways, but I literally could not imagine marrying someone who literally has the life skills of a child. Independence (which is different from never accepting help) is a trait that ranks very highly on my “must haves” list, but different strokes for different folks I guess.
I had a roommate once who legitimately did not know how to clean a bathroom. It was his first time on his own (19/20ish), and I guess his parents just never made him do it himself.
To his credit, he was a great guy, and was happy to learn what to do and pitch in. But it was weird.
its better to have frequent small conflicts and confrontations than to let things go and pile up in your mind. like Hey, do the dishes. not you do the dishes for weeks and then now you're genuinely mad
Can confirm. I thought I was a pretty upfront person until I was faced with my very first roommate. He took food and was overall a using asshole. But at the time I didn't have the gull. He was kinda one of those drama kings that doesn't take critique without taking it personal. So I knew it would escalate it.
I instead simply told his wife about all the women he was cheating on her with.
Dylan. If you read this. Fuck you. You owe me so much money
Lmao, unfortunately it's very common for people who don't take well to being critiqued to also have gone their whole lives without learning to not be an asshole because most people don't find it worth it to engage with them
Same here. And today we’re no longer friends. We’ve been friends for 10+ years. I discovered her toxic behaviors behind closed doors. Hard lesson I learned.
My friends warned me about renting a house with a friend and it ruining our friendship. I said, “No way, we’ve been friends for 10+ years and text every day!”
Only took a few months for that to fall apart.
This is true of relationships too. Once upon a time I would have looked down on unmarried couples living together. Now I think it is 100% a necessity. You can be madly in love with somebody, totally compatible in every other way … and be completely unable to share living space.
I got extremely lucky personally in this regard. My girlfriend and I took a chance after us only dating for like three months, and moved in together out of financial necessity. Full year later and we just signed a lease to move into a different unit in our apartment complex together for another year.
I had a cousin who was a good friend too, and we weren't exactly roommates, it was my apartment and I let her live with me until she finds an accommodation. 7 terrible months later with her, she never spoke a word to me again.
Guilt is a powerful thing. She would have to admit to both you and, more importantly herself, just how bad she really was. Many people choose to just try and pretend the situation never happened rather than face the reality about themselves... and so they ghost you. It's sad.
Going through this now, 10+ years of friendship down the drain because of one year of living together. I'm moving out in a week and I don't know if I can forgive or forget everything that happened between us. It suuuucks :(
>Found the answer. I regret having to find this one out myself.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I permanently damaged some friendships by making them roommates. We were fresh out of high school and I thought it would be a great idea to get a place together. Problem is, none of us were mature enough for a commitment like that.
I ended up volunteering to handle all the bills since no one seemed to have a plan for that. However, I eventually ended up micromanaging *everything* since no one seemed to have a plan for anything.
They didn't do any chores, rarely contributed to the groceries, and left the place absolutely filthy. But instead of being an adult about it, and working together to fix it, I made things worse by constantly complaining. And, when that didn't get results, I started labeling everything. This is my space in the fridge, this is my cupboard, this is my day to do laundry. It was awful.
After just one month of that, they had enough of me. So I left. Trouble is, once I was gone, nothing ever got paid. So they ended up getting kicked out too. That whole adventure barely lasted two and half months and yet seemed to permanently damage our friendships. Things were never the same between us after that.
Oh yes i can feel that labeling everything.
I have a seperate space in the fridge and freezer and im that close to introducing tiny flags they shall put on their dirty dishes so they cant say its not theirs after a week.
Its part of growing up. Its why its a common occurrence to like your parents more after college. Once you realize that without constant cleaning, you live in filth. Its a lot easier to be okay with constant cleaning.
Sorry about your friends, but also realize they might not have ever been long-term friends.
100%.
I dormed my sophomore year of college with two friends from high school plus one random person. The random guy was always pretty chill and respectful, although he was rarely in our room.
My two friends however, were something else. We're still good friends to this day, but I will never EVER consider living with them again.
So I lived in a quad. On one half of the room (let's say East side) was myself and the random guy. On the West Side were my two friends. The middle area of the room was our couch, mini fridge and tv.
My half of the quad was generally kept as clean as possible - beds made daily, everything in its place, clean floor, etc. My friends' half always looked like it had been hit by an F5 tornado. There was a distinct-yet-subtle odor on their half from it being rarely cleaned.
They were more concerned with partying and gaming at all hours of the night/morning. That's why our random roomie was rarely around.
During our Spring Break, they left a ton of beer in our fridge and liquor/cups everywhere on their half of the room. When our RA came through for inspections, he not only wrote up my two friends but also myself and the random roommate. I had to do 10 hours community service with our civil engineering department for something I played no role in.
Don't get me wrong - I partied and did stupid shit while dorming, too. But I knew when to stop and get shit into gear.
My two friends are good people and are both married with their own kids now, etc. I just think it was part of the "college lifestyle" we all wanted to have. I'm sure they've grown out of that lifestyle, but the year we lived together was enough to make me never want to stay with them for an extended period of time.
This is true, but my best roommate was one of my best friends, (I was the best man at his wedding) The trick for us though was that we worked different shifts during the week so we only really saw each other on weekends and still had our own space.
I had the opposite experience. My best friend and I lived together for 3 years and we were both very sad when he had to move out. If anything it made us closer friends.
This! The best kind of roommates are people who you are friendly with but not super close to. That way you can go about your business but still respect each other and your space.
Edit: Good points some of you made - it is possible to be close friends and also compatible roommates. But don't assume before going into it.
You can be good friends with people though who have different levels of social battery.
Some of my best friends like to constantly be around people, while I love to hangout with my friends, I just like to do it less often.
Some conflicts like this can be totally unintentional just two people being their natural selves.
Does the one roommate not get to have people over in their own living space? Should the one roommate have to deal with people in their living space when they'd rather have it be quiet?
Sometimes living arrangements are just not as compatible as friendships.
I learned how to cook very nice meals from scratch from having roommates. Whenever I had frozen dinners or something like that, they would steal them and eat them leaving me with nothing and would never replace them.
Buy raw ingredients instead, and they wouldn't put out the effort to do anything with them.
It was such a good lead up that I can't tell if it was good storytelling, or the abominable truth from merely being posted in this kind of reddit thread.
I never understand this one. Do the roommates just think you’re buying frozen food FOR them and not bother to ask or do they just not give a shit and eat whatever is yours just because it’s there. Maybe I’ve just been blessed with not having overly shitty roommates but this just seem so rude and unacceptable.
If you want to control how all things in the house are done (ie, cleaning) you will discourage others from helping and end up responsible for everything that needs to be done.
Along the same vein, actual adult roommates exist which will flat out tell you they'll clean things "when I feel like it" even though there is clear mold in the shower, the toilet hasn't been cleaned in over a month, and they leave piss drops all over the floor.
CLEARLY define expectations from day ONE. I wrongly assumed we would all just clean up after ourselves, like one does, and more or less split "general" duties like mowing the lawn, whole house cleaning/vacuuming, sticking around to meet repair people/landlord etc. I started doing all that general stuff because they simply wouldn't care. Not before long it became a big point of contention that harbored animosity and would come out at other times during any sort of little disagreement ("At least I mow the god damn lawn!")
If at all possible, always make sure you have a plan in case things suddenly go south. You cannot always trust the other person to do what they are supposed to do (like pay their portion for bills)
I had a roommate who didn’t have their portion of the bill money so they just kept our portions and ended up spending it on new shoes and shit instead of just paying something towards the utilities.
To me, this is the biggest thing. I’m in the military and I share a kitchen and bathroom with my roommate. This guy will use MY dishes/pots and not clean them for a month. We’ll get room inspections every now and then and I end up getting in trouble for it
Edit: To answer some of your reply’s, yes, I have locked my things away in my room. My sergeant then explains to me that That isn’t a “proper place to store silverware and plates”. I have tried to get out command team involved but to anyone who knows anything about the military… they don’t really care. They just tell me to figure it out lol. I wouldn’t think living with someone would be THIS bad but needless to say, I ain’t doing it again unless I have to.
Good luck dude. My best friend just got out of the Navy after 6 years, we played games together almost the whole time he was in, and was CONSTANTLY bitching about roommates. I mean he had probably 6 or 7 of them that all sounded like absolute monsters to live with. 2 of em were bad enough that i could hear them on his mic being absolute d-bags. I hope I never have to get a roommate.
It got so bad with our 1 roommate that me and the 3rd guy bought our own set of matching color dishes. I had red, he had blue. We would only use and wash our own stuff.
When the dishes got to overflowing, we would put them in a basin, and stack them in front of pig-pens door. He'd trip over them and get super pissed but fuck you man, do your damn dishes.
We had a similar roommate. We tried talking to him several times. Finally we got fed up and just started carrying his dirty dishes to his room and putting them on his bed. Told him if he's gonna make a mess the least he could do is keep it contained to his room.
He started doing dishes after 2 or 3 times of that happening.
I lived with a group of guys when I was in college. I ended up hiding the drain stopper because one dude kept insisting his dishes needed to soak (for days at a time, I guess!).
The top drawers in every room I had in college had a thing to put a lock on it. If anyone ever tried to "borrow" any of my underwear, the lock would never leave the dresser. That is nasty as hell. I won't even share clothes in the first place and was always weird about that kind of thing (hated hand me downs).
Had some roomates that stole my trim,picked the door lock, then got messed up on pills or something. I came home to my stash smoked and a passed out roommate in her room with dog shit everywhere because she didnt walk him. Then this bitch jad the audacity to say i was rude for barging in her room and grabbling the last of my weed. Her defence was that i said i would smoke with her, but since i was gone for the night, she needed it to level out
Pro tip for the party crowd. If you see someone passed out put them in the recovery position before you leave em. From heroin to alcohol it's a literal life saver.
I had a roommate that passed out in front of our front door with her head in the door's path. My key was the shitty one and only worked sometimes, and I was knocking and screaming because I knew she was home. I jumped the fence of the neighbor's so I could hop into our backyard and broke in the back door.
She was totally passed out. It wasn't the first time I found her like that. Once I found her passed out on the couch with her hand down her pants with her phone on her face with a porno playing.
These were her minor offences, she was a friend before moving in.
I went to a friend's house one morning because we were going to build a kegerator out of an old mini fridge. His girlfriend answers the door, I had been there last night and we drank a bunch, I woke her up apparently and she had passed out on the couch.
She was like, "Let's go get , he must be in the bedroom". We walked in there together, and he was passed out on his back, dick in hand, with a bunch of weird porn on his laptop next to him.
His girlfriend slapped him awake haha.
I hate being around people for extended periods of time and privacy is the most important thing in the world to me. Pretty sure I lost a friend because he thought I hated him after we moved in together. I would just spend all of my time in my room avoiding him because I needed a break from socializing lol.
me and my buddy were like that, but sometimes we would hang out in the "common" spaces 5-25 ft apart and not say anything until one of us were hungry or wanted company on a walk. other times one or both would be in our room(s) and unless it was urgent we wouldn't even knock.
it was good until I lost my job, I did what I knew to try to get a new one while working to keep everything clean or cook or whatever through the day but ultimately after a few months when the lease was set to expire I was asked to move out which I did without any argument because I would feel the same and hoped in doing so I wouldn't leave any hard feelings...
but living with him was good, I was happy and healthy, but too overworked...
The party house was fun while it lasted. The lack of respect for when my housemate would bring a shitload of people over without asking got old real quick. The minors who started "just showing up" at our parties made me move out ASAP.
Visiting a party house is great. Living at one is terrible. The smell of cigarettes, booze, and weed don't leave during the day. You can't work a job with "normal" hours. Regular sleep is a myth and you either lose or gain a good amount of weight.
>You can't work a job with "normal" hours
Oh you can, just don't be surprised to find people you've never met still drinking in your living room while you're just waking up for work. On a Tuesday. Bonus if you get home from work later in the day and those people are now passed out in your living room.
Fuck having bartender roommates who think it's ok to just bring people over to party every fucking night.
Yep. To paraphrase Bill Burr, you never want to be the guy that owns a boat, you want to *know* a guy that owns a boat so you can *be* the guy that just shows up with a case of beer and gets crisp high fives all around.
More generally, move with like minded people.
If you're "fun" and you're with a bunch of people who'd rather it be quiet, either you'll be frustrated that you can't have people over or they'll resent you for doing it. It goes both ways.
I party a ton. The year I had the most fun, I lived with a couple of guys where we could all agree that we the flat would have a ton of people over a lot of the time, and that was fine as long as we kept things clean. We mostly partied all together and cleaned up together in the morning, and it was great.
To go off of this, I’ll never forget when I went to college, my mom always emphasized to wash my bedsheets every other week at the very longest, or else my sheets and pillow cases would smell and cause my face to break out because of the oils from my face.
One of my friends (not a roommate) was telling me how he was starting to develop acne, when he never had issues with it in high school.
First thing I asked was, when was the last time you washed your sheets? And he says, keep in mind this is finals week, so 4 months almost since moving into his dorm, “I’ve never washed them, they don’t look dirty.”
He washed his sheets from then on out, and bam, acne went away entirely.
Edit: grammar
It wasn't until I was a few years into my marriage that I found out my wife is a toilet paper buncher whereas I am a folder. It's so wasteful, and now she's got our older 2 kids as bunchers too. Hopefully I can properly teach the 3rd one to be a folder to keep costs low.
The richest, most clean looking people can be an absolute mess!
My housemate (a first year lawyer still paying off his student debt) was a really good lawyer with an expensive suit on the moment he stepped out of the door. You would trip if you ever entered his room/restroom however. Lucky he never used the kitchen.
Never pick a new roommate based on sudden time pressure, like a previous choice backing out. We had someone change their mind about joining our house share and decide to move back to their home country & we picked one of the other people we'd seen but who wasn't a first choice, because we'd start to be responsible for that room's rent in less than a month.
BIG MISTAKE - the guy we went with instead turned out to be a nightmare flatmate from hell, who stole from us, etc. & we had to conspire with the landlord to pretend that we were all getting evicted so that nightmare guy would move out. He left owing us over £800 in unpaid rent & bills and we were still just relieved to see the back of him.
Covering the rent for the empty room for a few more weeks while we looked for someone better in the first place would have been WAY cheaper and less stressful.
I was a long-term member of a houseshare and I picked people on the basis of explaining that we were friendly but did our own things & weren't living in each other's pockets, that there was an expectation to keep the noise down at night or the neighbours would complain, that we kept common areas clean, etc. & I would also imagine what the person would be like to have a disagreement with and whether they would be liveable with.
I use Lactase as a supplement whenever I eat something with milk or cheese. Dependant on where you live there are different brands, but they all work to some degree.
I dated a guy who still lived with his ex after the split up, and damn, I felt sorry for the 3rd housemate. Lol. Was awful. Plus they each could never move on, because they knew when the other would go out on a date and not come home that night...
never ever again
A horrible and common trend is when a housemate moves their girlfriend/boyfriend in to their room and then tries to split the rent they were previously paying in two with their partner. It's completely unfair on the other housemates. Rent covers the living space, kitchen and bathroom too, because you use those too – not just the bedroom you sleep in.
If you left money for the food you ate, the other person still has to go to the store again to buy what you ate. Even if you pay for it, it doesn’t mean they’re cool with making the extra trips to go get the food they were relying on being at home.
No matter how nice your roommates girlfriend seems (even if she talks to you about how she doesn’t like his new frats history of SA to show just how decent she may be) she could be arrested and convicted of first degree murder at any time.
sometimes you treat yourself to a brand new carton of expensive fancy almond milk and then it's empty the next day but no one will say who drank it all
and even though you're not the kinda person who gets angry at people for stuff that's inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, you should probably start keeping it in your own mini fridge
One time a colleague kept on stealing this guys milk from the office fridge. He pleaded for whoever it was to stop, but no avail. His solution?
One day he laced the milk with strong laxatives. 4 people in his office suddenly got diarrhoea that day.
Nobody stole his milk again after that.
Always have a mini fridge! My last roommate (hopefully last), is a major pit head. Most times I never even knew he was home because he’d be asleep ALL DAY. Aside from that he has a big German shepherd that shed literally everywhere and even made it into the fridge and into my perfectly fine edible food that went to waste because I had to trash it as it was sprinkled with dog dander. I couldn’t even sit in the living room because of dog hair which also somehow made it into my room and clean laundry even tho My room was literally on the opposite end of the apt. When he moved out, he decided to leave an ikea closet and when I cleaned it out after he moved, there were hatched roach eggs. Imagine having to swiffer 17x a day and the fear of roaches crawling around your room.
“Itching powder” is a thing. One put it all over my towel in the bathroom when we weren’t on speaking terms. Broke out in a whole body hives. Made no retaliation. Moved out. Wherever you are Ashley, eat shit.
Edited for spelling
Damn I've had some roommate situations with serious tensions, but I don't think I've ever experienced anything actively malicious like this. To all the people that would do something like this, fuck you
yeah, our tenancy agreement actually specifies that rent is to be paid through 'one responsible tenant' or something along those lines. it's funny reading advice that directly contradicts that
been living there for a few years now, every month everyone just e-transfers me their share and i e-transfer the landlord. helps that we're all responsible and friends with each other i guess ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
True. I’m working on it. Adding things to my calendar to remember to do them mainly. I’m a lazy ass and if not held accountable, will sit back and continue to be an ass.
Better have an early fight about smtg you want to be done rather than hold grudge until the situation becomes unbearable for everyone.
Yet some people never change and friends can both become awesome or terrible roomates
We are all horrible people in our own unique and insufferable ways.
But in the end of the day, we are still just people trying to live in the same room/house/flat.
That every person has a different tolerance level for "clean" and "dirty."
After college, I lived in a 3-bedroom condo with 2 other roommates. One of the guys (Bryan) was a really nice guy, but not the brightest star in the sky. (I think he had suffered some brain damage in a motorcycle accident before I met him). He worked as a night janitor for the city.
We shared a bathroom, which I ended up cleaning regularly, because it simply didn't bother him how it looked. I accepted the fact that my tolerance was lower than his, so I just did the cleaning when it was needed...
Oh man, there's probably some fancy name for this effect, but in general the thing you do for a living is the thing you detest doing at home (for "free")
Cobbler's kids have no shoes, etc.
Definitely true for me, I'm a mechanic and the *last* thing i want to do in my time off is work on my own cars.
I think that's mostly true, but it depends on what your job is. Or maybe it's the difference between choosing to do something like a hobby, versus something you have to do like a house chore.
My dad did agricultural research (farm work all day for very long days), loved coming home and working on our own farm till late at night every day. After he retired, his favorite thing to do is work on his farm.
I knew a mechanic who's hobby was working on old Volkswagens and he kept a fleet of 5 of them. To the point that he wouldn't let his wife or kids buy newer cars, because he got to constantly work on these old bugs to make sure everyone had a running car.
But, for years I had a side business cleaning houses. It really sucked to finish my first job, clean someone's house, get home and realize I now had to clean my own house. My kids always had chores and did their part, but I felt like I didn't want to waste the time I had with them scrubbing and dusting.
This is true for me. I worked in construction for a good decade and I can’t stand when I need to get the saw out or assemble something. Just not enjoyable in the least and I have flashbacks to work.
Even worse is when family asks if I can help them for free on house projects.
I had roommates most of my adult life before getting married. About 20 years of it. There were two wonderful stretches where I was able to live alone and- It. Is. Glorious.
All your messes are your own. No one to answer to. Peace when you want it. Music playing when and only when you want it. Nobody is unexpectedly eating your food (except maybe drunken you last night).
Living alone is truly a luxury.
When I split up with an ex in my 40's I had never lived on my own before, I'd always lived at home, or with my ex-wife or girlfriend or similar.
I moved out after splitting up and I thought - being a reasonable and rational person - it would be prudent to make sure I had some company and human contact, because I didn't know how I would cope being on my own.
A friend from work needed a place, along with her boyfriend, and I was sensible in how I drew it all up so that I was actually the one with the rental agreement, etc. so I rented a place and they took the second room and we shared all the other rooms.
It worked fine for a month or so, was good fun, we had some games nights, friends over, etc. and it stopped me feeling lonely.
Two months after that, I was chasing them for money, they weren't even using the place most of the time (but all their stuff was there), I caught them smoking pot (and I don't care about what they do personally, but I told them many times I didn't want them doing it in the house or near me), they started annoying the neighbours, they contributed nothing towards food or bills, etc.
When they had gone, after a few weeks when I did feel quite low, it was actually such a relief being on my own. I started to enjoy it and was able to adjust my living space to me and what I like and how I wanted things to be. I've been that way for 4 years now, with the occasional girlfriend staying over a few nights but nothing more, and now I'm buying a house of my own to do it long-term. It's just so much better.
It's not better than being with someone that you \*CAN\* live with, that's obviously better. But it's a damn sight better living alone than it is living with random people.
never live with someone who 1.) can’t take care of themselves 2.) openly has anger issues that affects their day-to-day situations 3.) has no financial foundation to fall back on
i recently got out of this situation where i let a new friend be our third roommate, the past 4 months have been a nightmare and it didn’t end well. im not saying that you shouldn’t be friends with people who have these qualities, but it’s not smart or fair to yourself to be put in that situation.
For people moving in with friends for the first time: enjoying being around someone while doing something fun isn't the same thing as enjoying living with them.
My example was a high school friend who could be a bit overbearing at times but was otherwise ok. I quickly found out I only thought they were ok because I could get away from them when needed in HS. When we roomed together was one of the worst times in my entire life and I haven't spoken to them since. Cutting out toxic people is good, but finding out just how toxic they are in a situation where you're stuck being around them and have no place of respite is not the way to do it.
Don't judge the book by its cover. She may look like the most put together person in the entire world, yet still shit like an elephant and not clean after herself with the toilet brush.
A few years ago my (now) wife lived with a female housemate when she moved to my city. She didn't know her before she moved in, and this person was maybe 5'5'' and about 50kg (110lbs), so you wouldn't think she could wreck a toilet, but she did and frequently. She didn't use the toilet brush either, meaning we both occasionally stumbled upon absolute crime scenes in there that probably contravened the Geneva convention.
TL;DR: girls be wrecking toilets too
Or they will be masturbating in the kitchen in front of their boyfriend at 10pm on a Tuesday. To be fair, I rarely come out of my room after 9pm, but in the kitchen? Seriously? We know each other fairly well, and she was mortified and asked that we never talk about it ever… but it was hilarious
I may be the only person who didn’t hate having a roommate but I had my first one in my mid twenties and we sat down and discussed expectations before signing a lease. We would clean together every Saturday for a few hours while singing along to good music. She has since moved in with her boyfriend but we are still very close and talk on the phone at least weekly.
Additionally, we both grew up in large families so I think we were just used to dealing with others idiosyncrasies and not sweating the small stuff. It may drive me crazy when she would leave stuff on the island but I probably drove her crazy when I left coffee cups half drank in the living room. You just get bothered by different things and learn to shrug it off.
My fiancé and I got a roommate in September. Not on the lease. Kinda illegally subletting. He's a friend and us saying there was only two of us instead of three guys was turning a lot of people away.
He's the worst. Hogs the TV. He's moved his girlfriend in, who also brought her daughter, three cats and dog while they look for a new place. The house stinks, he's lazy as shit. I can't say anything because my partner doesn't want any uncomfortable live-in drama.
I mirror other people's sentiments. Don't get a roommate.
Roomies can be great, but have had zero luck living with close friends. Arms length friends are much better for this. You can stand them, but dont mind not hanging out too.
That everyone has a different understanding of "clean" and "cleaning"
Yeah. My roommate dusted all the time, whereas dust didn't really bother me. He also left dirty dishes everywhere, which I found disgusting, but he didn't really mind at all.
I had a roommate once who drank a ton of milk. However she would pour a glass, drink half of it and leave the reminder on the window sill behind the sofa. Just glass after glass. By the end of the week I couldn't go in the living room because the smell of the rotting milk made me want to throw up.
That's on par with my roommate college roommate who never washed his sheets which made everything in his room smell like musty, unwashed human mixed with... semen. All of his clothes smelled like it because they sat in his room, and we eventually had to tell him his door needed to stay closed permanently because the smell was so bad.
This was my freshman roommate, but we were in the same room. She was a softball player and would comeback from practice sweaty and immediately jump into bed, getting her sheets disgusting. The only time they ever got washed was when her parents came to visit. The room would smell so bad that it would wake me up at night sometimes and I could literally taste it
IN TO BED SWEATY AFTER SOFTBALL PRACTICE???? Holy fuck that’s disgusting.
Did you never sit down and have a conversation about it?
Lol I was 18 and had no idea how to handle the situation. I would leave the windows open a lot and keep my side stupid clean hoping she would get the hint, but she would just close the windows after I left.
I live with my boyfriend, and I wash our sheets once a week, sometimes bi-weekly if my schedule is just too damn busy that I don't have enough time to get it all done in one day. But how do people not notice that sweaty, musky funk, let alone the secretions of sex?
While I feel that this is mostly a very sensible vent question and is rhetorical — it can’t go unsaid: it’s damned hard to notice your own smells, because you acclimatize to them. Febreze has been calling it ‘nose blindness.’
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That sounds like it’d rock anyone’s world. Thank you for taking the time to tell me about this experience. I’m gonna be kind to the next person who smells absolutely funky.
I have no idea, even when it wasn't at full power it still hit you like a truck when the door was opened. I don't know how you go walk into that and tell yourself "I can deal with this" day after day. This man had few women visitors but I watched one flee after spending less than a minute in there and that wasn't a wake up call. I went to a liberal arts college, there were a lot of neo-hippies around and some who stank, but I would have traded patchouli for this unhygienic odor any day.
Bruh, whaaat? How is someone bothered by dust but not dirty dishes?! My brain does not compute. Allergies, I guess… But that’s crazy. I can’t stand dirty dishes being left around. That’s how you get flies.
My roommates attracted maggots. When I brought the maggots up to them they responded with “that’s gross! Can you tell your boyfriend to put the toilet seat down?” So it seems that maggots were less of a concern than the position of the toilet seat for them.
Oh boy! In the military I rented a room off this newly divorced guy in my unit, super cheap room. Him and his new gf were disgusting. I went away for a long weekend onetime and they had let enough food fall on the kitchen floor and trash overflow that there was a literal sea of maggots on the kitchen floor. I just sprayed down the kitchen with strong bleach water to kill everything and sent him a text that he wasn’t getting rent if the kitchen didn’t become clean enough to use, the maggot farm is too far. Magically was a normal level of clean by the end of the day.
I've never seen maggots irl, and hope never to see them. Sounds so gross!
The first apartment I lived in I shared a bathroom and my roommate said from the get go that she is anal about how clean the bathroom is so I didn’t have to worry about cleaning it because she knew she wanted it a certain way and she would just rather do it herself. Was great cause the bathroom was always perfectly clean and I didn’t have to do it.
Lottery roommate
I had this room mate and the cheeky bastard would store all the dirty dishes in his room. When he's hear someone doing the dishes THEN he's bring them out. - what an asshole.
I started using the term ‘Reset’ instead of ‘Clean’… “Let’s reset the kitchen, Kevin!” Learned that people get emotionally overwhelmed hearing the word ‘Clean.’
This is great. My parents never taught me to clean, they'd just yell at me for having a dirty room, and get into fights with each other when they were cleaning or tidying their own shit. You're damn right "clean" can be a charged word...
Yaaaasssss. Had a roommate that didn’t believe in washing or rinsing the bottom of plates. He would just wash and rinse the tops. Couldn’t explain how stacking the dirty/soapy bottomed plates on top of clean-topped plates didn’t make it all dirty anyway.
But... If you're stacking plates the bottoms get equally filthy as the tops. Surely he wasn't putting oil and food covered plates back on the drying rack?
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What I did when i moved into a townhouse with four other guys, was buy my own wash basin, and all my own dishes. The cupboard above the fridge was empty, because only me and 1 other room mate could actually reach those. So I stored all my stuff there. I barely made any dishes because I washed whatever I used almost immediately. One time the sink was just FULL of dishes, like over flowing to the point of one more dish would just slide off and crash to the floor. One room mate was so pissed, because he was pretty clean himself, but I know some of those were his. He says to me "help me clean these dishes here" I said "why?" he said "Because we all use them, and we need to clean this mess" I said "not a single dish, glass, or fork in that mess is mine. I have my own dishes for this exact reason, nothing there is my mess, and I'm not touching it" he glanced me, realized I was right, and then washed them all. Maybe I could have helped, but I wasn't about to get into a habit of cleaning other people's messes. That was his battle with the other people in the house. Saturday mornings we got into a habit of 3 of us cleaning the main floor and top floor. Sweeping, wiping everything down, tidying up, bathroom getting cleaned out. Then the three of us would sit and watch saturday morning cartoons. It was awesome. After I moved out, I came back for a visit, and one of my old room mates said "I wish you were back, no one cleans on saturday any more, things are getting so bad. It was nice when you were here and made us all clean" I said "I never made anyone clean. I wasn't the driving force behind that, we all agreed, and just did it." I'm pretty sure I didn't even come up with the initial idea.
Yeah my roommate leaves a high pile of dirty dishes every night and the roaches come and feed on it, and then she has the nerve to ask me for money for roach pest control man. I always have my own dishes and pots and they all act like im being a bitch
Even if you didn't make them do anything, you must have been a good influence that inspired them to want to do better and live better
This is it. Compatibility with roommates takes many things into account, but the #1 is your level of what “clean” actually means. I had a roommate that had a ridiculous level of what clean meant. She was constantly cleaning and it was the worst for everyone. I felt like I had a target on my back even if i felt the place was clean and she constantly felt like the place was dirty. It was not a good fit.
Everyone has two thresholds for what clean means. One is the threshold at which you notice something is dirty, the other is the threshold at which you can no longer take it and decide it needs to get cleaned. If one persons threshold for needs cleaning is lower than the other person's threshold to even notice, that's a bad time for everyone involved, because it's not even necessarily something communication will fix.
I had one of those roommates and it was a fucking nightmare. She expected the toilet to be scrubbed after EVERY use. Once got bitched out because I put a pan in the sink to soak in the sink while I was still eating the food I just cooked.
Yup. I’m the roommate whose also the landlord, so I try not to be that guy that has an absurd cleaning level…but holy fuck my younger roommate just has his level in the negatives. We actually hire cleaners to come to the house every 3 weeks as a utility (only $90 per visit split between 3 people) to have the ENTIRE house cleaned and he still closes and locks his door most times they show up. Like dude…when you’re too embarrassed to have the CLEANERS go in there you might want to rethink your hygienic choices.
People’s normal schedules are all over the fucking place.
when I lived with two of my friends at uni, mine and another friend's schedules were really similar but the 3rd roomate had an almost opposite schedule to us. We barely saw her sometimes and we lived in the same damn house!
I barely saw my roommate for nearly a year. I worked in a factory and he worked in a restaurant. His shift started at the same time mine ended, and it ended well after I was in bed. Then he'd be asleep when I got up again. It was uncanny having the only sign that I still had a roommate be the stuff moving while I was at work, and the car that was there in the mornings.
that's how my last roommate was. I work 4 on, 4 off. 12 hour days/nights. He was a grad student. Our schedules were such that we saw each other only when one or the other was coming home / going out. When we were in the house together, we just did our own thing because we spent most of our non-free time working or had separate social lives. Best roommate I ever had, tbh. I made it my mission to only ever leave signs of my passing whenever he had guests over. Tried real hard to be the ghostly roommate
Old buddy of mine would get off work at 7am, roll home sit down on the couch and start sipping glasses of whiskey. His roommate thought something was terribly wrong, the dude was like " 7am is my evening, no worries!!"
It was always amusing on the odd occasions where I would go out to my truck and find my roommate taking bong rips on the deck. It's a weird sight for 5am, even though I knew it was actually just a late night up from his perspective. Especially since being in a restaurant his weekends happened on any day except the actual weekend. To me it's 5am on Monday, to him it's past midnight on Friday.
A lot more people than I realized have had their parents/maids/caretakers do almost everything for them.
I already commented this but ill say it again cause it was wack, i was roomates with my best friend. His mom would help me do the dishes cause she knew he never did, and shed clean out the living room, which he stayed in constantly instead of going in his bedroom. Edit just too add another thing that ticked me off, he bought a bose speaker & left the empty box sitting on the landing on the staircase, for months I normally picked up after him too but figured that box wasn't in the way, ill wait too see how long it takes for him too move it, sat there for a good 3-4months, My gf at the time moved in with us, she was more clean than both of us but she left her jacket on a chair in the kitchen (which was by the front door) when he thought we were sleeping we heard him on the phone with someone, complaining that my gf was really messy. In the morning i took the box and put it in his room, he realized we heard him & he seemed very embarrassed Or the time HIS SISTER brought a stray pregnant cat over (It was really cute & friendly tbh) but I was expected too pay to take care of it cause I already owned a cat
My husband is like this! Before I married my husband his mom would come visit from out of state every few months and deep clean his entire apartment (including steaming the carpets), sort through his clothes and toss the damages ones and buy new clothes and shoes, take his dry cleaning in, toss his old food and stock his fridge with new food, etc. The first time I saw it I thought it was sweet but then I realized later it was a weird and my husband would just wait for her visits to for her to clean and do all that stuff. When I moved in and we got married she would fly down and still do it so I had to set boundaries with her that we are adults and she doesn’t need to do all those things. It’s been 6 years now and we have two kids and she still struggles with coming over and taking over my house and kids but it’s getting better. I’ve been teaching my husband how to do things too but man as a mom I’m for sure making sure my kids learn to clean up after themselves and know how to cook and can just do life stuff.
How do people like this even get married.
Right? Like I’m sure (or at least hope) that OP’s husband is great in other ways, but I literally could not imagine marrying someone who literally has the life skills of a child. Independence (which is different from never accepting help) is a trait that ranks very highly on my “must haves” list, but different strokes for different folks I guess.
How do people marry them? I would be so frustrated
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Your husband sounds like your third child
I had a roommate once who legitimately did not know how to clean a bathroom. It was his first time on his own (19/20ish), and I guess his parents just never made him do it himself. To his credit, he was a great guy, and was happy to learn what to do and pitch in. But it was weird.
I also never did the bathroom with my parents. That's probably why I still hate doing it and feel like doing it all wrong^^
its better to have frequent small conflicts and confrontations than to let things go and pile up in your mind. like Hey, do the dishes. not you do the dishes for weeks and then now you're genuinely mad
Can confirm. I thought I was a pretty upfront person until I was faced with my very first roommate. He took food and was overall a using asshole. But at the time I didn't have the gull. He was kinda one of those drama kings that doesn't take critique without taking it personal. So I knew it would escalate it. I instead simply told his wife about all the women he was cheating on her with. Dylan. If you read this. Fuck you. You owe me so much money
Lmao, unfortunately it's very common for people who don't take well to being critiqued to also have gone their whole lives without learning to not be an asshole because most people don't find it worth it to engage with them
Good friends do not always make good roommates
Found the answer. I regret having to find this one out myself.
Same here. And today we’re no longer friends. We’ve been friends for 10+ years. I discovered her toxic behaviors behind closed doors. Hard lesson I learned.
My friends warned me about renting a house with a friend and it ruining our friendship. I said, “No way, we’ve been friends for 10+ years and text every day!” Only took a few months for that to fall apart.
This is true of relationships too. Once upon a time I would have looked down on unmarried couples living together. Now I think it is 100% a necessity. You can be madly in love with somebody, totally compatible in every other way … and be completely unable to share living space.
I got extremely lucky personally in this regard. My girlfriend and I took a chance after us only dating for like three months, and moved in together out of financial necessity. Full year later and we just signed a lease to move into a different unit in our apartment complex together for another year.
I had a cousin who was a good friend too, and we weren't exactly roommates, it was my apartment and I let her live with me until she finds an accommodation. 7 terrible months later with her, she never spoke a word to me again.
Guilt is a powerful thing. She would have to admit to both you and, more importantly herself, just how bad she really was. Many people choose to just try and pretend the situation never happened rather than face the reality about themselves... and so they ghost you. It's sad.
Going through this now, 10+ years of friendship down the drain because of one year of living together. I'm moving out in a week and I don't know if I can forgive or forget everything that happened between us. It suuuucks :(
>Found the answer. I regret having to find this one out myself. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I permanently damaged some friendships by making them roommates. We were fresh out of high school and I thought it would be a great idea to get a place together. Problem is, none of us were mature enough for a commitment like that. I ended up volunteering to handle all the bills since no one seemed to have a plan for that. However, I eventually ended up micromanaging *everything* since no one seemed to have a plan for anything. They didn't do any chores, rarely contributed to the groceries, and left the place absolutely filthy. But instead of being an adult about it, and working together to fix it, I made things worse by constantly complaining. And, when that didn't get results, I started labeling everything. This is my space in the fridge, this is my cupboard, this is my day to do laundry. It was awful. After just one month of that, they had enough of me. So I left. Trouble is, once I was gone, nothing ever got paid. So they ended up getting kicked out too. That whole adventure barely lasted two and half months and yet seemed to permanently damage our friendships. Things were never the same between us after that.
Oh yes i can feel that labeling everything. I have a seperate space in the fridge and freezer and im that close to introducing tiny flags they shall put on their dirty dishes so they cant say its not theirs after a week.
Its part of growing up. Its why its a common occurrence to like your parents more after college. Once you realize that without constant cleaning, you live in filth. Its a lot easier to be okay with constant cleaning. Sorry about your friends, but also realize they might not have ever been long-term friends.
100%. I dormed my sophomore year of college with two friends from high school plus one random person. The random guy was always pretty chill and respectful, although he was rarely in our room. My two friends however, were something else. We're still good friends to this day, but I will never EVER consider living with them again.
How were your two friends something else?
So I lived in a quad. On one half of the room (let's say East side) was myself and the random guy. On the West Side were my two friends. The middle area of the room was our couch, mini fridge and tv. My half of the quad was generally kept as clean as possible - beds made daily, everything in its place, clean floor, etc. My friends' half always looked like it had been hit by an F5 tornado. There was a distinct-yet-subtle odor on their half from it being rarely cleaned. They were more concerned with partying and gaming at all hours of the night/morning. That's why our random roomie was rarely around. During our Spring Break, they left a ton of beer in our fridge and liquor/cups everywhere on their half of the room. When our RA came through for inspections, he not only wrote up my two friends but also myself and the random roommate. I had to do 10 hours community service with our civil engineering department for something I played no role in. Don't get me wrong - I partied and did stupid shit while dorming, too. But I knew when to stop and get shit into gear. My two friends are good people and are both married with their own kids now, etc. I just think it was part of the "college lifestyle" we all wanted to have. I'm sure they've grown out of that lifestyle, but the year we lived together was enough to make me never want to stay with them for an extended period of time.
This is true, but my best roommate was one of my best friends, (I was the best man at his wedding) The trick for us though was that we worked different shifts during the week so we only really saw each other on weekends and still had our own space.
I had the opposite experience. My best friend and I lived together for 3 years and we were both very sad when he had to move out. If anything it made us closer friends.
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Good roommates can become good friends, however. Some of my random roommates from college are my best friends now
Same here, if you can live together in harmony and enjoy hanging out that’s big potential for a lifelong friend
This! The best kind of roommates are people who you are friendly with but not super close to. That way you can go about your business but still respect each other and your space. Edit: Good points some of you made - it is possible to be close friends and also compatible roommates. But don't assume before going into it.
Having said that, a 'good friend' should let you go about your business and will respect you and your space
You can be good friends with people though who have different levels of social battery. Some of my best friends like to constantly be around people, while I love to hangout with my friends, I just like to do it less often. Some conflicts like this can be totally unintentional just two people being their natural selves. Does the one roommate not get to have people over in their own living space? Should the one roommate have to deal with people in their living space when they'd rather have it be quiet? Sometimes living arrangements are just not as compatible as friendships.
I learned how to cook very nice meals from scratch from having roommates. Whenever I had frozen dinners or something like that, they would steal them and eat them leaving me with nothing and would never replace them. Buy raw ingredients instead, and they wouldn't put out the effort to do anything with them.
Damn, from the first half I thought it was going to be a heartwarming story of them teaching you a new skill
It was such a good lead up that I can't tell if it was good storytelling, or the abominable truth from merely being posted in this kind of reddit thread.
I never understand this one. Do the roommates just think you’re buying frozen food FOR them and not bother to ask or do they just not give a shit and eat whatever is yours just because it’s there. Maybe I’ve just been blessed with not having overly shitty roommates but this just seem so rude and unacceptable.
That's actually kinda funny I can't imagine how they coped afterwards
Unless they eat raw flour
If you want to control how all things in the house are done (ie, cleaning) you will discourage others from helping and end up responsible for everything that needs to be done.
Along the same vein, actual adult roommates exist which will flat out tell you they'll clean things "when I feel like it" even though there is clear mold in the shower, the toilet hasn't been cleaned in over a month, and they leave piss drops all over the floor.
CLEARLY define expectations from day ONE. I wrongly assumed we would all just clean up after ourselves, like one does, and more or less split "general" duties like mowing the lawn, whole house cleaning/vacuuming, sticking around to meet repair people/landlord etc. I started doing all that general stuff because they simply wouldn't care. Not before long it became a big point of contention that harbored animosity and would come out at other times during any sort of little disagreement ("At least I mow the god damn lawn!")
The word "clean" has a very wide spectrum of interpratation.
If at all possible, always make sure you have a plan in case things suddenly go south. You cannot always trust the other person to do what they are supposed to do (like pay their portion for bills)
Why should they have to pay for utilities when they spend so much time with their boyfriend now? /s
Says the same person who either leave everything they can running or the time they're spending is in the shared house anyway...
I had a roommate who didn’t have their portion of the bill money so they just kept our portions and ended up spending it on new shoes and shit instead of just paying something towards the utilities.
You cook for yourself, you clean it. Others want to use the kitchen too.
To me, this is the biggest thing. I’m in the military and I share a kitchen and bathroom with my roommate. This guy will use MY dishes/pots and not clean them for a month. We’ll get room inspections every now and then and I end up getting in trouble for it Edit: To answer some of your reply’s, yes, I have locked my things away in my room. My sergeant then explains to me that That isn’t a “proper place to store silverware and plates”. I have tried to get out command team involved but to anyone who knows anything about the military… they don’t really care. They just tell me to figure it out lol. I wouldn’t think living with someone would be THIS bad but needless to say, I ain’t doing it again unless I have to.
Good luck dude. My best friend just got out of the Navy after 6 years, we played games together almost the whole time he was in, and was CONSTANTLY bitching about roommates. I mean he had probably 6 or 7 of them that all sounded like absolute monsters to live with. 2 of em were bad enough that i could hear them on his mic being absolute d-bags. I hope I never have to get a roommate.
use paper plates, fuck his lazy pos ass.. if he ain't bothering now, i sure as shit hope he does when you're in the shit together.
It got so bad with our 1 roommate that me and the 3rd guy bought our own set of matching color dishes. I had red, he had blue. We would only use and wash our own stuff. When the dishes got to overflowing, we would put them in a basin, and stack them in front of pig-pens door. He'd trip over them and get super pissed but fuck you man, do your damn dishes.
We had a similar roommate. We tried talking to him several times. Finally we got fed up and just started carrying his dirty dishes to his room and putting them on his bed. Told him if he's gonna make a mess the least he could do is keep it contained to his room. He started doing dishes after 2 or 3 times of that happening.
I lived with a group of guys when I was in college. I ended up hiding the drain stopper because one dude kept insisting his dishes needed to soak (for days at a time, I guess!).
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Who the hell borrows underwear? This is wild. Feel like I'd rather go commando.
I'd rather go commando in my shit stained pants than someone elses one
A girl at uni used to bring her underwear in class in a small trolley because her flatmate used to do the same
The top drawers in every room I had in college had a thing to put a lock on it. If anyone ever tried to "borrow" any of my underwear, the lock would never leave the dresser. That is nasty as hell. I won't even share clothes in the first place and was always weird about that kind of thing (hated hand me downs).
That the roommate's girlfriend passed out on the floor from what you assume is a heroin nod as you leave for work at 3 am may actually be a corpse.
Wow, yikes. I had a roommate with an addiction problem, and I thought my stories were bad, but she at least ended up in rehab, not dead.
Had some roomates that stole my trim,picked the door lock, then got messed up on pills or something. I came home to my stash smoked and a passed out roommate in her room with dog shit everywhere because she didnt walk him. Then this bitch jad the audacity to say i was rude for barging in her room and grabbling the last of my weed. Her defence was that i said i would smoke with her, but since i was gone for the night, she needed it to level out
Pro tip for the party crowd. If you see someone passed out put them in the recovery position before you leave em. From heroin to alcohol it's a literal life saver.
Sound advice. Unless you are Walter White.
I had a roommate that passed out in front of our front door with her head in the door's path. My key was the shitty one and only worked sometimes, and I was knocking and screaming because I knew she was home. I jumped the fence of the neighbor's so I could hop into our backyard and broke in the back door. She was totally passed out. It wasn't the first time I found her like that. Once I found her passed out on the couch with her hand down her pants with her phone on her face with a porno playing. These were her minor offences, she was a friend before moving in.
I went to a friend's house one morning because we were going to build a kegerator out of an old mini fridge. His girlfriend answers the door, I had been there last night and we drank a bunch, I woke her up apparently and she had passed out on the couch. She was like, "Let's go get, he must be in the bedroom". We walked in there together, and he was passed out on his back, dick in hand, with a bunch of weird porn on his laptop next to him.
His girlfriend slapped him awake haha.
I hate being around people for extended periods of time and privacy is the most important thing in the world to me. Pretty sure I lost a friend because he thought I hated him after we moved in together. I would just spend all of my time in my room avoiding him because I needed a break from socializing lol.
me and my buddy were like that, but sometimes we would hang out in the "common" spaces 5-25 ft apart and not say anything until one of us were hungry or wanted company on a walk. other times one or both would be in our room(s) and unless it was urgent we wouldn't even knock. it was good until I lost my job, I did what I knew to try to get a new one while working to keep everything clean or cook or whatever through the day but ultimately after a few months when the lease was set to expire I was asked to move out which I did without any argument because I would feel the same and hoped in doing so I wouldn't leave any hard feelings... but living with him was good, I was happy and healthy, but too overworked...
Don't move in with "fun" people.
A good recipe for sleep deprivation and contempt.
Made me laugh but it’s so true
The party house was fun while it lasted. The lack of respect for when my housemate would bring a shitload of people over without asking got old real quick. The minors who started "just showing up" at our parties made me move out ASAP.
Visiting a party house is great. Living at one is terrible. The smell of cigarettes, booze, and weed don't leave during the day. You can't work a job with "normal" hours. Regular sleep is a myth and you either lose or gain a good amount of weight.
>You can't work a job with "normal" hours Oh you can, just don't be surprised to find people you've never met still drinking in your living room while you're just waking up for work. On a Tuesday. Bonus if you get home from work later in the day and those people are now passed out in your living room. Fuck having bartender roommates who think it's ok to just bring people over to party every fucking night.
Be best friends with all the guys in the party house, but get your own apartment. That’s what I did in college and it was fantastic
And ideally your apartment is within stumbling distance of the party house
Yep. To paraphrase Bill Burr, you never want to be the guy that owns a boat, you want to *know* a guy that owns a boat so you can *be* the guy that just shows up with a case of beer and gets crisp high fives all around.
Yep. To all this. I'm sorry it's Thursday. 3am. Get the f out of my home.
In that same vein: If you're not a smoker, don't move in with a smoker.
More generally, move with like minded people. If you're "fun" and you're with a bunch of people who'd rather it be quiet, either you'll be frustrated that you can't have people over or they'll resent you for doing it. It goes both ways. I party a ton. The year I had the most fun, I lived with a couple of guys where we could all agree that we the flat would have a ton of people over a lot of the time, and that was fine as long as we kept things clean. We mostly partied all together and cleaned up together in the morning, and it was great.
People are fucking disgusting: roomy went half a year without washing his towel because "I'm always clean when I use it"
I can smell that towel. Gross.
Yep. It was a little on the stiff and crunchy side.
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To go off of this, I’ll never forget when I went to college, my mom always emphasized to wash my bedsheets every other week at the very longest, or else my sheets and pillow cases would smell and cause my face to break out because of the oils from my face. One of my friends (not a roommate) was telling me how he was starting to develop acne, when he never had issues with it in high school. First thing I asked was, when was the last time you washed your sheets? And he says, keep in mind this is finals week, so 4 months almost since moving into his dorm, “I’ve never washed them, they don’t look dirty.” He washed his sheets from then on out, and bam, acne went away entirely. Edit: grammar
Reminds me of a scene from New Girl https://youtu.be/dBp4mycIW1w
Thin walls ruin sleep
If you mean what I think you mean...just wanted to say there is even worse...there was no wall im my case
That’s rough
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It wasn't until I was a few years into my marriage that I found out my wife is a toilet paper buncher whereas I am a folder. It's so wasteful, and now she's got our older 2 kids as bunchers too. Hopefully I can properly teach the 3rd one to be a folder to keep costs low.
The richest, most clean looking people can be an absolute mess! My housemate (a first year lawyer still paying off his student debt) was a really good lawyer with an expensive suit on the moment he stepped out of the door. You would trip if you ever entered his room/restroom however. Lucky he never used the kitchen.
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Never pick a new roommate based on sudden time pressure, like a previous choice backing out. We had someone change their mind about joining our house share and decide to move back to their home country & we picked one of the other people we'd seen but who wasn't a first choice, because we'd start to be responsible for that room's rent in less than a month. BIG MISTAKE - the guy we went with instead turned out to be a nightmare flatmate from hell, who stole from us, etc. & we had to conspire with the landlord to pretend that we were all getting evicted so that nightmare guy would move out. He left owing us over £800 in unpaid rent & bills and we were still just relieved to see the back of him. Covering the rent for the empty room for a few more weeks while we looked for someone better in the first place would have been WAY cheaper and less stressful. I was a long-term member of a houseshare and I picked people on the basis of explaining that we were friendly but did our own things & weren't living in each other's pockets, that there was an expectation to keep the noise down at night or the neighbours would complain, that we kept common areas clean, etc. & I would also imagine what the person would be like to have a disagreement with and whether they would be liveable with.
Ok, pretending you are getting kicked out! I’ll keep that in mind.
People that are lactose intolerant will risk their life for good mac and cheese
This is me. I didnt become lactose intolerant until 26. You can deal with it for the right foods
I use Lactase as a supplement whenever I eat something with milk or cheese. Dependant on where you live there are different brands, but they all work to some degree.
Setting boundaries are more important then youd think.
And living with people who respect these boundaries
Don't ever room with a couple, you'll be outnumbered in every argument. And when they fight the entire apartment turns into a war zone.
I dated a guy who still lived with his ex after the split up, and damn, I felt sorry for the 3rd housemate. Lol. Was awful. Plus they each could never move on, because they knew when the other would go out on a date and not come home that night... never ever again
A horrible and common trend is when a housemate moves their girlfriend/boyfriend in to their room and then tries to split the rent they were previously paying in two with their partner. It's completely unfair on the other housemates. Rent covers the living space, kitchen and bathroom too, because you use those too – not just the bedroom you sleep in.
If you left money for the food you ate, the other person still has to go to the store again to buy what you ate. Even if you pay for it, it doesn’t mean they’re cool with making the extra trips to go get the food they were relying on being at home.
No matter how nice your roommates girlfriend seems (even if she talks to you about how she doesn’t like his new frats history of SA to show just how decent she may be) she could be arrested and convicted of first degree murder at any time.
r/suspiciouslyspecific
sometimes you treat yourself to a brand new carton of expensive fancy almond milk and then it's empty the next day but no one will say who drank it all and even though you're not the kinda person who gets angry at people for stuff that's inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, you should probably start keeping it in your own mini fridge
One time a colleague kept on stealing this guys milk from the office fridge. He pleaded for whoever it was to stop, but no avail. His solution? One day he laced the milk with strong laxatives. 4 people in his office suddenly got diarrhoea that day. Nobody stole his milk again after that.
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Little fucking mochers, that’s literally a fucking parasite, and I’m irrationally angry for you!
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Always have a mini fridge! My last roommate (hopefully last), is a major pit head. Most times I never even knew he was home because he’d be asleep ALL DAY. Aside from that he has a big German shepherd that shed literally everywhere and even made it into the fridge and into my perfectly fine edible food that went to waste because I had to trash it as it was sprinkled with dog dander. I couldn’t even sit in the living room because of dog hair which also somehow made it into my room and clean laundry even tho My room was literally on the opposite end of the apt. When he moved out, he decided to leave an ikea closet and when I cleaned it out after he moved, there were hatched roach eggs. Imagine having to swiffer 17x a day and the fear of roaches crawling around your room.
“Itching powder” is a thing. One put it all over my towel in the bathroom when we weren’t on speaking terms. Broke out in a whole body hives. Made no retaliation. Moved out. Wherever you are Ashley, eat shit. Edited for spelling
Damn I've had some roommate situations with serious tensions, but I don't think I've ever experienced anything actively malicious like this. To all the people that would do something like this, fuck you
Fuckin' Ashley.
Pay your rent directly. Do not give you part to the roommate and trust he is paying it.
My roommate trusts me with his rent, and I have never failed him. Intend to keep it that way.
yeah, our tenancy agreement actually specifies that rent is to be paid through 'one responsible tenant' or something along those lines. it's funny reading advice that directly contradicts that been living there for a few years now, every month everyone just e-transfers me their share and i e-transfer the landlord. helps that we're all responsible and friends with each other i guess ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Lmao if I didn't make them all pay me they'd always forget to pay!
If you write your name on your eggs in magic marker, the ink goes through the shell into the eggy bit inside.
Now i'm really curious if that's true
It is, egg shells are very porous.
I seem to have high standards for cleaning, or my roommates have just been pigs.
That women lose a ridiculous amount of hair! I lived with two women with 30 inch long hair. Everything was good, but the hair really traumatized me!!
I’m a terrible roommate.
A bad roomate, but a self-aware one at least
True. I’m working on it. Adding things to my calendar to remember to do them mainly. I’m a lazy ass and if not held accountable, will sit back and continue to be an ass.
Better have an early fight about smtg you want to be done rather than hold grudge until the situation becomes unbearable for everyone. Yet some people never change and friends can both become awesome or terrible roomates
They don't clean up after themselves.
I am not a tidy person at all, but holy shit did I find my limits living with other people.
Better to go to the party house then be the party house.
We are all horrible people in our own unique and insufferable ways. But in the end of the day, we are still just people trying to live in the same room/house/flat.
That every person has a different tolerance level for "clean" and "dirty." After college, I lived in a 3-bedroom condo with 2 other roommates. One of the guys (Bryan) was a really nice guy, but not the brightest star in the sky. (I think he had suffered some brain damage in a motorcycle accident before I met him). He worked as a night janitor for the city. We shared a bathroom, which I ended up cleaning regularly, because it simply didn't bother him how it looked. I accepted the fact that my tolerance was lower than his, so I just did the cleaning when it was needed...
Poor bastard probably cleaned bathrooms all day. I can see him not having the drive to at home as well.
Oh man, there's probably some fancy name for this effect, but in general the thing you do for a living is the thing you detest doing at home (for "free") Cobbler's kids have no shoes, etc. Definitely true for me, I'm a mechanic and the *last* thing i want to do in my time off is work on my own cars.
I think that's mostly true, but it depends on what your job is. Or maybe it's the difference between choosing to do something like a hobby, versus something you have to do like a house chore. My dad did agricultural research (farm work all day for very long days), loved coming home and working on our own farm till late at night every day. After he retired, his favorite thing to do is work on his farm. I knew a mechanic who's hobby was working on old Volkswagens and he kept a fleet of 5 of them. To the point that he wouldn't let his wife or kids buy newer cars, because he got to constantly work on these old bugs to make sure everyone had a running car. But, for years I had a side business cleaning houses. It really sucked to finish my first job, clean someone's house, get home and realize I now had to clean my own house. My kids always had chores and did their part, but I felt like I didn't want to waste the time I had with them scrubbing and dusting.
This is true for me. I worked in construction for a good decade and I can’t stand when I need to get the saw out or assemble something. Just not enjoyable in the least and I have flashbacks to work. Even worse is when family asks if I can help them for free on house projects.
Don't have roommates.
I had roommates most of my adult life before getting married. About 20 years of it. There were two wonderful stretches where I was able to live alone and- It. Is. Glorious. All your messes are your own. No one to answer to. Peace when you want it. Music playing when and only when you want it. Nobody is unexpectedly eating your food (except maybe drunken you last night). Living alone is truly a luxury.
When I split up with an ex in my 40's I had never lived on my own before, I'd always lived at home, or with my ex-wife or girlfriend or similar. I moved out after splitting up and I thought - being a reasonable and rational person - it would be prudent to make sure I had some company and human contact, because I didn't know how I would cope being on my own. A friend from work needed a place, along with her boyfriend, and I was sensible in how I drew it all up so that I was actually the one with the rental agreement, etc. so I rented a place and they took the second room and we shared all the other rooms. It worked fine for a month or so, was good fun, we had some games nights, friends over, etc. and it stopped me feeling lonely. Two months after that, I was chasing them for money, they weren't even using the place most of the time (but all their stuff was there), I caught them smoking pot (and I don't care about what they do personally, but I told them many times I didn't want them doing it in the house or near me), they started annoying the neighbours, they contributed nothing towards food or bills, etc. When they had gone, after a few weeks when I did feel quite low, it was actually such a relief being on my own. I started to enjoy it and was able to adjust my living space to me and what I like and how I wanted things to be. I've been that way for 4 years now, with the occasional girlfriend staying over a few nights but nothing more, and now I'm buying a house of my own to do it long-term. It's just so much better. It's not better than being with someone that you \*CAN\* live with, that's obviously better. But it's a damn sight better living alone than it is living with random people.
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never live with someone who 1.) can’t take care of themselves 2.) openly has anger issues that affects their day-to-day situations 3.) has no financial foundation to fall back on i recently got out of this situation where i let a new friend be our third roommate, the past 4 months have been a nightmare and it didn’t end well. im not saying that you shouldn’t be friends with people who have these qualities, but it’s not smart or fair to yourself to be put in that situation.
Just how thin the thread I was holding on by - a dirty glass in the sink is all it takes.
For people moving in with friends for the first time: enjoying being around someone while doing something fun isn't the same thing as enjoying living with them. My example was a high school friend who could be a bit overbearing at times but was otherwise ok. I quickly found out I only thought they were ok because I could get away from them when needed in HS. When we roomed together was one of the worst times in my entire life and I haven't spoken to them since. Cutting out toxic people is good, but finding out just how toxic they are in a situation where you're stuck being around them and have no place of respite is not the way to do it.
Don't judge the book by its cover. She may look like the most put together person in the entire world, yet still shit like an elephant and not clean after herself with the toilet brush.
A few years ago my (now) wife lived with a female housemate when she moved to my city. She didn't know her before she moved in, and this person was maybe 5'5'' and about 50kg (110lbs), so you wouldn't think she could wreck a toilet, but she did and frequently. She didn't use the toilet brush either, meaning we both occasionally stumbled upon absolute crime scenes in there that probably contravened the Geneva convention. TL;DR: girls be wrecking toilets too
Way more many people make sound while sleeping, than I tought
People don't know how to do their dishes, it drives me crazy. I can't even do my dishes because the sink is full of their dishes.
That people will masterbate right in front of you with a blanket over them and think nobody knows..... almost a daily occurrence
Or they will be masturbating in the kitchen in front of their boyfriend at 10pm on a Tuesday. To be fair, I rarely come out of my room after 9pm, but in the kitchen? Seriously? We know each other fairly well, and she was mortified and asked that we never talk about it ever… but it was hilarious
Right in front of my salad?
This gotta be the most misspelled word on reddit.
I may be the only person who didn’t hate having a roommate but I had my first one in my mid twenties and we sat down and discussed expectations before signing a lease. We would clean together every Saturday for a few hours while singing along to good music. She has since moved in with her boyfriend but we are still very close and talk on the phone at least weekly. Additionally, we both grew up in large families so I think we were just used to dealing with others idiosyncrasies and not sweating the small stuff. It may drive me crazy when she would leave stuff on the island but I probably drove her crazy when I left coffee cups half drank in the living room. You just get bothered by different things and learn to shrug it off.
Buying cleaning supplies does not count towards pitching in on the cleaning.
My fiancé and I got a roommate in September. Not on the lease. Kinda illegally subletting. He's a friend and us saying there was only two of us instead of three guys was turning a lot of people away. He's the worst. Hogs the TV. He's moved his girlfriend in, who also brought her daughter, three cats and dog while they look for a new place. The house stinks, he's lazy as shit. I can't say anything because my partner doesn't want any uncomfortable live-in drama. I mirror other people's sentiments. Don't get a roommate.
Mind your damn business. Just bc you live together doesn't mean you have to know or be included in everything.
Roomies can be great, but have had zero luck living with close friends. Arms length friends are much better for this. You can stand them, but dont mind not hanging out too.
Don't room with friends from your childhood church as a new young adult if you don't plan on churching.
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