Hiding things which flatmates may use

Do you ever do this? Nice follow up to the passive aggressive notes thread.

Generally I have a good relationship with my flatmates but today I bought washing capsule things and since they've disappeared almost instantly anytime I got them before and they're expensive (and I'm broke) I decided to keep them in my room.

In a way I felt this is better because I don't have to worry about them being taken or be paranoid or count them or some shit, and flatmates would just buy their own and it saves any confrontation.

This got me thinking though that I would never do this with food (even stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated), it just seems too tight wadded and I can sort of understand someone using olive oil you bought if nobody else has bought any.

My former housemate did this with washing powder, drove me insane seeing as to my knowledge the rest of us never used hers.

how did you find out?

how did you know about it then?

xp

It was hidden behind three bottles of spirits in a cupboard.

lame. she should keep it in her room.

hiding things behind booze is either totally stupid or a cry for help.

She also used to write her name on bottles of milk. This offends my loose commie sensibilities.

that is pretty lame. I drink soy milk so thankfully my flatmates never touch it.

fucked health issues 1-0 society

The trouble I have is he’ll finish off or use all of something and then replace it with corner shop cheapest brands. He used the majority of a bottle of olive oil while I was away and replaced it with cheap cooking oil. He’s emptied my salt and pepper pots that many times without replacing any that I now don’t refill them.

The worst though is I have a couple of decent pans which were quite expensive and he always uses them. He’ll cook something and then leave some in the pan so I can’t use them; it’s a pain in the arse. I said I wanted the pans one night and he stropped big time and said there are loads of pans in the cupboard. I said I wanted to use the pans I bought and not his crappy old burnt ones.

Despite this, we do get on, and as far as sharing, he’s the best flatmate I’ve had.

Wish I lived alone though, it must be great to find stuff where you left it.

i had to hide my booze and drugs in college

shit don't get me started on this

dood will only buy "fresh squeezed OJ" (yet he never does) but will open a new carton of my tropicana or kill it off without a second thought

my freshman year roommate used to lock his closet when he went home on the weekends, i case i was going to steal his polo shirts or something

dood will only buy "gourmet bread" (unsliced, yet he never does) but will open a new loaf or kill a load without a second thought

so i have THOUGHT about hiding things. but you can't hide food in your room. it's pathetic.

dood will only buy "fresh squeezed OJ" (yet he never does) but will open a new carton of my tropicana or kill it off without a second thought

^ oh man the very same thing did my head in the other day, i bought a litre of orange juice, planning to drink it at breakfast the next day, and someone else got through the whole thing that evening. shit still hasn't been replaced. it's not the cost that annoys me, it's the principle... next time i buy some i'm putting a plastic bag around it or something.

while we're on this, what's your etiquette on washing machines/hanging up etc. since i've been unemployed I find it fucking hard to wash clothes because my flatmates are up early putting on washes, then they leave them steeping in the machine all day.

today I just thought fuck it and dumped a wash out of the machine onto a chair. I'm assuming this won't be a problem.

x-post yeah hiding food is pathetic. and bringing it up is pathetic too. I mean I guess I just assume I do annoying stuff too.

olive oil though, I buy rivers of the stuff. and another big annoyance for me is that whenever the olive oil, which I bought, runs out, flatmates use groundnut oil until it's gone. I mean I buy a tiny bottle of groundnut oil cos some recipes require it, so I'll always have it.

seriously some people just don't get how to co-habitate with another. i wouldn't dream of finishing someone's food without replacing it immediately.

What in the world are groundnuts?

i'll hang up my housemates' clothes, grudgingly. but i'd never leave *mine* in the machine (it makes you stink)

groundnut oil = peanut oil

You know, there are basic rules, like "Use some of the other person's milk but only enough for yr coffee and not if it's almost gone already." Right? How hard is this??

Then again, I just left an apt in which no one would buy toilet paper for like two months. Finally I kept a roll in my room just cos I was the ONLY GIRL and no one else would bother.

my freshman year roommate used to lock his closet when he went home on the weekends, i case i was going to steal his polo shirts or something

How do you know he did that unless you tried stealing his stuff?

I'm the only one who buys loo roll in our house. But I only buy cheap brand roll anyway (89p for 12 rolls or something) so it's hardly worth the argument.

I guess keeping stuff that belongs to you in your house/cupboard is a hangover from uni/college, yes? I mean, when you're a student you have to hide everything cos it'll go whether it's any good or not, but as a grown up you'd hope that people have outgrown their dickishness.

Regards washing machine stuff: I always assume that if there's clean washing in the machine that I can just take it out and put it on a chair, yeh. If that happened to me then I wouldn't mind, so I assume that the converse is true.

sorry to vent here, but regarding the OJ, one day he came home from work, and i had finished my carton of OJ. he looks in the fridge and says--"oh i was going to buy OJ but i thought you would have"

like i'm the fucking orange juice man.

How do you know he did that unless you tried stealing his stuff?

he saw him lock the closet?

A likely story!

I haven't bought toilet roll in a long time but someone else does, haha, hence why I'd never bring up this stuff with flatmates. That said I think I am easily buying enough stuff to not feel bad. Butter, oil etc etc.

One other thing that I find irritating is when nobody is buying something that's really useful, eg in our flat, kitchen paper, and I am discouraged from buying it cos whenever I do it's gone so quickly.

x-post so when you put their washing on a chair, is it cool to then put your wash you do afterwards on the rack to dry. I sort of feel the queue system is forfeited if you leave your stuff steeping in the machine.

my freshman year roommate used to lock his closet when he went home on the weekends, i case i was going to steal his polo shirts or something

How do you know he did that unless you tried stealing his stuff?

he padlocked it shut

so don't want to live with people ever again

Padlocking? Bloody hell.

Use the milk for a cup of tea or borrow an onion if they've got plenty and you're gonna replace it tomorrow, but don't rely on someone else to bring you juice, that's just not cool.

re washing: the queue for the rack and the queue for the washing machine are separate. It's first come first served on the drying.

leaving ur washing steeping in the machine all day is kinda gross anyway

honestly some of the flatmate stories i see here are unbelievable - in like 6 years of cohabiting with friends & randoms i have never lived with anyone who'd dream of doing anything like this. the worst girl, who i thought was pretty bad at the time, is but a mild irritation compared to some of this behaviour. can't believe some people still can't work out basic cohabiting etiquette!

xps

I mean, when you're a student you have to hide everything cos it'll go whether it's any good or not

i never had a problem like this when i lived with students!

does anyone else's flat always have way too much garlic? In ours, presumably cos garlic is so essential, we always have a ridiculous amount of cloves of garlic and the skin on this one shelf. Everybody buys garlic every day or something.

Fascinating.

x-post Lex is this because you can't cook beans and just ate out all the time as a result?

i've always assumed that stuff like olive oil, butter, most spices, etc., was pretty communal. in some arrangements it has been explicitly so (we'd split up the communal expenses on a monthly basis ("i bought TP, you bought olive oil, etc"), in others it was just sorta on the honor system.

oddly enough, i've been more annoyed by current roommate's willingness to *duplicate* shit i've already got. like, we've already got veggie oil, why are you taking up space w/a bottle of the EXACT SAME BRAND

i honestly can't even remember what i ate as a student.

oh man you are asking for a world of hurt re: the laundry

I'm just saying, prepare for an argument

^^ this is why i never skip the rack queue

(basically, the situation you're currently in has no one right or wrong answer, so prepare for a fight that will determine what the appropriate protocol should be)

i've always assumed that stuff like olive oil, butter, most spices, etc., was pretty communal. in some arrangements it has been explicitly so (we'd split up the communal expenses on a monthly basis ("i bought TP, you bought olive oil, etc"), in others it was just sorta on the honor system

yeah I generally assume this. tho sometimes you kinda think "is this actually fair?" if you are buying a few of these condiments constantly.

x-post I don't think there will be a world of hurt. our flat is built on nobody ever bringing up issues in a way which actually works better than it should.

it's only communal if the person who hasn't purchased the item realizes when it's depleted and replaces it. and if you aren't aware or keeping track of these things then you are a bad roommate.

I don't know, for me "laundry on chair while roommate's is drying" = "world of hurt"

also, current roommate has pretty much confirmed my fundamental desire to just live alone or exclusively w/ppl that are already very dear friends: she's low-maintenance, really friendly and pleasant, and totally not a problem. it's her mere *presence* that's a drag---it could be anyone! like i want to go and listen to the radio in the living room, but the apt is so small and we're both home, so it's headphones or nothing :(

xp that's what i meant, cutty! like, it's usually worked seamlessly in my experience, or was made explicit (everyone keeps track of what they're 'giving' for communal use) and then squared up

I used to keep a few good utensils and bowls in my food cupboard when I lived in a shared house, only because a couple of my housemates were horrible at washing dishes and would leave flecks of food on everything and it annoyed me having to re-clean things that should've already been clean. Thankfully (with the exception of current arragement) I have never done the communal food thing.

With the washer/dryer in that house, we just took out other people's stuff and set it aside in a bag if they weren't home to do it themselves.

ie to clarify, current arragement being that I live with boyf and not randoms

my shampoo started to get low too quickly. one day i tested roommate's dozen or so shampoo bottles--all empty. she was helping herself to mine. i felt petty about caring--and yet, one shampoo bottle will last me like a year, but she has shoulder+ length hair, clearly she goes through a lot, and my bottle was noticeably lighter every morning. what to do? carrying it back and forth to my room was just too...weird (plus i would forget and have to run back to get it). solution: store bottle on floor between tub and wall (we have an old-fashioned clawfoot tub thing, you could never see the bottle there unless you moved the shower curtain and looked down). that felt weird too but at least it was easy.

after i determined she had bought herself shampoo i put mine back in the customary spot. no one said anything :\ choose your battles innit? the fight over CLEANING the bathroom was much more direct.

this was months ago. this week she did a similar thing with the facial cleanser, except she poured it into her dispenser. didn't even bother to screw the top back on tightly.

i got my wash onto the rack and put the other one back in. perfect crime. almost.

fwiw in that situation ronan i would put my washing on the rack, maybe hang up what i could of the flatmate's (stuff that needs to be hung, like shirts), leave the rest in a basket or something - putting them back into the machine will make them more skanky

though if i was the one who'd left them in the machine all day i'd accept the entire situation was my fault anyway

How come the people who are willing to swipe other people's stuff never post on these threads? Come on, defend yourself.

this happens EVERY DAY. but I would do it too if I was working.

WmC, i'm of the mind that these people don't even recognize what they are doing. it doesn't matter to them.

Oh I have shamelessly used people's shampoo or etc when I ran out, there's no defense, really, except to say "When I bought toothpaste it was always getting left out with the cap off or scrunched up in a way that I wouldn't do, so I am going to use this person's conditioner" which just prolongs the cycle of perceived injustice and doesn't help anything. But when I am stuck in the shower and have no conditioner and my hair is wet and I have to go to work or something, I'm going to use whatever I can reach.

EVERY DAY? ...you only have 2 flatmates though, right? if this is happening every day i'd just go "guys, i need to do washing sometimes too, do you mind..."

when i worked in an office i just did my washing at the weekend/in evenings, which my own flatmate mostly does too.

thank god i have my own bathroom. because i know this dood would never buy soap.

x-post I was going to say that but I am pretty sure they won't care if I just dump their stuff on a chair or put it back in machine and then I don't have to have that conversation.

Laurel, one day or even two is ok, i understand emergencies, but this was going for like a week+. how long would you allow yourself to keep borrowing/stealing?

plus this girl has a history. paper towels and toilet paper live in fear of her

I'm so glad I no longer have to live with other people.

Will: my experience with doing this sort of thing over a long period would suggest that ... it's sort of a short-term spiral of shame where you feel bad about using the shampoo and tell yourself you're definitely going to pick up your own on the way home from work, but due to your own life and productivity issues that doesn't wind up happening, and then you find yourself the next day using more of the stuff and feeling even worse about it, and so on

Alternately: there may be times when you are like "c'mon, it's one squirt from a $5 bottle of body wash, this is not a big deal, if I asked for it they'd say 'go ahead, weirdo,' and of course I would do the same for them" -- conveniently ignoring the fact that you do not actually buy this theoretical stuff that they're welcome to, because you suck

I have totally been on both sides of this, roommate-wise. My main confession here should be that I am completely dysfunctional about buying toilet paper regularly.

seriously thought isn't having something to wipe your ass with one of the most essential quality of life issues out there?

next to having a pot to piss in

i got my wash onto the rack and put the other one back in. perfect crime. almost.

A+ handling of the situation IMO; you got done what you needed to get done and you put roomie's stuff back where you originally found it. Were I your roommate, I would totally be fine with your actions here. (I've been known to start laundry in the morning and put it in the dryer when I get home from work.)

Very simple ground rule: never open a new thing of someone else's and never finish off someone else's whatever-it-is. Worst are those flatmates whose toilet issues mean they have to crap on a cumulus cloud of toilet paper so they don't make A NOISE OH NOES but you never know there's no paper until you're wearing your trousers around the ankle. These people don't ever replace that mountain of bog roll.

Worst are those flatmates whose toilet issues mean they have to crap on a cumulus cloud of toilet paper so they don't make A NOISE OH NOES

wow is this really a thing? so intrigued by this strategy!! i have never seen it in effect!!

Cutty, I have had the good fortune to always have roommates who will restock the toilet paper slightly before I do, either while it's just low or on that one pathetic-looking morning when there's a pile of napkins or a roll of paper towels sitting sadly next to the sink.

It's not a good quality, obviously, but I seem to forget for just slightly longer than anyone I've lived with, and so a situation develops where they always get the toilet paper and I never do, which I'm sure starts to feel like I am coasting on their efforts -- even though, to be fair, I would probably pick up more toilet paper within like 6 hours of whenever they go ahead and do it first.

^^ I have a whole complex about these sort of asymmetrical thresholds, where someone's like "why am I always the one to clean the sink" and it's like, well, that's true, and I see why it bothers you, but the answer is that you are in the habit of cleaning it every 6 days, whereas if you didn't do that I would actually clean it every 7th one.

Cf "why am I always the one who has to call you and suggest plans" = "that's because you will call me with plans within a week of when we last did something, whereas I would probably call in about 10 days"

one pathetic-looking morning when there's a pile of napkins or a roll of paper towels sitting sadly next to the sink

^ we are here. i'm not buying b/c that 18-pack i expected to last 3+ months didn't even--i mean it felt like a roll was vanishing each day for a while. maybe she does that TP turd-silencer thing mentioned above (really??). also leaves lights on and fridge doors open.

in this case i'm ok with shuttling a personal roll from room to bathroom

Haha are you about to play the toilet paper fake brinksmanship game, where you secretly have your own roll that you use, and are just waiting to see how long it would take her to pick up some more? (The one advantage here is that people who never buy toilet paper, when they finally do, will buy a pack of like 800 rolls, out of a desire to never have to think about it again)

oh totally. there's a third bathroom-sharer who in the past would give in, but no new rolls have appeared in there days now so i suspect she is doing same. yeah!

there=three

xxxp wow I have never heard of pooing on a cloud of toilet paper but totally get the idea.. people, FFS, we all have bowel movements, it's okay..

The toilet paper game is ridiculous. We ran out on Saturday, and I directly asked one of my roommates, who was going to the store this Sunday, to pick up some, but another one said "oh, great, I was going to go to the store tomorrow to get some"...and, of course, the one who was going Sunday didn't pick it up, and the other one didn't end up going to the store at all Monday. Someone got some Tuesday, at least. (I avoided it on principle because I'd spent $60 on house groceries on Saturday and felt someone else could take a turn.)

Also, we do communal food in my apartment, and there are five of us, so in theory we're all responsible for replacing the orange juice, milk, or bread when it gets finished. In practice, some people go to the grocery store multiple times a week, and others end up making maybe one trip a month and bringing back only a few things. Some people also cook a lot more than others. At first I tried to keep things everyone consumed well stocked, but I ended up not being able to keep up and spending too much money. Now I just try to make sure we have stuff for a few dinners each week, because I end up cooking most, and I buy the staples that are important to ME so I don't end up nagging people for eating them all and not replacing them. Then, if I still have money and am able to carry more groceries home a mile and a half, I'll replace other stuff. And of course if I really don't want someone to eat something up right away, I hide it. Not in my room, but at the back of a shelf, maybe.

I don't know where the ILX indie toilet habits thread (scrunch or fold? or somesuch lol sounds like poker you play on the pot) but this is one of my friends who's on about doing what her body tells her to do (shiatsu person, ya get me) to the point where I have to wonder if her mind gets a vote. I had known her for 10+ years before I realized she pooed on clouds.

Flatmates need to understand that they can't start or finish anything they haven't bought themselves. If it's communal they should never finish something without lining up a replacement. I was once mortally offended by a new flatmate who was a food labeller and on the first day had to be all this is NOT how civilized people live; you should expect your food to be safe in a two-person flatshare.

^^ I have a whole complex about these sort of asymmetrical thresholds, where someone's like "why am I always the one to clean the sink" and it's like, well, that's true, and I see why it bothers you, but the answer is that you are in the habit of cleaning it every 6 days, whereas if you didn't do that I would actually clean it every 7th one.

but if you realise that's going on shouldn't you make the effort to get in before them, even just every now and then?

yes, that is one mature solution

it's not that it's an intractable problem, it's just funny that a very slight difference in tolerances of certain things can turn into an absolute "i always do X and you never do X" situation, even though the root of it is "i leave dirty dishes in the sink until midnight, whereas you leave them until morning"

Yah I have a friend who gets mad if there are dishes in the sink in the morning when she wakes up but her boyfriend sometimes goes to bed hours after her and used them at like 1am. Really, people. The best thing is just not to be so OCD.

I don't know where the ILX indie toilet habits thread (scrunch or fold? or somesuch lol sounds like poker you play on the pot) but this is one of my friends who's on about doing what her body tells her to do (shiatsu person, ya get me) to the point where I have to wonder if her mind gets a vote. I had known her for 10+ years before I realized she pooed on clouds.

this is fascinating to me i never dreamed of such a thing

it's not that it's an intractable problem, it's just funny that a very slight difference in tolerances of certain things can turn into an absolute "i always do X and you never do X" situation, even though the root of it is "i leave dirty dishes in the sink until midnight, whereas you leave them until morning"

I've been on both sides of the line, and yeah level of tolerance for stuff can definitely affect your perception. But of course when I was on the 'i always do it' side I was right, damnit!

Yah I have a friend who gets mad if there are dishes in the sink in the morning when she wakes up but her boyfriend sometimes goes to bed hours after her and used them at like 1am. Really, people. The best thing is just not to be so OCD.

― How can there be male ladybugs? (Laurel), Thursday, March 5, 2009 4:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have this problem, where i like to do dishes immediately after using them, and keep my shoes in a specific place & all this kind of OCD stuff--for a while a tried to be less OCD about it so i wouldnt get mad at my roommate/girlfriend who is less ridic than i am--but its hard to stop being OCD, so instead i decided to stop getting mad at my girlfriend and just do the damn dishes

but if you realise that's going on shouldn't you make the effort to get in before them, even just every now and then?

but what if somehow it is never the right time to make the effort?

I have a+ awesome housemates at the moment, which means that I get the guilts on abt a weekly basis when I realise that someone's done my washing up in passing or I've wandered off with someone else's cereal bowl, and there's no little householdy thing i can do to up my housemate karma. Which is why my system is to buy forgiveness for my slatternly ways with cake.

I used to nag my boyfriend to keep shit a bit cleaner and he was just like "look, you like it X clean, I like it Y clean, I will keep it Y clean but if you want it X clean you have to do it" and I do. Which probably makes me not a feminist or something, but whatever, we're all happy. He puts more money into our joint account every month because he earns more than me. Win-win.

apparently/horrifyingly I should date Max haha

still amaaaaaazed by this pooing on clouds business....am i to understand that these people pre-load the toilet bowl with paper so that there are no unfortunate splashing sounds (or, uh, backwash)? that is so amazingly vain and wasteful that i don't even know how to wrap my brain around it

umm the cloud-pooping actually seems like it would be counterproductive, since now the poop will be held aloft in the open air on a paper cloud, instead of being safely and non-aromatically submerged (which I thought was most of the point of having water standing in toilet bowl)

There was an article I read, sometime in the past year, about division of household labor in couples, and it seemed funny how a lot of them hadn't really come to a lot of agreement about the "different tolerances" issue -- you'd have, for instance, one person who vacuums the house five times a week, while their spouse vacuums twice a week, and this five-time person would feel totally burdened and unsupported by this unfair division of labor ... and for whatever reason it would take some kind of outside intervention for the spouse to make clear that, like, he/she is totally content to live in a house that's vacuumed one a week, and is already making a huge effort to vacuum it a whole other unnecessary time, and if his/her spouse is so burdened by the daily vacuuming maybe he/she should sit down and really think hard about why this burdensome task seems so necessary.

(You can probably guess how that was usually gendered.)

"he poos clouds" by Final Fantasy, early contender for album of the year

Yes, gbx, they are the mad(der) cousins of the people who use airport/restaurant toilets and put paper between their ass/thighs and the seat because they'll Catch Something.

Nabisco, I'm sure it's women moaning about this most but it could also be freelancer v. employed. In flatshares I used to get incredibly annoyed by the expectation that I would be there for the gas guy, deliveries etc.

xp to HD FF album was the first thing I thought of too!

xxp to nabisco - no interventions for me thank god, I'm not OCD clean but I just like to have clothes hung rather than strewn on every flat surface, this is our major point of contention but luckily we both have "logic" unlike these couples in the article :P

The gender Q pisses me off b/c yes, I can guess how that was gendered but men are not judged by the quality & cleanliness of their homes at nearly the same level as women, and also they are not the ones being marketed to by EVERY CLEANING PRODUCT EVER that they can only be good and worthy mothers/women/people if everyone they're responsible for lives in an antiseptic bubble.

yeah, well, it's not that hard to sort through that stuff and compromise, but it's also pretty easy to retreat into these positions of annoyance or martrydom or whatever and not entirely get there

also I think even once people's different tolerances are discussed, those can still be fought about, in an even deeper and more personal way! e.g. you can say it is your rational preference to vacuum once a week, but your spouse may well tell you that you are childish and lazy and need to commit to living like an actual adult -- your rational preference is not necessarily going to be accepted as valid

xpost - Laurel that is absolutely 100% OTM and true, but at the same time, there is this whole issue with "false consciousness" where I'm not sure you can have your cake and eat it, too

Wait, okay, I don't know what you mean by "false consciousness". But prob not worth hijacking thread over.

(Oh, sorry, yeah, I shouldn't put it in a jargonish way. I just mean that if an individual recognizes that the stake she puts in something like cleanliness is informed by, say, gender expectations and marketing, and she feels like this is a burden she is being manipulated into taking on, and she identifies this as a negative and unrealistic thing, this burden, then it becomes somewhat more complicated to say that the people around her should be pitching in to share a burden she herself has identified as negative, unrealistic, or deforming. I'm not saying it's wrong, it just gets more complicated.)

Nono, that is true, and also I think the societal expectations that this will be the case are changing (probably already changed for a lot of people our age). I'm thinking more of the prev generation, I guess, or the people really stuck on the cusp who are y'know maybe 40-50 now or something. They kind of got careers and maybe married late and had kids late and suddenly inherited a giant expectations bundle.

The gender divide does seem to come into this a bit, which I hate realising because I dont like to think it, but Ive lived with so many guys whos mothers must have just picked up after them and cooked for them its like... wtf dudes. They're always "what mess?" when you ask them to do more around the house, or "you always get to it all way before I do, I dont get a chance" - even though thats after I've, say, left emptying the dishwasher for THREE DAYS or something stupid.

When it gets to "oh hey I dont have any clean socks why not" when you never do any of your own washing, thats when all bets are off.

.... grr I have issues with this recently heh.

"look, you like it X clean, I like it Y clean, I will keep it Y clean but if you want it X clean you have to do it" and I do. Which probably makes me not a feminist or something, but whatever, we're all happy. He puts more money into our joint account every month because he earns more than me. Win-win.

this is basically the arrangement i have with my bf: before we moved in together, we both completely understood the messiness of each other an didn't expect to magically change. he's more slobby than i am - he doesn't mind mess or whatever, but altho i am also v v messy, i need to regularly clean or i get stressed. bf earns far more than me, and works more hours, so i feel like we contribute equally to our household, just in different ways.

dishes should always be done before you go to bed.

that is a perfectly legitimate personal preference, but one for which there is really no rational argument w/r/t efficiency or health or safety

This is why I have a dishwasher, heh.

when you have a dishwasher, more of the things you have to actually hand-wash will be big greasy pots and whatnot that actually benefit from a night spent full of suds

I hate tidying stuff late at night. My flatmates seem to do this as a habit, eg 11 or 12 at night. Feels really stifling and awful for me so I never do it. I dislike the ensuing guilt but I do think people have a right to not tidy just cos another flatmate is, once you do it at other times.

you like waking up to a sink full of dirty dishes?

the sink wouldn't be full unless nobody washed dishes for days. i'm unemployed currently so it suits me fine to wash whatever's there in the morning, if I was going out to work I would prob do this in the evening.

I start work a bit later than most, so yeah, given a choice, I would usually rather wash out some pre-soaked pots after breakfast than scour them late at night when I'm tired and just did a bunch of cooking and mostly want to take a book to bed

yeah exactly. i even dislike the noise of activity at that time of night but obv if people want to do shit by all means. just feels so fucking catholic to be washing dishes at midnight. flatmates also have this buzz for doing housework on sunday nights...also Irish catholic as hell that one. cleaning is best in the morning.

you know, personal preferences, people have different systems that suit their different needs

I feel like only maybe a quarter of arguments about those systems actually come down to any kind of rational thing where one person's preferences are just clearly more efficient or healthy or whatever -- the rest involve weird intrusions like people's various senses that something just has to be a certain way because that is what's right/normal, and people's various tolerances for being able to adjust to other people's expectations, whether up or down

oh definitely.

one issue I find interesting about all this stuff is that where in most situations in life people say clear or open communication is the key to good relationships, I'm really not sure this is the case with flatmates. eg I get on v v well with mine but I think all of us have a strategy of not bringing up annoyances with each other. in my case this is cos I figure we all prob do little annoying things, I kind of assume that's what they think too

I think if you mentioned everytime something irritated you a little, living with people would be way more fractious.

i'm sure i'm aware of all the irritating things i COULD be doing to a roommate and i consciously try my best to not do those things. i'm not sure everyone thinks that way. i'm not sure my roommate pays attention to anything besides the TV.

btw, he's a great friend, horrible roommate. i separate the two.

Yeah having different timing/methods of doing things is fine, and can work well as long as everyone's on the same page and talks about it and whatever!

People excusing doing nothing at all with "but I work hard and I'm so tired" or "I am busy after work writing music" when I'm working just as hard and am just as wrecked? BUH BOW.

i'm sure i'm aware of all the irritating things i COULD be doing to a roommate and i consciously try my best to not do those things. i'm not sure everyone thinks that way.

I do this too but have def lived with people who do not. And then I'm like, why the fuck did I go through all that effort to be quiet/thoughtful/neat/generous/etc?

being a live-in landlord brings a whole new level of weirdness to this. 'i should be doing right by my tenants' vs 'eh fuckit it's my flat i'll do what i like'.

I am pretty guilty by nature so I hope this makes me good at doing whatever I should.

x-post yeah that must be weird

People excusing doing nothing at all with "but I work hard and I'm so tired" or "I am busy after work writing music" when I'm working just as hard and am just as wrecked? BUH BOW.

I totally 100% agree with you on this, but I do feel this need to mention that some of these people might respond "well if you're just as tired, you don't have to do it either," because they're just not bothered either way (and to be fair, most of these people, if the thing just doesn't get done, won't be annoyed with you for not having done it)

i guess its a type a/b personality thing

It's not exactly an admirable place to be, and surely sucks to live with, but I do have sympathy for (younger) people who are not good at this stuff and get to that point where they have enough trouble keeping their shit together without worrying about whether there are any clean bowls -- there's personality stuff involved, but also just where-you-are-in-life stuff (e.g., imagine living with someone who's depressive or always swamped at work or constantly dealing with some kind of ongoing relationship drama or whatever)

I totally 100% agree with you on this, but I do feel this need to mention that some of these people might respond "well if you're just as tired, you don't have to do it either," because they're just not bothered either way

Aha, and herein lies the big problem! To quote from an interesting article in todays The Age that touches on this when it comes to marriages in particular (which I realise is veering quite off the thread topic, sorry)

Mismatched observation is the burning issue, he said. "I have spent half my life hearing from women angry at the cleaning/cooking/caring mountain and the other half with men saying: "Uh? What mountain?"

Unkel was surprised at the despair of women who are traditionally afraid to discuss the issues for fear of being called "feminists". Women, he said, were shocked and awed by men's resistance.

"They don't know what's hit them," Unkel said. "They listen to what men tell them, they try to please those they love by cooking what they like, by changing the sheets and making a garden because not only do they like to express their love in this way, but they like to live in harmony and order. The difficult thing is that the more efficient they are, the more invisible the housework becomes. Men just don't seem able to see what's involved in running a house. And they don't see the ongoing effect for women."

Though in fairness I dont think it is all that fair to make such a disconnect a "men cant see it" thing as much as a "certain personality types cant see it" thing, myself.

haha I can't decide whether or not to take the difference between NYTimes and Age coverage of this issue as indicative of a social split between the metropolitan US and Australia

It's not exactly an admirable place to be, and surely sucks to live with, but I do have sympathy for (younger) people who are not good at this stuff and get to that point where they have enough trouble keeping their shit together without worrying about whether there are any clean bowls -- there's personality stuff involved, but also just where-you-are-in-life stuff

i blame the parents

i'm amazed there hasn't been a parody thread re: "hiding thongs which flatmates may use"

That'd still have hilarious Aus-based misunderstandings, haw.

one issue I find interesting about all this stuff is that where in most situations in life people say clear or open communication is the key to good relationships, I'm really not sure this is the case with flatmates. eg I get on v v well with mine but I think all of us have a strategy of not bringing up annoyances with each other. in my case this is cos I figure we all prob do little annoying things, I kind of assume that's what they think too

So true. It's like passive aggression actually IS the best strategy, though it feels so wrong. I actually had a housemate one time ... we went down to this weird cliff/river thing by the house for a smoke and he asks "so let's share what each of us thinks is the most annoying thing about living with the other ... you first" and I was like [what the hell?] "uhhhh okay, you're always in the bathroom when I need to get ready for work" (not sure that was even what I believed at the time) and he was like "you leave lights on all the time." What did we learn from that? Nothing. Honesty is a completely laughable, stupid, naff idea.

revelatory!

I think what LG was getting at is that some day-to-day things are far too petty to ruin the peace over.

I feel like only maybe a quarter of arguments about those systems actually come down to any kind of rational thing where one person's preferences are just clearly more efficient or healthy or whatever

one argument for cleaning dishes right away: when i come home from work with pan-fried cube steak on my mind, i don't want to find my skillet soaking in the sink. having to wash dishes before i cook with them aggravates me. ideally, i could in turn leave them for the original party to clean, but the situation is muddied, and, if you are dealing with the type for whom cleaning is not a sure thing to begin with, it lowers the chances that they will do it.

There seems to be some kind of vague consensus here that the person with lower standards of cleanliness should only clean up enough to reach that lower standard, and then the person who likes a cleaner house has to do the rest of the work to get it up to par...that seems a little unfair to me, it leaves one person comfortable with less work and the other person uncomfortable with more work. I think it's better to have a bit of compromise where the person with the lower standard does more work than they're comfortable with, and the person who wants a cleaner house deals with it being not quite clean enough. E.g., if one person only wants to do dishes once a week and the other person wants to do them immediately after eating, maybe they should each do dishes on alternate days.

Cleaning dishes in a big house gets ridiculous, you can wash your own right after eating but what if you all eat together, whose responsibility is it? Shouldn't always be up to the person who does dishes right away. That is why asking for help is useful.

I just realised the article I quoted above was a somewhat too-subtle sattire mocking a Betinna Arndt book about how women dont give it up for their men enough (geddit? Arndt... Unkel...) so I feel a bit silly, but the sentiment remains! Also, Maria OTM.

suzy right about the not starting and not finishing things thing being fairly key I think

too difficult to read this thread without neurotically venting a couple of my own:

I am renting from a guy just now who is only here a week every couple of months but his first trip back he finished a box of muesli and threw the empty box in the bin. why does it matter that he threw the empty box in the bin? not sure but maybe it gave me a sense that he must have been aware of what he was doing. he did buy a new box of muesli a couple of days later but it was manky sugary stuff that I would not eat when he'd finished some nice and not particularly cheap stuff. another time for some reason I had two lots of butter in the fridge and after he'd left I discovered he'd opened the one that wasn't on the go lifted the paper bit taken his scrape and then lowered the paper bit. two butters on the go is not a happy situation in which to find oneself. why does it matter that he left the paper bit on a now-on-the-go butter? not sure but maybe it gave me a sense that he must have thought I...wouldn't notice? otherwise leaving the paper bit on a now-on-the-go butter just seems somewhat uncivilised to my sensitive nature

had a word w/ him eventually after some bizarrely lacklustre washing up of some dishes of mine that he'd used - like bowls on the drying rack as if they'd been washed but w/ green crud encrusted upon the outside. I've no problem w/ him using any of my kitchenware but it seems I have a problem w/ encrusted green crud. so it turns out he just doesn't pay v much attention. this could easily be translated to him being inconsiderate or ignorant but at least I know what he thinks he's like and he knows that it's created some annoyance and that I can be a bit of a picky prick (something I am aware of and do resist as much as poss (the upside of this is that I am as conscientious as poss about avoiding doing other annoying things (although I'm sure I still do plenty of annoying stuff of which I'm not aware (although this guy volunteered that he had no complaints whatever)))). also did bring up the fact that I think he's been back a bit more than we agreed he would be but that is still pending a resolution

I think you (I) have to speak up eventually if you (I) do not want to find your(my)self driven mad and/or pretending everything's cool when the other is around (which can just compound it all) and/or find your(my)self doing the kind of pathetic thing of hiding kitchen or bathroom stuff in your (my) bedroom

it's mostly great when I have the place to myself though! there's no one left to blame :D

I think I've had to come to terms with the idea some people just need to be told/asked. And again, and again and again. I dont like being in that position - I'm nobody's mother.

again, i blame the parents

Hah, I certainly blame mine for banging such an enourmous amount of neat-freakery guilt into me that I feel like a failure no matter how much I do in a household! :(

two butters on the go is not a happy situation in which to find oneself
i hope this never happens to me, i don't know what i'd do.

Two butters one ... I'm not even going to finish this joke.

I had a tenant once who apparently thought all the utensils, plates, cups, etc that I supplied weren't up to par so she bought and used all her own things in the kitchen. This made it exceptionally easy for me to totally ignore any dishes she had to wash up and only do mine, except when she left hers for so long they formed a mountain that took up half the counter space. Which was often.

She also turned the living room into a second bedroom (she already had a giant master bedroom and walk-in closet) for her schoolwork and designer clothes and bags she used her parents' money to buy. They also paid for her rent, her car and insurance, her school, and gave her a $500/month allowance. She was actually amazed to find out that I paid for my rent/car/food/etc on my own.

Anyway, defintely one of the 'blame the parents' situations. The girl was a total slob, whined about housework, whined about her part-time job, and couldn't hold a conversation about anything other than how high school was rotten and how all the teachers were out to get her. SO yeah, living with spoiled rich kids, not so fun.

so how did you raise kids that are conscious of being a good and considerate co-habitator without turning them into neurotic OCD'ers?

fuck it i'm not having kids.

I thought you did leave the paper bit on the butter-on-the-go?

is that heathen?

Yes. Yes it is.

Butter oxidises and picks up smell if the wrap stays off. That is why I have a few balled-up wrappers with microns of demi-sel French butter sitting there, waiting to go on new potatoes (you uncrumple the wrapper, lay it face down over the potatoes once drained and let the butter melt off).

i manage to cohabit with 6 mates quite well, we tend to deal with any issues by having hate filled clusterfuck round robin emails during the day so the dust has always settled by the time we are all in the evening. Plus i tend to cook at least one face meltingly good carbonara or chilli a week and make apple crumble when theres apples out our back so i get away with all sorts. Also group things get bought out of our house money so theres always loads of gigantic pikey treats from green lanes where you can pick up 5litre cans of olive oil and litre tubs of houmous for peanuts

paper bit on the butter-on-the-go

Are we talking butter which is only wrapped in paper (or foil-coated paper), or are we talking butter in a plastic tub which has a paper/foil cover stretched over the top beneath the plastic lid before first use? Keeping butter wrapped sounds sensible to me - I don't have a butter dish and find them inconvenient - but I have no opinion at all about the latter.

(Wait, I thought this might be another US/UK divide, but seems NotEnough is in the UK like I am too)

I remember when I was younger and not used to keeping a household together, and I was house-sitting for people with nice places and I just felt like a bumbling clown -- things seemed to break in my hands, windows wouldn't shut, everything seemed like too much to keep track of. It's got to be a phase, I think. And also I wouldn't be 24 again for a million dollars.

I don't know that parent-blaming works, because I know lots of families (including mine) where one sibling winds up mega-neat and the other winds up slobby.

By the way, I have total sympathy/understanding for the slobby high-tolerance types, I completely understand it, but I also don't dispute that those people are missing skills that they need to learn if they ever want to live with others. I think the best tactic to teaching them this is not to do lots of lecturing about responsibility or leaving of snippy notes or whatever, because these things will probably just activate cycles of guilt and irritation and secrecy that the slobs already learned to live with around their parents or their last roommates or whatever. I suspect the best model involves just having your shit together, by way of example, and reminding them with a smile that they do not have their shit together and will need to get it that way, at some point. Because my experience suggests that the slobby one in a roommate pair often looks with a sort of private awe at the one who has obviously greater competence in life, and if the competent one seems to be happily beckoning the slob up onto that higher plane, the slob might make an effort to step up -- but if the competent one is constantly freaking out about minor details, the slob will get the sense that the competent person is not competent but just a neat-freak pain in the ass.

i agree with this. and lately, leading by example seems to have been working. he even bought orange juice yesterday. but then he announces it to me like he deserves a pat on the back for doing what he should be doing more than once a month. considering how thirsty he is.

Baby steps, cutty. Baby steps.

Yeah, I mean, if that's a victory for him, then good for him, give him one of those smile-and-nod things like the mentor at the end of a sports movie.

(Haha I cannot overstress the fact that orange-juice moochers and the like aren't necessarily just coasting on your effort to reduce theirs; there's every chance that if you weren't around to buy orange juice they would just sit there being thirsty and going "oh man I wish I had some juice, why is life so HARD")

feel for you cutty, not braggin but i am SO OVER this phase of life and i do not miss this nonsense

Worst are those flatmates whose toilet issues mean they have to crap on a cumulus cloud of toilet paper so they don't make A NOISE OH NOES

I've seen the aftermath of this in public bathrooms - usually they throw in a seat cover or two - I had no idea why - I just thought someone was seriously OCD about wiping or had some serious problem. People actually do this because of noise?

Paper also cushions the impact of faeces upon toilet bowl, resulting in important and polite reductions in skidmark and other residues. Why is everything about noise with you people?

I AM THE BREAD MAN

Last week:

"Oh hai! I just ate some of your bread for my dinner, sardines on toast lololol!"

That's nice because I have 3 pounds to live on this week and was hoping that loaf of bread would see me through.

Today just in from work and just a crust of bread left from half a loaf. Why can't people buy their own food, it's so fucking scroungey/lazy to just take stuff constantly cos you can never organise yourself enough to do a weekly shop.

My roommate or one of her guests have TWICE used my last clean towel out of the closet. Both times I've gotten an apology but NO CLEAN TOWEL BACK.

I would like to point out, like a big jerk, that when you have guests, THEIR MESS IS YOUR MESS. If they use dishes, leave food out, or untidy anything, it is YOUR JOB TO FIX THAT. Do NOT walk around it because it's "not yours".

The point being, w/r/t the thread title, that I'm thinking about hiding my towels, which is annoying because I keep them in the LINEN CLOSET for a reason (ie, they are linens) but that may not be possible anymore.

Some douchebag in my apartment buys toilet paper and then hordes all but a single roll. Except now there hasn't been any in the bathroom at all for, what, five days now? Even though there's a newly-discarded multipack toilet paper wrapper in the trashcan? Luckily, I do keep my own stash for just such occasions.

Living with people is the worst.

I stole some of my housemate's Coke yesterday and this thread is a timely reminder to me to replace it.

^^^^This was the only thing I used to get mad about

I should note (to avoid any accusations of hypocracy) that I'm only stashing a single roll. And that I bought the last batch of TP, a four-roll pack that somehow got used up in two days's time.

oh and hair conditioner. Coke and hair conditioner.

I would like to point out, like a big jerk, that when you have guests, THEIR MESS IS YOUR MESS. If they use dishes, leave food out, or untidy anything, it is YOUR JOB TO FIX THAT. Do NOT walk around it because it's "not yours".

i've never had a friend visiting who wasn't hyper conscious of this themselves, offering to clean their own mess.

slightly off topic but last sat my flatmate was up at 8.30am cleaning the kitchen. it was weird as obv cleaning is a good thing but the fucking noise on a day you can sleep would drive you bananas. not sure if it's just me but I found cleaning the kitchen at this hour completely fucking mental.

x-post my flatmates are moving out in a few weeks so it all feels even more futile, but it annoys me deeply all the same, I just can't comprehend the mindset that takes someone else's stuff.

Seriously I've been passive-aggressively avoiding having a confrontation w my roommate and it's ruining our friendship and I know I should sack up and say something, but I know it's going to be messy and I'm not sure I can handle it calmly...she is just THOUGHTLESS and not a very hard worker and not good at home things. I think she thinks she "cleaned" the bathroom yesterday...which meant wiping a few things off with a wet paper towel. Between that and the dog hair and her defensiveness and my cowardice, I just don't know what to do.

LG: well, her friend apparently took my towel out of the closet without asking about it, or even worse, my roommate might have told her to, and then not wanted to own up to it. Either way, my towel that I just washed for me to use isn't clean anymore.

i remember last time this thread was up it made me go 'oh god oh god' and paranoically scrutinize every housemate relationship i have ever had in search of what kind of jerk i was being

I think it's fine to get a bit arsey if you're own behaviour as a flatmate is beyond reproach, but if you can't honestly say that you've never used/used up anything of someone else's in a moment of desperation, it's probably best just to stfu about it/get over it. basically cuz if they have anything, no matter how small, that they can come back at you with, you will (and should) both look and feel like a bit of a cock.

imo.

LG couldn't you have gone "actually i'm a bit skint atm, can you make sure and get some bread in before we run out?"

Living with people is the worst

yeah this revive has kinda convinced me to stay solo and not go back to sharing to save money (altho i really need to move soon and do that) ha

we had a roommate once that would go number 2 like 5 or 6 times a day and never ever bought toilet paper (or anything else for that matter). so we finally decided to let the tp run out to force him to go buy some or poop elsewhere. unfortunately when the time came he went to the bathroom and then ran down the hall and straight to the shower afterwards. we just kept buying the toilet paper after that incident.

using stuff in desperation is fine, I'm not going to panic about a few glugs of oil or butter. but never buying certain things and using them when someone else does is a diff story.

I think you're right tho Nick, if they can come back with anything you then feel "oh why did I say this?" but that doesn't mean it's always some sort of just equilibrium. I sometimes think my flatmates expect me to borrow stuff freely from them but they often don't buy the stuff and hence I don't want such an arrangement.

x-post thomp I did say, like 2 seconds after "don't worry about it," "I have three pounds to live on this week" but it was in one ear and out the other. to do it again this week, even if I'm not skint, is just a joke.

oh yeah, I think you're probably perfectly entitled to your indignance and it's certainly true that not all housemate borrowing/sponging is equal. i realise I was rather more raging at my own housemate for emailing about her cornflakes a while ago and subsequently bringing up every single instance where I may have been less than perfect as a cohabitee.

my response has been to mentally collect equivalent ammunition against, should i find myself under such an attack at a later date. this, tbh, is a lot of effort and makes me feel like a bit of a cock.

I know, nick, and she's probably going to come back at me w something because every time I ask her a favor or anything about the house, she has a complaint about me in return, even if it's something minor that I've already taken care of...she cannot be at a disadvantage without shooting something back at me.

But I clean, and I cook, and I do my and often HER dishes, and I wash the floors, and I do my own laundry...and she leaves dishes out, and feeds her dog off my clean floor, and uses my towel and my dishes, and has broken or ruined several objects of mine, incl a handmade bowel that I think she's hiding from me. Srsly I LIKE her and I don't want to make her uncomfortable or angry but I can't take this anymore.

Bowel? My god. This is what I get for writing a post at the same time as a work email and being distracted.

For the record: BOWL.

unfortunately when the time came he went to the bathroom and then ran down the hall and straight to the shower afterwards. we just kept buying the toilet paper after that incident.

Just trying to picture the layout with the toilet in a separate room, down the hall, from the shower. Seems, inconvenient, to say the least.

I'm so glad I live with my girlfriend and our cats and never had to cohabit (except with parents) after university. Mid-20s cohabiting must be hell.

My roommate is awesome: clean, quiet, and often gone. However, maybe I am one of these bad people, as my dishes have been in the sink all night. The thing I don't understand about dishes, is that no matter how many times you wash them, you always have to do it again. This is my general dilemma with cleaning as well.

nabs said -

I suspect the best model involves just having your shit together, by way of example, and reminding them with a smile that they do not have their shit together and will need to get it that way, at some point. Because my experience suggests that the slobby one in a roommate pair often looks with a sort of private awe at the one who has obviously greater competence in life, and if the competent one seems to be happily beckoning the slob up onto that higher plane, the slob might make an effort to step up

There is, admittedly, approximate one (1) snowball's chance in hell that this will work but in my experience it does not. Sure, the slob probably does have a sense that his or her roommate is more competent and/or has their shit together, but is perfectly capable of remaining 100% unaware of what actually goes into keeping a place tidy and pleasant.

I have been on both sides of this - the totally unaware slob, and the diligent tidier. I have "led by example" with many people and it never, ever came close to working. I have also been "led" and failed utterly, 100% of the time, to ascertain even a smidgen of my own patheticness.

Maria said -

There seems to be some kind of vague consensus here that the person with lower standards of cleanliness should only clean up enough to reach that lower standard, and then the person who likes a cleaner house has to do the rest of the work to get it up to par...that seems a little unfair to me

Yes. I take issue with the concept of "lower standards" though. This is true to an extent, but there are a whole lot of people who say things like "A dirty kitchen just doesn't really bother me" or "If I need a bowl I'll clean it, no biggie" but these exact same people, if presented with a clean and tidy kitchen, OF COURSE prefer it, and like it. Their protestations that it doesn't matter are false. Everyone likes a clean and well-organized kitchen. They're just unwilling to work for it.

Mid-20s cohabiting must be hell.

We're both in our mid-30s!! Sigh.

Some people need one tho, rather than just think one is nice.

I clean the kitchen when the thought of looking at it or cooking in it disgusts me.

yeah i think there are many definitions of 'dirty kitchen'

I meant just that all dishes and pots are cleaned.

Doing them before bed is the only way, ultimately. Everything else is justification.

I think the impulses behind just leaving it is a sort of decadent, luxurious feeling, droit du seigneur, "this is the good life", "life's too short for this nonsense", "I am open-minded and alternative and unfussed by conventional hangups". Which might make sense after a big dinner party. But it looks a little thin and tired after Night #215 In a Row.

Ugh, I hate it when roommates don't pick up after their guests. It's really the worst when their guests aren't even friends of theirs but just couchsurfers. Yeah, I'm cool with letting people we don't know crash here, BUT APPRECIATE THE SACRIFICE OF PRIVACY I'M MAKING BY CLEANING THEIR DISHES. The worst part is, I think he thinks that mess is actually mine because he doesn't have the consideration to keep track of the mess his guests are making.

Also, to the defender of cloud-pooing above, skidmarks are not a crime. Especially if there are men in the house who can make a fun game of pissing them off the back of the bowl.

I don't care about dishes in the sink for a day or 3, esp during the work-week, I do that myself. But when I come after being gone 5 days and the pot that was there when I left is STILL there and now the sink smells...no.

but these exact same people, if presented with a clean and tidy kitchen, OF COURSE prefer it, and like it. Their protestations that it doesn't matter are false. Everyone likes a clean and well-organized kitchen. They're just unwilling to work for it.

But Tracer, this is just a definition of what cleaning standards ARE. Most people would "of course" prefer a lot of things -- a toilet cleaned daily, towels folded into swan shapes, silverware in drawers always neatly stacked -- that we're "unwilling to work for" because c'mon, we've got stuff going on and can't spend all day folding towel-swans, and who cares if a couple of forks are pointing the wrong way. Everyone calls a standard somewhere, and if their standard is super-low we tell them to stop being a slob, and if their standard is super-high we tell them to stop being so fussy.

I've lived in a house with a dishwasher for the last four years and it's saved many an argument. But what used to drive me insane was when people used to fill the sink with water, dump their dirty stuff in it, and then... leave it to brew into a pungent soup of the remains of their dinner. Thus putting the sink out of action to anyone who actually wanted to wash up without having to fish through brown water and various floating bits of food in order to locate the plug. Why can't people just leave dirty dishes on the side?

Our own standards seem to reasonable, don't they.

Erm, "so reasonable".

(I mean the logic there seems weird -- I would protest that it "doesn't matter" if the toilet is scrubbed after every use ... not because I'd mind if that magically happened (that'd be great), but because I certainly wouldn't care anywhere near enough to do that much work. So would you, probably. Everyone at some point will say no, it doesn't matter anymore, it's nice enough.)

It comes down to what's accomplishable. A kitchen can be cleaned within an inch of its life in 20 minutes, though it's not really necessary. The bare minimum of just doing dishes and utensils can be done in like 5. I could understand if your roommate is Jack Bauer but otherwise there is no "stuff" that is "going on" that would prohibit this scale of time investment! Your daily toilet scrubbing and swan-folding are red herrings - I can't recall any roommate arguments over it, since they don't impact others' ability to get on with their own dinners or what have you.

5 minutes???

Actually I got a really angry email from my housemate going 'WHERE'S MY FUCKING SWAN?!' this morning, so you're wrong.

tracer u should probably spend more time washing ur dishes

id put a thorough kitchen clean at 2-3hours. daily swipe down at maybe 10-15 minutes if you have a dishwasher.

I've lived in a house with a dishwasher for the last four years and it's saved many an argument. But what used to drive me insane was when people used to fill the sink with water, dump their dirty stuff in it, and then... leave it to brew into a pungent soup of the remains of their dinner. Thus putting the sink out of action to anyone who actually wanted to wash up without having to fish through brown water and various floating bits of food in order to locate the plug. Why can't people just leave dirty dishes on the side?

The theory behind this is that soaking the dishes makes cleaning them easier. The practice (IME) is that it just makes you put off doing the dishes even longer because who wants to touch that nasty shit? Ugh.

kitchen can be cleaned within an inch of its life in 20 minutes, though it's not really necessary. The bare minimum of just doing dishes and utensils can be done in like 5.

Uh how small is your kitchen and how do you define "within an inch of its life"? I can guarantee you that cleaning our kitchen within an inch of its life (dishes, counters, tables, floors, oven top, oven, microwave, dusting shelves, wiping down the front of the fridge, cleaning the fridge shelves, emptying the trash, scouring the trash can) is going to be an hour and a half at LEAST.

lol xposts, Tracer u r nasty

"I sometimes think my flatmates expect me to borrow stuff freely from them but they often don't buy the stuff and hence I don't want such an arrangement."

Like the third time I asked him not to take my stuff, even if he planned to replace it (he was forgetting), My housemate said specifically that he thought this was the arrangement. I was like, "haha the food you buy is ready meals and pizzas from the Coop rather than, y'know, oil and cheese and seasoning and vegetables, and you only shop once a month or so as far as I can tell, and I don't eat meat, so thanks for the offer but no thank you." He is literally delusional and went away thinking I had grown up in some broken home where I had to fight to get a healthy portion and have become crazily possessive, but since he's stopped taking my shit I don't care.

2-3hrs? Pretty sure you could get a restaurant kitchen clean in that amount of time.

How long does it take to wash up a plate, a glass, a couple of pans and some cutlery anyway. I mean, come on...

Mwahahahaha. My cupboards need degreasing AGAIN. That's going to take a hour, minimum. Then wash the floor. I'm not even thinking about cleaning behind the fridge....

An ounce of prevention, guys. This is the whole point. It doesn't take three hours if you keep it tidy to begin with.

I'm definitely not disputing that, just saying that people do have different standards and priorities about those things. One person might feel a serious need to clean up right after dinner; another person might prefer to sit down with a drink and relax and do it before bed. Both of these things make perfect sense and neither's really "wrong" -- it's just a matter of what you're comfortable with, and how important/satisfying it is to you to have things certain ways. (Our common agreed-upon standards are how we judge stuff like whether a certain pair constitutes a normal person who lives with a slob, or a normal person who lives with a neat-freak.)

Oh, I'm not talking about tidy. There's "tidy", and then there's "clean". Tidying is an every-day thing. Cleaning STILL needs to be done by someone, and it needs doing every couple of weeks, if you don't the dog to start sticking to the cupboard doors. (Or if you ever want to get the dog hair OFF of everything.)

The difference between tidy and clean is real, but guys living together in rented accommodation in their 20s do not clean.

I will admit that having a tiny apartment probably helps.

And yeah OK, I wasn't really including The Top Shelf That Must Not Be Spoken Of.

nabs in both your cases the dishes are getting done before bed so I don't really foresee any serious probs there.

2-3hrs? Pretty sure you could get a restaurant kitchen clean in that amount of time.

How long does it take to wash up a plate, a glass, a couple of pans and some cutlery anyway. I mean, come on...

― Matt DC, Monday, August 10, 2009 10:49 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

im thinking dan definition of 'within an inch of its life' for 2-3 hours, not a general daily clean up

Another thing, by the way, that seems maybe even more problematic, is: I think there is a variety of person who actually honestly doesn't prefer things clean and tidy, because they have gotten used to behaving in a messy way and feel uncomfortable or hassled by tidiness, like now they can't relax and let it all hang out. (To be fair, I think normal people can feel this way, too, in situations of extreme tidiness -- I think it's a bit like when you wash your hands in the guest bathroom and aren't supposed to disturb the little soaps or mess up the carefully folded hand towels, and you're like "this is ridiculous, I just want a normal towel to dry my hands on.")

xpost - haha actually Tracer I always prefer doing the dishes in the morning

If I'm just doing dishes and cleaning surfaces, you're talking about approximately 20 minutes (load dishwasher, handwash pots/pans/delicate glasses, wipe counters and stovetop and microwave) but I would never, ever, EVER call that cleaning the kitchen within an inch of its life.

Washing dishes takes me 5 minutes at most, but I barely cook and am only eating for one. I can't imagine cleaning up after making a proper meal for more than one person.

The clean/tidy distinction is funny--I used to always tell my mom I was cleaning my room, and she would say, you are not cleaning, you are straightening, with disdain in her voice.

I've recently gotten to the point where straightening is in fact the prelude to cleaning.

nabs I would rather die than do my dishes in the morning! That's it, the wedding plans are off.

Basically the answer here is, as with so much else, "don't be an asshole".

btw Tracer thanks for your contributions to this thread: an hour back I was here and then thought hey, maybe instead of posting about doing dishes I should actually do the dishes, which I did, which was a big hit back home

Another thing, by the way, that seems maybe even more problematic, is: I think there is a variety of person who actually honestly doesn't prefer things clean and tidy, because they have gotten used to behaving in a messy way and feel uncomfortable or hassled by tidiness, like now they can't relax and let it all hang out. (To be fair, I think normal people can feel this way, too, in situations of extreme tidiness -- I think it's a bit like when you wash your hands in the guest bathroom and aren't supposed to disturb the little soaps or mess up the carefully folded hand towels, and you're like "this is ridiculous, I just want a normal towel to dry my hands on.")

v otm. I enjoy the values of a place being clean and I like now and again to really go at the kitchen or my room or whatever. But I don't like the oppressive feeling of a place having to be clean at all times. I also hate when people unnecessarily "tidy" things, eg "I can't find x, y, z, cos person with hard on for minute interior design has moved it."

"I can't find the laundry detergent because some dope put it in the cleaning closet with all the other cleaners and cleaning supplies."

Actually it's more like "I can't find the laundry detergent because someone pulled everything out of the cabinets and reorganized them AGAIN in order to 'make it easier to find things' just after I figured out where everything went after the last unnecessary reorganization".

my roommates - who are good friends - always steal milk from each other, so now they draw lines on their milk bottles to indicate where the milk was when they last left it

i've never really hidden anything tho, i just assume that my friends won't steal food from me. usually when they do it's something petty like a soda or salsa. it just gets me angry on principle, but i feel like it's just an accepted part of co-habitation. people don't right when they are hungry.

xpost - oh man I have that problem a lot. (the moving-things problem.) I'm not even sure how to get into it apart from saying that whoah boy I get that one. I don't think roommates should ever really do that; significant others, okay, cause at least then it's not strange if you're walking around with no pants on going "where are my good jeans, I left them on the chair, what have you done with them." but I dunno. I mean, even when you know it's totally your fault, and the bathroom was a poor place to leave the shoes you need, this doesn't help much when you seriously can't find the shoes. what's less cut and dried is when, for instance, you and the cleaner both have, say, mail and papers on the counter, and the cleaner cleans the counter, and of course they know where they put their stuff, but where is yours? they will often respond with something rather vague, like "if you had anything out here, I put it in a pile in the other room," and then it's not in the pile and now what? you can't blame the cleaner for losing it, cause they were doing valuable cleaning work, but ...

I lived with someone who was very possesive about his stuff, and by "his" stuff I mean the TV, the computer, pretty much everything in the house that he could say was more his than ours. The TV was one of those that you couldn't turn on without the remote, so while he was out he would take the batteries out of the remote so we couldn't use it (it's *his* remote, he can do what he likes with it, and so on). Then he finds out that we're not stupid and do know how to put new batteries in things, so he hides the remote instead. We found it once and hid it again with some treasure trail clues leading him to where it was, but he got pretty angry and went apeshit, so we never did anything like that again. In the end it was just easier to buy separate TVs, DVD players, computers. Ridiculously expensive, but so much easier than trying to persuade him to let us use his things.

So anyway, I'm cleaning up one day and I accidentally knock over a huge pile of CDs and books, sending them crashing onto his computer pretty hard. I thought I should try switching it on just to make sure I didn't break it or pull any of the wires out. I press the button, it doesn't switch on, Oh fuck. I check all the wires in the back, shove them all back in again properly and switch it on. It doesn't switch on. Oh fuck oh fuck. Neither does the monitor. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. And he'll know that I did it because I was the only one at home. So I start hoping that maybe it broke before I dropped everything on it, maybe the fuse blew out or something ages ago and none of us knew about it because we never use it. So I check the fuse, and it's gone. I check the fuse of his monitor and it's gone too. His TV, his DVD player - the twat apparently takes every bloody fuse out of every piece of electrical equipment he owns every time he leaves the house, and puts it back in when he wants to use it. Sure enough, that evening he's on his computer again, like nothing happened.

I think more than anything else I was just offended that he thinks we would want to use his nasty spyware-ridden shiteheap of a PC instead of ours (oh yeah, we might not be allowed to use it under normal circumstances but he sure as hell wants us to help remove the bloody spyware and viruses he gets from porn sites).

I don't know why he didn't just put a frigging password on it tbh.

My mom used to try to teach my sister and I not to leave the blowdryer out on the bathroom countertop, but to put it away in the bathroom closet. We never did this, so she thought it would be a good idea to "hide" the blowdryer in her own bathroom closet. We never learned to put to the dryer away, but always went screaming to her bathroom whenever we couldn't find it.

88 that story is astonishing!

i've pretty much decided that i'll live in a refrigerator box under the overpass before I'll live with another human again (who's not a gf/wife obv) <-- but you know, even then I'm wondering if homes next door to each other might not be the way to go. or maybe a duplex...

nabs hahaha - isn't it uncanny how that works!?

That is a crazy story 88. I once met someone who reckoned that they knew someone who lived in a house where each housemate had their own personal set of lightbulbs that they would screw in and out when they wanted to use, say, the lounge. I wasn't sure if I believed it at the time, but after your story I guess it might be plausible.

The theory behind this is that soaking the dishes makes cleaning them easier. The practice (IME) is that it just makes you put off doing the dishes even longer because who wants to touch that nasty shit? Ugh.

otm. it's bad practice twice: one for putting off the washing up, and two for hogging the sink so no one else can do any washing up without removing (and washing) the stinky smelly stuff you couldn't be arsed to do yourself.

another pet hate: bog roll runs out, new bog roll is stood up on top of empty tube. gah! not able to access bin?

and this is family, not co-habiting, what have i done wrong...?

soaking everything in one big bath is odd to me, mostly because it will make your glasses a billion times dirtier and harder to clean than when they started. soaking dishware in general seems odd. soaking is great for pans caked with fond from searing meat; it's great for pots with glutinous or starchy stuff caked on the sides; it's good for cooking implements. not so much with the glasses you just drank out of.

xpost - hahaha I would guess the mentality there is "I already had to procure the new roll just to get wiped and get out of here, and now I'm supposed to take the thing off and actually mount the new roll? I just came in here to use the bathroom and get out, I didn't sign on for a whole home-improvement project"

to be completely 100% honest I don't see a grand amount of extra utility in having the toilet paper properly mounted versus just having a roll sitting somewhere within arm's reach

another pet hate: bog roll runs out, new bog roll is stood up on top of empty tube. gah! not able to access bin?

A variant of this happens in our house now only because my wife overenthusiastically bought some ginormous fuck-off sized rolls of TP that don't actually fit in the dispenser until you've used a quarter of it. I think we still have something like 7 rolls to get through before going back to normal-sized rolls, by which point we'll probably be totally used to the enourmo-sized rolls and won't see a problem with what we're doing.

Forming habits sucks. ;_;

I guess one advantage of the properly mounted roll is that if you have a puppy and live in a commercial, you can walk in to find your puppy happily spinning all the paper down off the roll and romping around in it

I had to hide my weed at pretty much every house I've ever lived in, as one who uses it maybe once every 5 weeks or so. It wasn't awesome to have to go home and be like, "Loooooooooooooooocy, you got some 'splaining to do about why you smoked all my druuuuuugs!"

I have to say I think putting the roll on the dispenser is a waste of time...

I know it's not the same, but after living seven years with my husband, I basically have come to accept the things he does that annoyed me. Why? Because I have little quirks he hates. And fuck it, life's too short to get bothered by these things. Leaving the toilet door open? (Yes, I got annoyed by it.) So what, and actually I do it too now. He ate the last of some biscuits? So what. Of course it's a whole other thing when you are skint and you live with roommates. Honestly, I am happy I never got to experience the whole sharing a house thing. It's just VERY uncommon her in Belgium.

The main problem w/not putting the roll of TP on the dispenser is not everyone puts their TP in the same place, and consequently your bathroom gets riddled with all these partially-used rolls of toilet paper.

but what do you do with the used cardboard once there's more than one empty?

Then the guinea pig gets a chew toy.

I don't get why people put the toilet roll with the paper facing uh... away from you. It just doesn't make sense at all. Much harder to rip a piece off. I always turn it around (and thus probably annoy the ones who like it hah)

I know it's not the same, but after living seven years with my husband, I basically have come to accept the things he does that annoyed me. Why? Because I have little quirks he hates.

Completely understand. The quirks work both ways and you learn to accept those.

I find it strange now accepting the quirks of the children, having brought them up for 16 and 12 years, when in my younger days while they were but babes I thought they would always be the kind of people who would recycle the used roll cardboard and put the new roll on..... But now I know, they are just developing their own quirks for their future co-habitees/partners/family, while also getting a kick out of winding their dad up.

I don't get why people put the toilet roll with the paper facing uh... away from you. It just doesn't make sense at all. Much harder to rip a piece off. I always turn it around (and thus probably annoy the ones who like it hah)

She and I are like Jack Sprat and his wife. Paper needs to face the s(h)itter, otherwise there is a risk of scraping fingernails against wall.

May I say that whole issue is a bit anal?

hahaha Abbott, I love you!

It's number two on my list of priorities

wasn't there a study that gave marked tendencies male-vs-female in the matter of what way ppl wanted the toilet roll to face?

His TV, his DVD player - the twat apparently takes every bloody fuse out of every piece of electrical equipment he owns every time he leaves the house, and puts it back in when he wants to use it.

Wait, I don't think I'm understanding this. Where in a PC is there a removable fuse? Where in any piece of electrical equipment for that matter?

plug

Oh is that all. I thought they meant some kind of fuse, seeing as he said fuse.

LOL sorry that came out sarcastic sounding, I didnt intend it to.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/British_plug.jpg

Fuse is inside a British plug, Trayce.

Thanks suzy - not at all how electric plugs work in Aus, hence my confusion :)

(To me a fuse is a little glass thing you'll find in the electronics you don't touch inside a TV or a guitar amp, or on the wall for the electric wiring for a house).

soaking everything in one big bath is odd to me, mostly because it will make your glasses a billion times dirtier and harder to clean than when they started. soaking dishware in general seems odd. soaking is great for pans caked with fond from searing meat; it's great for pots with glutinous or starchy stuff caked on the sides; it's good for cooking implements. not so much with the glasses you just drank out of.

xpost - hahaha I would guess the mentality there is "I already had to procure the new roll just to get wiped and get out of here, and now I'm supposed to take the thing off and actually mount the new roll? I just came in here to use the bathroom and get out, I didn't sign on for a whole home-improvement project"

― nabisco, Monday, August 10, 2009 8:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

to be completely 100% honest I don't see a grand amount of extra utility in having the toilet paper properly mounted versus just having a roll sitting somewhere within arm's reach

― nabisco, Monday, August 10, 2009 8:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

All of the above is correct and exactly how I run things around here.

my roommates - who are good friends - always steal milk from each other, so now they draw lines on their milk bottles to indicate where the milk was when they last left it

i discovered as a kid that the way to get round this is to just top up the bottle with water after you've stolen the milk

your parents didnt let you have their milk??

"it's too expensive for you to just DRINK it!!!"

am not kidding, btw

my brother used to sneak vodka from the bottle my dad kept in the freezer and never drank, topping it off with water, and then one day my dad had some company over and decided to make martinis, and took the bottle out of the freezer and the vodka inside was frozen solid

thats still pretty lol. my brother used to go through approx 2 litres a day. xp

milk not vodka although who knows

yah my mum never cottoned on to my tricks cuz she was too cheap to drink milk herself (at least she practiced what she preached). it was strictly for cereal/baking

loooool i just remembered another trick: packs of biscuits that are in a tray? there was an add for one of these when i was little and it showed the kid sneaking the biscuit from the END of the pack so the pack still looked like it had the same amount in it... great idea! used this one a few times afterwards.

obv i was v v deprived child

Ha my mom wouldn't let me eat fruit out of similar financial reasoning.

i started writing my name on my food after my roomie ate the last of my chicken parmesans thinking it was his.....

That's a long name! I hope you have large food.

DO NOT EAT BUTT

Trayce have you thought abt employing "She's in Potties" as a username? (I hope not?)

i just wrote EWP. then I replaced his three alarm chili with pig nads

Emewson Wake & Pawmer

haha i've been doing the elmer fudd thing all weekend

Trayce have you thought abt employing "She's in Potties" as a username?

LOL. "Its in the can".

(To me a fuse is a little glass thing you'll find in the electronics you don't touch inside a TV or a guitar amp, or on the wall for the electric wiring for a house).

There are actually little glass things inside every British plug. It sounds completely bonkers and maybe is, but there you go. There are two or three small screws to take out, the casing for the plug comes apart and the fuse is inside. You pop it out and put in a new one. Because of this I figure "surge protectors" are irrelevant in the UK, but I dunno. They're definitely super aggressive with electrical safety. Bathrooms are forbidden by law from having light switches in them, for example.

Also American plugs don't have an earth wire in them, unless I'm mistaken?

Trayce: rosegarden funeral of snores

Things with metal cases have three prongs, things without metal cases usually have two. But sockets sometimes only have space for two prongs. So you can buy an adaptor which removes the grounding from your three-prong plug! Brilliant. The better way is to buy an adaptor with a little metal ring at the bottom, which you then screw into the faceplate of the socket, like so:

http://www.electronicplus.com/images/products/419GY.jpg

I've suddenly realized that I have always just assumed that's what the little ring is for. I actually have no idea. But that's what I do.

There are actually little glass things inside every British plug.

not actually glass tho

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/image/s_fuse.jpg

Oh I forgot, it's made from the crushed plastic of Argentinian childrens' spectacles.

US plugs are completely terrifying to me.

WUSS

What's even better is that with a two-prong plug, one of the two prongs is bigger than the other... sometimes. That's so that you put the plug into the socket the right way, rather than reversed. But sometimes, the socket will accept the plug regardless of which way you put it in, even if one prong is bigger. Which is totally reassuring. By which I mean it's actually the complete fucking opposite of reassuring.

doesnt that just mean if one is bigger its polarized and if not its not? you soon find out if you have it in the wrong way.

Well, exactly.

i've never been quite convinced that american plugs are, like, real

and i mean i've seen and used them and everything and it's just, you look at them and mentally a little voice goes "really? really?"

the fairy dust gives them away a little

i seem them and i'm like "what's the matter, you like house fires?"

pish

Yes, with our large American peckers we can put out any housefires with voluminous torrents of urine

voluminous torrents of urine

okay technology has officially gone too far

"British power outlets incorporate shutters on the phase and neutral contacts to prevent someone from pushing a foreign object into the socket. Sockets from most manufacturers have shutters which are opened by the earth pin alone. This is longer than the others and must always be present"

"The phase and neutral pins on modern plugs have insulated bases to prevent finger contact with pins and also to stop metal sheets (for example, fallen window blind slats) from becoming live if lodged between the wall and a partly pulled out plug."

"- The plug base is broadened near the pins to help keep fingers away from the pins
- The plug is polarised, so that it cannot be inserted with the phase and neutral pins reversed
- The longer earth pin ensures that the earth path is connected before the live pins, and remains connected after the live pins are removed.
- The plug is firmly fitting and therefore difficult to dislodge by accidental knocks
- The cable always enters the plug from the bottom, thus making it difficult for people to unplug the plug by tugging on the cable
- If the cable is forcibly pulled from the plug, the phase wire disconnects first, the neutral second, and the earth wire last. This is ensured by forcing the different wires to have varying amounts of slack in them by design of the internal channel of the plug."

we is crazy safe

fwiw, US electricity has been dumbed down to 1/2 strength.

- The plug is firmly fitting and therefore difficult to dislodge by accidental knocks

^^^ this is my main one (i know nothing about electricity). US sockets can't support the weight of an international adapter of a macbook converter so those things barely hang out of the socket gently hissing sparks.

international adapter of a macbook converter

or

p.s."- If the cable is forcibly pulled from the plug, the phase wire disconnects first, the neutral second, and the earth wire last. This is ensured by forcing the different wires to have varying amounts of slack in them by design of the internal channel of the plug."

lol not when i wire them.

to stop metal sheets (for example, fallen window blind slats) from becoming live if lodged between the wall and a partly pulled out plug.

I'm going to go on record as guessing that no one in the history of America has worried about this eventuality, ever.

^^^ this is my main one (i know nothing about electricity). US sockets can't support the weight of an international adapter of a macbook converter so those things barely hang out of the socket gently hissing sparks.

alright, you've convinced me to take my British adapter plug for my Macbook to Hong Kong

I'm going to go on record as guessing that no one in the history of America has worried about this eventuality, ever.

Furthermore, the ones for whom this was a concern didn't suffer for long.

It's never even occurred to me, and judging by other people I've lived with, I have a reasonable grasp of How Electricity Makes Things Work and What to Do About It -- so I'm pretty sure it hasn't occurred to anyone.

xp kekekeeekee

on the other hand, American plugs have allowed for such delightful contrivances such as battery chargers whose prongs fold into the body

xp It's for the kids (british pins are big enough to get baby fingers in)

Yeah, why couldn't the engineers be thinking about THAT? xp

was delighted once when i'd forgotten to take an adaptor on hols, and opened up the plug of my video camera charger to find one of these:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Euro_converter_plug2.jpg/180px-Euro_converter_plug2.jpg

that was in europe. same trick didn't work in costa rica unfortunately so had to strip the wires from the cable and wrap them round the pins of a table lamp plug.

I begin to see why the British government has mandated about 400% greater safety measures than generally required.

Wait, I have a q. If the plugs are giant and the cords must always face down etc, that would mean you couldn't have the US outlet with one, err...input above the other, because one of the inputs would always be inaccessible. So how are outlets arranged on the wall??

side by side

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2007/07/24/plug_sillitoe_2.jpg

coming from a family of inveterate electricity savers, I absolutely love those on/off switches on British sockets

notice it's 'off' on the empty socket to stop the electricity leaking out.

Yeah I've been diggin those in NZ xp. How much do those actually do?

i really want to know the answer to that btw

Mostly what they do is make you grow up crazy paranoid that they're somehow unsafe when 'on' with no plug in. Though I guess it's kind of necessary when uk plugs are a lot more difficult to pull out of the wall than US ones.

the cord doesn't exactly always have to face down - i think all phone chargers i've had have had the cord coming out the top, above the earth pin.

Maybe i just had to watch too many electricity safety videos in primary school (and uh FE college) but I'll never take a plug out of the wall without switching it off at the wall first.

My god. Is the incident of electrical house fires actually lower there due to these reams of precautions? I guess if our current is only half the voltage, if that's the right term, then maybe it's best to take more srsly.

if you've been reading wired lately you'll know that things are afoot in the world of uk plug design:

http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/06/23/folding_uk_plug.jpg

rabies - a lot of electronics like TVs and VCRs and computers and stuff draw a lot of power even when they're in 'off' mode, they're great for electronics in general

what the fuck is that, it looks like a B-wing xp

there's also a hand 3 into 1 adapter that's only as big as a standard plug

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/06/24/folding_uk_plug/

*does a sweep of the pad looking for red on switches*

i missed the on/off switch when i first got here but soon learned that you can pop the TEST button and a whole bunch of outlets will turn off.

Hahahahaha yes if your building was re-wired after oh I dunno, the 1980s or something. Have never had a test button on any outlet in any apartment in NYC, pretty sure.

it still freaks me out that in the US, plugging stuff in often produces a spark. and it annoys me that every socket in our house will only fit a two-pronged plug, so we have all these adapters, which are flimsy and don't support the weight of the plug.

good luck usa

Don't US powerpoints in the wall have on off switches? That would weird me out. Which is odd, because our power-strip type extenders often dont have them, but you'd never ever see a wall outlet in Aus without switches.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Australian_dual_switched_power_point.jpg

Outlet thus gives the option of plug with or without earth pin. As in the UK, many outlets have a saftey inner barrier that wont open up unless an earth pin's inserted. My bf blithely said the other day "so I just jam the plug in really hard til that breaks".

thats the spirit!

Yeah and when his Fender amp blows up, I'mma laugh.

"so I just jam the plug in really hard til that breaks".

i hope this is not a general philosophy he holds!

Dammit I *actually* had a mouthful of water when I read that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Australian_dual_switched_power_point.jpg

looks like an ethan or cankles display name tbh