This is the thread where you can moan about your housemates

Last year I shared a flat with a bloke, and we only did the minimal amount of cleaning. I wasn't that bothered, cos I was sharing with a bloke after all. So this year I though it'd be a refreshing change to share with some girls and we'd be clean.

There are 4 girls in our flat, and it just annoys me that two of my flatmates never clean any of the communal areas (kitchen, hallway, bathroom etc). It always ends up being me or the other flatmate who give in and start hoovering. And it isn't usually us who makes the most mess either.

And the other thing I'm annoyed about is how the front door to our flat is always unlocked. I live in a block of student flats, and one of my flatmate's boyfriend lives across the corridoor from us, so they always leave the door unlocked to pop in and out of each other's flats. She didn't ask us in the beginning if this was ok. Recently, another flat in our building was burgled, and so I lock up the flat whenever I go out, always to find that the door has been unlocked again by the time I get home.

Anyway, moaning over. I only have to live here for another 2 months.

Currently I live with three girls, and they're all okay. I've had worse flatmates in the past.

what to do when your roommate doesn't realize you're home and thusly is having loud sex in the living room

Kids don't like their own balls.

Kelsey perhaps you could encourage your roomie to put the TV in her room. If she says no, she wants to watch in the living room, then just tel her she can't watch as much. Period. That's the choice.

i am HORRIBLE with confrontation. plus, said roommate is a good friend i've known since college. things have been strained because i think we have a hard time confronting one another b/c we're friends, we are both "keepers of the peace," etc. i don't know. i make way too many excuses. i'm just miserable.

jellybean too!!

kelsey i'm just saying, your friend doesn't share your feelings about the subject and that's fine, she shouldn't have to. but she ought to know that it's driving you up the wall. if she's your friend hopefully that will make it even easier to figure something out. honestly, TV-in-room is probably the best solution, it might open her up to realizing the living room can be a not-TV place, rather than having some "restriction" because of you..

clearly we need to have a "talk" this weekend.

Passive agressive housemates..

totally true! dishes are definitely the most visible thing in a shared house. basically, i wash my pans and stuff straight after ive used them (takes like 1 minute while your food is still hot), and whatever else is in there (this is easy because there is never much), and then wash my plate right after ive eaten.

i think it helps to live in a house where there arent many dishes and pans too. like, when you see houses where the dishes are piled sky high, you think, why do they have so many dishes? if they had half the amount of stuff, then that pile would be half as tall. workload cut in half for no effort!

i'm actually pretty lucky at the moment, the 2 girls i live with, its been totally fine, no weirdness, no atmosphere, no arguments, its pretty great actually!

Isn't it getting you kicked out?

i really like my current roomate. except when she hooks up with someone and is FUCKING LOUD. exagerated moaning (with thin walls and a roomate) peeves me even more than lezzing up for frat guys. i mean do people masturbate loud?

My current housemate is super cool, though. I really can't complain.

2) you have a very loud phone voice. from my room, with the door closed, i can hear every word you're saying. and you talk on the phone A LOT. which wouldn't bother me if you'd just keep it down.

3) living room = communal area. that means i get to be in there too sometimes. there ARE other places you can go.

This is why cell phones sometimes complicate things.

I dunno, it's getting kinda boring hearing the South African who lives below me slap his gf around yet again.

I dunno, it's getting kinda boring hearing the South African who lives below me slap his gf around yet again.

Jesus!

cant wait to get my own place

ive never lived alone

I'm not really built for living with people, I'm messy passive aggressive and I play music really loudly. I also drink too much and come home late and eat my cupboards out leaving a mess all over the kitchen and then wake up at noon. I spend hours cooking sometimes and it takes up the whole kitchen. Also, I don't like television and so rarely hang out in the sittingroom because this is always television centred whereas I just wanna drink beer and dance or read in my room most of the time.

I wish my housemates were more willing to adopt systems and schedules and such. Dishes, shopping, cooking, cleaning...when you expect five people to just be adults and voluntarily do equal amounts of each, well, that's just unrealistic. And it results in me becoming incredibly annoyed when I feel other people aren't doing their share and then they say something like "who left dishes in the sink?" or "have you thought about dinner yet?"

^I called the police, they came round. The guy got his marching orders, lest he get arrested. If he shows his face again he will be. He's smashed the front door in, but now normality has been restored.
To be continued,I suppose.

wow. i hope things wind up ok for the gf.

Do I email this y/n?

"If you're going to take my washing powder then you may want to ask an adult to show you how to use it. As demonstrated by the fact that your laundry smells of BO and the wrong compartment in the washing machine draw is full of unused washing powder, it's not the one you apparently think it is."

lol passive aggressive a bit? telling them off directly is slightly scarier but a lot more satisfying.

Don't send. You've spelled 'drawer' wrong and your housemate will derive pleasure from this.

housemate has gone on holiday and i'm going away for a month tomorrow, so i'm not going to have a chance to tell him in person. aaaaand, i'm about to move out so i have no problem with passive aggression. spelling fixed (thanks suzy!) and sent. boom.

p.s. this is a 28 year old who phoned me last october to say all the clocks in the house were an hour fast and what should he do about it?

LOL a few months ago there was a problem in my block with a door to door pawn guy who'd come all the way up from Southampton to ignore our massive NO HAWKERS signs, leafleted the entire block with a poor photocopy which was all 'Sell! Sell! Best Prices, CASH, Check Your Draws For Old Gold'.

Any time you want to cuss someone out in writing, it's always a good idea to check spelling and grammar. My dad's wife used to write these poison notes to cover situations that were my father's responsibility. She made the mistake of telling me once that her aunt used to correct her correspondence so whenever I got one of these illiterate screeds I was all over it with red pen and return to sender, because I knew how much it would piss her off.

this is a 28 year old who phoned me last october to say all the clocks in the house were an hour fast and what should he do about it?

ahhhhhaahahaha

should have told him to go to sleep for an hour to make up the difference...

ahhhhhaahahaha otm

My housemate left me a pass-agg note about.... i dunno, mice and ants and leaving donuts on the counter and rinsing out beer bottles (all of which I concede as valid points)... so I graded it "A+ Passive Aggressive" and left it where it was.

'Pon my return she had shredded her own note and was being mega friendly in a remorseful way.

or to go and change everyone else's clocks xp

Boy do I hate my housemates!!

Number one is an oblivious Japanese idiot who hasn't quite mastered the art of eating with his mouth closed. Number two is an eternal postgrad student who listens to fucking Ani DiFranco and has a hipster douche boyfriend with the shittest facial hair ever.

HOW DID I END UP IN THIS HELL??????

Dear Housemate 1 and Housemate 2,

Shag each other all you want, but please don't turn up the Steve Lamacq radio show REALLY LOUD to try and mask it. I'm trying to get some work done.

Cheers, etc.

Dear ILX,

Sorry for posting this, I sound mental.

Yours, etc.

Just hold up a sign saying "6.4" when they come out, and tell them the Romanian judge ran away.

Might have to knock on the door in a minute and ask what the name of that Half Man Half Biscuit song was he just played.

Gave her 30 days' notice I was moving out, wouldn't have been in such a hurry if she hadn't been a cunt about some things and forced the issue. That 30 days is up in less than a week, she has no one lined up, and I don't have my deposit back b/c there's no new tenant to get it from.

Therefore I have no money for my move.

I'm borrowing some out of necessity but a) it sucks, b) it's less than the full deposit so my options are limited, and c) FUCK THIS ANYWAY.

Why can't landlords, etc. understand that a security deposit is not just automatically their money to wantonly spend and not have on-hand when you're ready to move out?

Depending on where you live and the particulars of your situation, Laurel, a threat of legal action may be both advisable and wholly justified.

a security deposit is not just automatically their money to wantonly spend

You might want to check the tenant laws for your state - many states require security deposits to either be held in an escrow account or for the landlord to post a bond in lieu of escrow. There are generally laws about when the deposit has to be returned to you (in WA it's within 2 weeks of move-out) and under what circumstances it can be withheld/reduced.

Thank you, all, but unfort since my roommate is NOT leaving at the same time as me, my landlord doesn't enter into the picture. The flatmate who is staying is responsible for finding another tenant AND getting that person to pay ME my deposit.

She has done neither, is the problem.

Jaq: Technically it's NYC tenant law that LLs are supposed to deposit your deposit and give it back to you WITH INTEREST but I have never heard of anyone doing that EVER and I've never met a tenant who didn't think the idea of holding them to that was downright hilarious. Maybe at the super-high end of the market, that happens, where lawyers are involved. Not to those of us who live on actual Earth.

Dear Housemate 1 and Housemate 2,

Shag each other all you want, but please don't turn up the Steve Lamacq radio show REALLY LOUD to try and mask it. I'm trying to get some work done.

Cheers, etc.

My flatmate, who is also my younger brother, does this ALL THE TIME. It's really annoying because he'll have on good music and I'll be ready to go in and ask what is before I realise what's going on.

Actually it's better when he has the music on - a few nights ago he just told me "put your mp3 player on and listen to it for an hour", and it turned out that an hour was nowhere near enough

Pretty impressed at somebody keeping it up during the Steve Lamacq Show tbh

mostly my flatmates are fine but one of them.......continuously leaves loads and loads of long black hairs all over the shower. not just in the plughole, like just all around the porcelain. it really makes me want to puke or makes me not want a shower. hate the idea of saying it tho.

turned out that an hour was nowhere near enough

braggin by proxy 2010!

moving in with someone for the first time in 2.5 years this week. she seems pretty dope but we have to find a third person so it could all go pearshaped. I get a built-in wardrobe though.

moving into the family home (currently occupied by younger brother and, on a part-time basis, his young daughter) in september. not looking forward to it, not least because of noisy neighbours (am currently in a detached place with my girlfriend, who's going back to college).

I don't understand why it seems that everyone else finds it perfectly acceptable to keep your mouth wide the fuck open while eating. I mean, good lord, the sounds.

i was about to bitch about my roommate and celebrate that i only have 50 days left here, but in possibly the nicest gesture he's ever done he just helped me change a lightbulb in my room.

I am in a large house with 7 others, no horror stories as of yet, but it's been.... interesting

My bf just informed me that one of his housemates solves the problem of the DSL modem playing up and needing to be reset by...

...going to the mains, and flicking the mains power for the entire house off and then back on again.

What in the everloving stupid fuck.

aghhahgdjhjdk when people just leave piles of washing up in manky water IN THE SINK

i am very easy-going about leaving undone washing up on the side (within reason, like...2-3 days max maybe? oh let's not kid myself, i won't bloody notice) but PEOPLE NEED TO USE THE GODDAMN SINK FFS

I hate that. I leave dirty dishes on the counter and need the sink to be clean and empty to wash my hands and water the plants or whatever. My wife goes nuts if the counter's dirty though, so she piles everything in the sink.

and also must i reiterate this every week

it is pretty much the only domestic thing i get OCD about and i think i am 100% justified

when you are doing with the washing up sponge, don't leave it to fester in the sink. PICK IT UP AND RINSE IT AND SQUEEZE IT OUT AND LEAVE IT ON THE SIDE otherwise it'll just get completely disgusting within a week

xp i am on your side here! i need to fill up kettles and water bottles in the sink mostly. and also to do my OWN washing up because i am not washing up anyone else's shit.

fuck the counter tbh.

the sink in our bathroom is clogged, it takes about an hour for water to dissipate, and I think it's because my two roommates regularly dump their electric razor clippings + wash their hair in the sink

yesterday I had to brush my teeth in the kitchen because the bathroom sink was full of water that wouldn't go anywhere

*when you are done with the washing up sponge

Maybe we should move in together, lex. We'd get along real well over sink habits.

lex otm re: both sink and sponge. i've just discovered that i finally broke the housemate who leaves his dishes in the sink for days by using the most passive-aggressive technique available to me: doing his dishes. like relentlessly, silently, even if they were only there for ten minutes. gave it a couple weeks (of the entire house remarking on how nice the kitchen was) and then stopped, and lo and behold: it runs all by itself now. another confrontation elaborately avoided.

Landlord of the big, under-maintained and therefore cheap house where I live is selling up. Two of my housemates, a couple who have the lease, have asked me to move with them. I was really grateful for the offer, but they want to move to an apartment, not a house, and I said 'probably yes and thank you so much but let's talk about your criteria' - my #1 is enough space not to feel on top of one another, but that may not match theirs. If they have different priorities, they need to go with them and I need to find another place - I'm planning on trying to be done with studies and leaving Canada in less than 2 years; they'll be staying.

So, I asked them a couple of times to sit down and talk about it (including money issues re: the likely overlap in rent between old and new places) and they said let's do it after the coming weekend when your friends are visiting. While my friends were visiting they found a place and applied, and a few days later got accepted. I asked to see it, and was told I can see it 1 November. (They have the place from then, but don't have to move till mid-Dec). I said I'd prefer to see it earlier and was told that would be hassling the agent. Expressed my disappointment, and they scrambled to arrange a viewing for me next week.

They are lovely people but are acting oddly over this. It's so disappointing and makes me feel so insecure when people don't face up to saying the things they need to say and instead act defensive. I'd like to hear something like 'We didn't think it would all go this fast, and it would have been better if we'd talked first, and we're sorry about that, but we had to take the place fast. We'd still like you to live with us but totally understand if you turn out not to like it and want to live elsewhere'. For instance.