house/flat sharing - C/D

Living with friends who have personality problems or are demanding and need to have everything just fucking so is DUD. I lived with a reasonably good friend once, who turned out to be an anal-retentive freak who thought he was secretly my father and lectured me about shit like leaving my bowls in the sink. The final straw was when he forbade me to smoke any and all substances in the apartment and I ended up moving out in the middle of the semester.

We're not friends anymore. Caveat renter.

Spencer is probably the most well-adjusted ILX0R.

The problem about dishwashing arguments is that the roots of them are so deeply entangled in the familial histories and barely cognizant first-thoughts of peoples' relationships with parents/authority -- i.e. the very basis of selfhood -- that it is simply impossible to have a rational conversation about it unless that person has, in fact, grown up.

wow! that's a thought! someone ought to write a book on this concept :-) "Suds n Squabbles" "Bubbles and Troubles"

A friend of a friend (also sort of a friend) is moving from London to Paris, and so it was suggested that I enquire about that. She seemed a little hesitant about recommending me to her flatmate, because she knew that a year ago the vacancy was definitely for a female flatmate, but said she'd mention it, and if I was over next week for other flat/job interviews, I could stay with her and meet the flatmate at the same time. She also described the lady as "odd as the day is long". I rang back yesterday, and she'd talked with her flatmate, who has six or seven people in to look at it, but was still hemming and hawing.

"To tell you the truth, Andrew, she's not so much looking for a flatmate as a friend, if you get me."
"Ahh."
"It might work out for you, she wasn't really keen on male flatamtes, but she said she might try one out, to help her with problems she has relating to men in general."
"Okay, I have to go now, there's a red flashing light just appeared in my flat."

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/tcom/faculty/ha/tcom103fall2004/gp8/Images/DScast.jpg

I like my housemates. They are nice. One of them is a bit mental but it hasn't impacted adversely on my life as yet so I can deal with it.

a) someone who's never lived with anyone else

or

b) Lying.

I am looking forward to just living with S.O. now.

We even spell it huis in Belgium.

If only Le Coq would do house-sharing, he could come live with us ANYTIME.

the sink full of water and filthy greasy shit thing enrages me beyond belief, but luckily none of my housemates do it. neither did the last lot, or the lot before that. also not cleaning the shower/bath after you winds me up no end - jesus fuck, how much effort does it take to make sure everyone else isn't paddling around in your soap scum and pubes? again, none of our lot do this...

i LOVE coming home and there being a few people still up just pottering around or whatever, so you get a chat and a nightcap to wind down before bed. i also LOVE coming home and finding nobody else is home at all cos i get a whole house to play with. the only shitty thing is if whenever you come home the living room tv is on (and not on because anyone really wanted to watch anything, just cos someone couldn't be fucked to do anything else and their default setting is slumped in front of the tv dribbling) and then that's it for the whole night, the living room becomes tv room, no matter what anyone else wants to do. but i'm out most of the time and we're 3 anti-tvallthetime and 2 pro-tvallthetime and our tv is titchy, so it's not as bad as it could be and given how great everything else is, it's dealable with. so long as it doesn't get any worse.

WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE SO MANY DISHES?

i see houses with sinks piled high with dishes, and there are only 3 people living there. people have like 20 forks! 20! since when do 20 people eat at once in your house? in my last place there were over 20 pans! why? get rid of it, and only have what you need and then it is impossible for there ever to be loads of washing up.

ie, instead of arguing about when/who does the work, make there be less work!

THIS IS SO TRUE! The first thing we did when we moved into our new place is put 80% of the current cutlery/crockery stock somewhere Very Far Away From The Kitchen so we wouldn't be tempted to dig into it. It's laziness, pure and simple. But I am immensely lazy when it comes to housework, so it's a major plus that We've Got A Dishwasher...

that depends what you wanna watch, chuck. if it's friends/frasier/the oc/hollyoaks/two pints of lager/charmed/etc then NO, FUCK OFF! if it's dr who/6 feet under/buffy/wife swap (uk only)/documentaries about a) weird shit that lives under the sea or b) space or c) monkeys then COME ROUND AND PUT YOUR FEET UP, I'LL GET A BREW ON.

I have lived with friends who, after I left one bowl on the table for a day, freaked the fuck out and left a rude note on the table admonishing me (I'm messy. Deal with it).

I have then lived with one of my closest mates who, on me moving in with him, burned cig holes in various fabrics and carpet, left stinky clothes all over the house, invited his mates into MY BEDROOM while I was away to watch DVDs on my PC, spilled coffee over my desk and denied it, didnt feed my cat (again while I was away), and dragged various girls home every week to the point I had no idea who if anyone he was actually "going out" with. We had a NASTY falling out over all that, to do with me "dropping him in it" by mentioning one girl and another hearing about it, when I had no idea. Long story.

Oh. and then there's the "girl who moves in, re-arranges your entire kitchen within 3 days without asking, and then steals yr boyfriend and moves out" deal, but lets not go there.

I MUCH prefer living with my partner. We are both slobs, but we KNOW it and we LOVE each other.

Oh. and then there's the "girl who moves in, re-arranges your entire kitchen within 3 days without asking, and then steals yr boyfriend and moves out" deal, but lets not go there.

W.T.F.

i love that these two events are presented as being of equal importance!

xpost sorry to bang on...

xpost: dave you should have told her straight out! or would that be coming on a bit strong?

eh? you don't put everything in the sink at once! that is washing up mentalism. pile like with like on one side of the sink, rinsing anything that's had time to dry and looks like it might be difficult, then start with glasses, then cutlery (sticking it in the pint glasses obv) then mugs and cups, then continue in order of least dirty to most dirty, again piling like with like on other side of sink. once you've finished put some clean water in the sink, rinse the lot, arrange to satisfactory effect in drying thing/plate rack/around kitchen.

christ, i am an anal washer-upper.

xpost - i have never ever broken a pint glass, or anything else, by doing this.

NRQ, it may just work...

Do you still have this knife and can I use it to slay sock-beasts?

There is only one rule in my house: no post-it notes. If you got a problem, talk about it. Usually flatmates aare too timorous to bitch.

Very best thing to do is all have cleaning spazzes at diffrent points in the cycle and different specialities. I am a master toilet and bathroom cleaner which excuses a slightly lighter washing up load. But there is nothing more passive aggressive than someone doing your washing up when you have guests around, especially if you have made a godawful mess in the process...

I think I'd better start.

Also: rinsing plates, why? (see multple ILE threads)

dude we're not talking litres and litres of water here. we're talking a quick go-round of the bottom of the bath/shower to swirl any debris towards the plughole, then you clean the plughole. it's simple. it's courtesy. it's not being a selfish twat. really, anyone who thinks it's fine to leave their pubes (and once it's no longer attached to you, ALL hair in the shower becomes pubes - how does this happen??) and scum for the next person to tread in can fuck right off.

and rinsing plates, yeah, what johnny said, plus do you really want them drying in the water that's all full of the muck you've just washed off them all? what's the point? and you wanna get the soap off too if you use eg f4iry or p3rsil or other evil toxic washing up liquid, as most ppl do. (tho people who rinse by keeping the tap running the whole time are wrong too, cos of the reasons chew mentions wrt showers...)

Anyway, nothing to do with flat-sharing. In a way I have loads more problems living with just one person than when I lived with five, but at the same time I could never live with anyone who wasn't my husband now. Not least because walking around naked is actively encouraged.

Living alone has made me tremendously neater.

A vaccuum cleaner in the wrong hands etc.

if it's not the answer is 3

and pee in a can

Hi,
Just saw your ad on CL. I'm very interested in the room. I'm a swm 44 yrs old 6' 195 lbs long brown haired amateur/beginner guitarist, {job description deleted}, annual salary ${large salary deleted}, work in {northern california city deleted}. I don't smoke, I like red wine, a cold beer, music, nature, animals. I'm very handy around the house(previous homeowner) with tools. I'm very open to partial trade. We should meet to find out if there's something I have or can do that you would like to trade for. Off the top of my head, the first thing that comes to mind is this: I'm a highly skilled lover. It's one of my passions.
I love to pleasure a woman orally. I can easily go for an hour or until you become exhausted from the intense orgasms you will experience.
I currently live in a share rental house in {city and other boring details edited out...}

so in a flat with three people including me, there's been a lot of conflict lately about cleaning. mainly that me plus one flatmate, k, are unhappy about other flatmate, F's, efforts in cleaning and general habits.

after a few months of bringing up the issue in emails ("you need to clean more") but no face to face we all had a flat meeting last month. at this meeting f was ultra nice and just denied everything, eg "i do a regular cleanup of the entire flat", "i always empty the bin" etc.

basically the two of us are pretty sure this isn't true but it's an extremely hard tactic to deal with as you then have to accuse flatmate of lying. anyway in the four weeks since last meeting she hasn't cleaned the place, for certain, and me and k have both done it once each.

how do you deal? is it okay at this point to just call bullshit? to me it seems clearest that she's lying because she is the only one not annoyed about any of the cleaning situations...

k wants to get a cleaner, which i am cool with, but i don't want to let this slide either, nor do i want to force a cleaner to have to pick up f's hair off every floor and sink in the house etc...

reads v like a problem page letter, still, help me aunt ilx!

call bullshit + create a whiteboard with specific weekly tasks, each of you take a marker or magnet color, "do or do not, there is no try"

Had a roommate who did the same thing, in almost the same situation: good roommate (Roommate B) and I were pissed at Roommate C for never cleaning shit, anytime C was confronted he said he always cleaned, etc. It's hard to say whether he was lying or whether he really was so unobservant. C smoked so much weed on a daily basis that the latter was probably the case.

Anyway, he moved away and we got better roommates THE END.

this is the thing, i actually think she might think she does clean, or not realise when things are her. there has been a gigantic black hair of hers in the (kitchen) sink for three days, ugh.

which i normally would remove but genuinely curious as to when she might notice this

i went in on the kitchen the other day cuz i couldn't take the dirt any more, even though i'd made none of the mess*, and within 48 hours it was filthy again, and i believe this is still the case ;_;

also how the hell do you make massive pools of water appear beneath the salad trays in the fridge and why would you not deal with it immediately?

it's not egregious yet i guess though.

*i am naturally quite lazy so my strategy for keeping things clean is to completely avoid doing anything that makes a mess in the first place

PET FUCKING PEEVE though:

leaving the washing up cloths & scrubbers to fucking marinade in the sink without even being wrung out

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY would anyone do this why, it makes them so grim and gross

xps Yeah. It's tough. Roommate C left dishes so often that I eventually refused to stop doing them and would leave them neatly stacked on the counter by the sink. He finally got the hint and was like "you're being passive aggressive, it's, like pretty childish. *" HOW ABOUT YOU DO YOUR FUCKING DISHES YOU FUCKING IDIOT???

* (you have to imagine this being said in a voice that sounds like someone constantly yawning)

he moved out to go to Israel for his "birthrite" (he was not a follower of Judaism — he ate fucking bacon like three times a day)