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Housemate doesn't clean up after himself. Help.

dunkadunc — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:58:24 -0800

My housemate doesn't clean up, like ever. How can I do to make things work, or at least more bearable? I've been sharing an apartment since the beginning of September with an old acquaintance, and everything's been going well enough. EXCEPT:
My housemate doesn't help out with the cleaning. Every day I come home to even more mess, and it's starting to really bug me.

Some background here: My housemate and I are both 23, male, and college seniors. We went to high school together but lost touch after graduation. I was looking for a housemate for an apartment I found this August, and a mutual friend said Housemate (whose mom died last year) was looking for a place as well. We signed a lease, moved in and started school, so far so good.
The first hint I got that Housemate wasn't very good at cleaning was about a week in when he asked me what "rinsing" dishes meant. Since then, he's remained pleasant, but the amount of housework he's done has gone from little to almost none.

The main problems:
-His dishes stay dirty in the sink either until I wash them or there are no more clean ones, whereupon he washes a dirty one, uses it, and puts it back in the sink. The same thing goes for pots and pans. I can count the number of times he's washed all the dishes in the sink on one hand, and even then they've come out covered in brown curry grease and needed to be washed again.

-When asked to wash his dirty pots and pans that were filling up the sink, Housemate was surprised that I would want them to be cleaned even if I wasn't immediately going to use them. Housemate said that he would wash them before he needed them again "only as a favor". He cooks about four gallons of curry every two weeks.

-Although he was willing to split the cost of a $50 vacuum cleaner, the only time he's picked up a broom was when he broke a glass. He's been leaving brown greasy globs of curry on all the kitchen surfaces and covers the floor in oil when he cooks. All these problems with cleaning up have carried over to the bathroom as well.

Apart from all this, he's been a decent housemate, asking if I want to watch cartoons or split a pizza or whatnot, or coming out to parties with me.
I've talked to him about washing dishes and cleaning up around the apartment, and he's always said "sure"- the problem is it doesn't end up happening. He tends to drink beers and watch cartoons when he's done with schoolwork and doesn't have anything to do, so it seems like a combination of procrastination and just not knowing how to run a household: his mom used to do all the housekeeping.

What can I do to encourage him to do his share of housework, or failing that, what can I do to minimize the amount of mess I have to deal with? Ideally, we would clean up after ourselves, and if someone else missed something then the other would clean it, no problem.
I don't want to be that passive-aggressive guy, but something's got to change, since I'd like to be able to have guests over without feeling embarrassed. I'd be tempted to only clean up after myself, but I'm afraid the apartment would be taken over by maggots.

Metafilter:Guidelines :: Apartment:???

yaymukund — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:40:08 -0800

What are some things you wish you knew (or were glad you knew) before you moved into your first apartment with roommates? I'm looking for methods of splitting up chores, cooking, finances, resolving disputes, and dealing with common problems.

Is he a sociopath?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:03:26 -0800

I think my roommate has dissocial personality disorder...what can me and my roommates do to minimize the implications this has on us? I'm not really qualified in any way to make this diagnosis other than psych 101 and a passion for neuroscience, but after going through the list of symptoms on Wikipedia (yeah, great diagnosis tool), I'm convinced my roommate has dissocial personality disorder. I lived with him last year and he would constantly go into my room and take my things. Once, the bathroom flooded and he used all of my towels to clean it up. At the beginning of this year, he started stealing the food of me and my other roommates. I confronted him about it and he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about, and that perhaps one of his friends was doing it. I set up my webcam and managed to get photos of him coming into my room and looking through my food. I confronted him about this and he still didn't come clean, saying he was on medications that made him afraid to go outside, so he couldn't go food shopping. I didn't understand why he didn't just explain this to me and ask if he could have some of my food, but the whole story is probably a lie, since some of our mutual friends see him out and about all the time.
Anyways, he offered to compensate for the lost food items, which, after a lot of hassling and reminding, he finally did. Now, about a month later, my other roommates have been noticing food missing again. We found it in his room, and when confronted, he denied it until I pointed out the evidence on his desk. He then acted like that was no big deal, and when confronted about the other missing food item, he said he had bought it himself, when the place he mentioned doesn't sell it.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe he's just an asshole. I live in college housing, but they can't really do anything about it. Is there anything my roommates and I can do about this?
Oh, and according to my diagnosis, he fits 5 of the 7 ICD-10 criteria listed on Wikipedia.

My Roommate's Junk Smells

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:27:55 -0800

My roommate smells, and it's not just typical BO. Help! I live in a typical (read: small) college dorm room with one other person.

In the past few weeks, I've noticed that my roommate has developed an odor. It's not bad breath, or typical BO. It smells distinctly... cheesy. In a really nasty "this isn't a good smell" kind of way. Specifically, I've noticed the smell when he removes his jeans as he is going to bed. My desk is very close to his bed, and after repeated instances of this, I can say with some assuredness that the smell is eminating from his pelvic area. It's very noticeable, and it can be pretty hard at times not to comment on the sudden foul odor that has started assaulting my nostrils immediately following the removal of his jeans.

What finally drove me to make the AskMe question I've been putting off about this is that I came back to the room after going to lunch, opened the door, and hit a wall of the odor. I discovered my roommate taking a nap in his bed, the air absolutely saturated with the repugnant smell in question. I opened my window and door to get air moving, went out into the hall, and found the smell was strong enough to seep into the hall and smell just as bad. I borrowed air freshener from the people in the next room, and even THEY noticed the smell coming from the hallway! That just isn't right!

He used to be pretty sexually active, with many a partner, due mostly to the lowered inhibitions/standards caused by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol (I'm not juding, really, he's admitted this to be the case multiple times). But I've noticed he has been completely abstinent lately (to my knowledge), and it coincides rather neatly with the debut of his new fragrance.

I have two main questions. First, what is up with my roommate's junk? Why does it smell the way it does? Answers from personal experience, educated guesses/conjecture from "I am not a doctor," "I'm a doctor but not YOUR (ROOMMATE'S) doctor," and the like are all welcome.

Second, what can I do about this situation? Should I put up with it since the end of the year is quickly approaching? Maybe a buy a ton of febreeze? Should I bring it up? If so, how?

I can be reached at anonymousmefi@gmail.com if you have any questions. If I have followups or new information I'll try and get in touch with one of the mods to have them post it in the thread.

Thanks for any and all help you can offer.

We've Been Revealed

SansPoint — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:47:09 -0800

Is my college being negligent about the safety of my housemate and myself? Recently, I filed a report with university police about my housemate who has made violent threats on another housemate and me. The school is holding a disciplinary hearing on Thursday about him, and has called the other housemate and I to testify. They notified the housemate who made the threats as well, informing him that we would be testifying against him.

Because of this, when I came home, I spent much of the night with my bedroom door barricaded, in fear for my own safety, and stayed awake much of the night. He did not come home until six AM, though I was worried (with cause) as to what he would do. Has the school endangered my housemate and myself by revealing our identities?

Roommate won't stop coughing, I can't sleep.

theiconoclast31 — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:46:11 -0800

Roommate keeps coughing. I can't sleep. I don't want to be a jerkface. What do I do? I live in a triple, we're all freshman at a university. My roomie (1) keeps coughing loudly, and it's driving me crazy. Sometimes, it's late and I can't sleep because of his coughing, and other times, it wakes me up hours before I need to go to class. I live in a triple, my other roomie (2) doesn't seem to care. He sleeps like a log, sometimes while listening to his iPod.

At the beginning of the year, we signed a housing agreement contract that listed any "rules" we would have to follow. I laughed it off, didn't write much, never knew that cough sleep would be an issue.

My logic is this: We can only sleep in one place (the room), but he can study/browse facebook in the library or the computer lab, at least when it's 12AM-9AM, and I'm trying to sleep. Do I approach roomie (1) alone? Do I gather a roomie meeting with both of them? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?