apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Try a roommate that buys and sells vintage clothing for a living. Piles and piles of filthy, dusty old clothing everywhere. Tub, shower and sink constantly filled with soaking rags, black dye water in every available pot or basin. I got out of there fast.

i am the slob, and my wife hates it. she regularly throws out my mountain of desing magazines and catalogs that i had been saving before we wed (5 years ago in in november). we just bought a house and i have 1/3 of the basement filled with with my crap. i just feel the minute that i get rid of something i will need it. help me. just playing!!! i love being a slob.

Yes my husband is a slob - and he did a decent job of hiding it from me for the time we were dating and then the six months we lived together before getting married! I swear he doesn't notice the trail of things he leaves behind him but he never puts anything away, throws anything away, etc ... and then gets angry when he can't find his things!

I just read on today's Unplggd about an online vehicle for divvying up the chore list ... Avoid the post-it-note at all costs! If you have to label your food, toiletries, or other sundries, it's time to talk.

ugh don't get me started. parents: don't raise your kids to grow up to be entitled, out-of-touch twentysomethings that have never cleaned up after themselves or felt the natural consequences of their bad behavior. fire the maid! no, seriously!

i have had my moments of being a bad roommate, but i don't think anyone ever had to hide their nice plates under their bed from me like i had to from the last guy.

it is nice to live with someone who cares about keeping things clean - very motivating to do so myself.

w0rd to livejournal...i'm joining that comm pronto!

and yeah, i live with my bro (who's never here, but somehow still manages to make a mess) and while he BUILT the bathroom, he's never friggin' CLEANED the bathroom. i guess all my tub scrubbing is a way of paying him back, eh? grrr.

my girlfriend, whom i live with, leaves her clothes all over the bedroom floor. every time she changes. and if she tries on a few outfits, all the rejects end up on the carpet... not back in the drawer or closet, and certainly not the hamper. she also leaves the closet door and dresser drawers OPEN... ALL the time. it drives me CRAZY. but i love her anyway.

i lived with a knuckle head for a couple of months who didn't know how to use a dishwasher or a washing machine, as in, she didn't know how to turn the dial and put in the clothes. Her maid had always done it and she was 26 years old. And when she wanted to save a sandwich, she didn't know you had to put it in the refrigerator, she put it on a saucer in the cabinet for a couple of days until the army of ants found the peanut butter and jelly. she was an idiot. and she watched E network all day. i kicked her out.

akostalas! right on!

I was married to a man who grew up with a live-in maid. I swear to god he never did understand that items did not magically find their way back to their rightful place after he was done using them. And thought I was just being mean when when I'd point out the disasters he left in his wake and ask him to clean them up. Then again, maybe I was being mean after a few years of trying (and failing) to convey this point.... ;)

A huge disparity in cleanliness is a really bad thing in *any* roommate situation.

I used to live with a guy who would never seem to do his dishes. He gave me the big room when we moved in (which was awesome of him) and in return he got his desk in the living room. That desk was covered in crap 24/7. In the 2 years I lived with him I can pretty much say that except for the first month there was a glass of his left over drinks growing MOLD in at least one room the entire time. That guy was a slob. The ridiculous thing is when I finally broke down and told him to clean he would do an outstanding job, he used to work as a maid (is that the right word for a guy too?) at a hotel. If only he could have done that every day.

housekeeper, maybe?

I used to live with a messy (note: not *dirty* - I think there is a big difference) roommate in college and just cleaned up after her. It didn't bother me that much, and she didn't mind me straightening her stuff. That was the only reason it worked for so long.

Sloppy-ness is on my list of "Dealbreakers" when it comes to dating. Along with a love of 80s music (it's only fun for about an hour, then I want to return to the current century), cats (deathly allergic), and any sort of desire to live outside of the city (why?).

I am far from perfect in my housekeeping, occasional clutter is a reality, but there is no excuse for filth (or dirty dishes for more than a day).

@HeatherAB, yeah that sounds right. Couldn't remember it for the life of me lol. Needless to say I lived in my bedroom when I lived with him. It was so embarassing bringing people over.

My roommate loves to let the dishes "soak" in the sink. I've come to learn that that's her way of saying "I don't want to rinse it and put it in the dishwasher," because really, that bowl you ate your cereal in, DOESN'T NEED TO SOAK!
But in 2 months I'll be roommate free, and I'm so excited!

My housemate is willing to clean up after himself...if I remind him, and then if I stand there keeping him focused while he cleans - and then I'm bored so I end up helping...and right now his boxes of personal stuff (we moved in May) are taking up a not-insignificant portion of the living room. It doesn't help that whenever his stuff gets in the way (frequently) I move it and then remember where I put it - so he has no motivation to change. (I am becoming my mother...) And he always leaves empty cereal boxes on the counter and never remembers to put them in the recycle bin...but his vegetable garden is doing fabulous.

He's a very dear friend, but he drives me nuts sometimes.

I started dating someone a couple years ago, and when it came to be my first time visiting his place, I was mortified. He had a cat, and I could smell the litter box before I came in, but then I noticed..... everything else.

At one point I asked him if he had some Comet, and he didn't know what I was referring to.

As time wore on, I got him to show a little self respect. He still tried hiding things from me, though, I came over another time and had to get a drinking glass, admiring that there were no dirty dished stacked up on the counter or in the sink, Then I opened the cupboard and found out where they all went.

We're still friends, and I have the empowered feeling of never wanting or feeling like I need to date again.

Yay!

closertotheocean, are you my boyfriend?
I do this all the time but I'm REALLY trying hard to mend my ways. It doesn't help that every time I leave a closet door open a cat immediatly jumps in and refuses to leave.

My old roommates were two guys. Two very dirty guys. I kept my room spotless, my cabinets in the kitchen were organized, and I always cleaned up after myself. I'm not a neat person by nature, I just knew I had to share a space, so I did my part to make it work out.

They on the other hand would shave and leave hair trimming all over the sink, and my TOOTHBRUSH. They would smoke in doors knowing we agreed for them not to, then leave ashes all over the floor and furniture. Beer cans and video games were everywhere, and they never, EVER in the 3 months I lived there washed dishes. They sat in the sink the entire time, and when they ran out of plates, they just started eating out.

I couldn't deal with it anymore, and I guess they assumed since I was female I would clean up after them. Now I live with an OCD boyfriend, where I feel like the slob.

I had a roommate in college who stunned me with her incredible immune system. She could eat week-old pizza she hit under her bed, and not die! And she kept her toothbrush, you know, wherever, and she didn't die! And I repeatedly hit her with things, and she didn't die!

When she finally moved out, we found what we think was once cheese coagulated in the corner behind her bed.

I live alone now. And if I ever get married, he'd better have his own house, and stay there except for conjugal visits.

I am a reformed slob. All it took was living with a guy who was worse than me! Seriously, when I live with someone, I am much more conscientious. But my ex-boyfriend was beyond the pale. If he was getting some soda and spilled on the floor, he just left it. If I left the ironing board out in the morning (yes... that was my problem), I would come home to find food spilled all over it where he had used it for prep. He would let laundry go forever (turning his underwear inside out for a few extra wearings). Then he brought home a St Bernard puppy... which lived indoors. When I left, I vowed I would never be that bad again. And for the most part, I've stuck to it. My primary rule is that it should never take me more than 30 minutes to tidy my apt good enough to have guests over.

My husband home-brews beer in our tiny galley kitchen, and then doesn't completely clean it up for over a week. So I've got huge pots, mash tons, lengths of clear plastic tubing, big glass car boys, and other brewing paraphernalia claiming our little counter space and spilling over to the floor. To top it off, he hasn't mopped the floor yet and there are sticky spots of beer on the floor. I'm trying not to clean it, as a matter of principle, but I'll probably give in before he get time to do it.

In my first apartment ever my junior year of college, I lived with a very dirty and messy (I agree that there's a difference) friend. This girl had obviously never cleaned a day in her life. She left papers and dishes all over the living room to the point where I couldn't use it and she had never heard of disinfecting anything or doing any sort of cooking that didn't involve a microwave. The best part was when she decided to heat some soup and grabbed my Pampered Chef plastic soup heater, which was, in her defense (kind of), shaped like a pan. She then proceeded to put my plastic soup heater on the stove, burning the shape of the spiral burner into the bottom of it. She showed it to me when I came home and said, "I'm sorry! I didn't realize I couldn't put this on the stove!" Even though it was obviously plastic.

I had an ex-boyfriend who had left a lasagna sitting on the counter on a Thursday night, after I asked him repeatedly to put it away. Out of protest, I refused to do this for him, thinking that it would teach him a lesson. By sunday afternoon I had made up my mind to throw the damned thing out...only to find him and his friends, to my horror, scarfing it down! Gross!!!

Oh one more thing I forgot to mention....this same ex-boyfriend, when he was in college, created the batchelor food museum, where he and his buddies smeared their favorite foods on the wall. I was lucky (or unlucky) to catch them when they created this mess, and believe it or not, it was still there 6 months later.

2. Discuss ground rules and expectations when you move in, or, preferably, before you move in.

That doesn't usually make a difference if you end up with a bad roommate [that you didn't know was bad to begin with!].

My husbands ex roommate used to leave milk jugs [with varying amounts of milk in them] out around the apartment until they spoiled. He also left food in pans after he was done eating what he wanted. For weeks. Eventually they had multitudes of creepy crawly "houseguests" and my now husband spent more time at my place then at his...

omg. so many horror stories. I am counting down the days till I can finally move into my own place w/ out roommies. been there w/ the messy and dirty. let me tell you there is nothing like grabbing the fridge door handle and finding it sticky, or scrubbing dried peanut butter off of the counter. this same person slept w/ sand, funyun crumbs and a smelly dirty dog in her bed. my current roommie is not dirty but she's not clean either. her damn cat leaves hair and litter all over, that I end up cleaning every wknd. and when she finally gets to cleaning after me getting on her case for a while, she makes a whole production of it. moaning and groaning as she cleans. god I gotta live on my own.............

"Now I live with an OCD boyfriend, where I feel like the slob."

Wow. I hope he doesn't mind you referring to him as his mental disorder first and your boyfriend second.

ok, sorry, i just had to add one more thing i thought of. once, i saw my old roomie in the kitchen and mentioned that he had left a knife with peanut butter all over it sitting on the kitchen table for days. no joke, he said with a chuckle:

"oh, it's almond butter."

for such a complete slob, he was insanely stuck up. i don't even think he picked it up for another few days.

My housemate's slobness does motivate me to clean more, because I want to maintain moral superiority. When I live alone, I am absolutely horrible, especially if I don't have a dishwasher. (If you leave Pottery Barn chopsticks in the sink with the rest of the dishes for over a week, the paint comes off...)

The grossest roommate I had... thinking about it just gives me the willies. A week after he moved in he decided to leave his job. He would hide in his room all day, with the heat cranked and the window opened. When I started cleaning he would hide or run away. He wanted me to buy his groceries so that he could just re-reimburse me (I only had 3 jobs, after all) He did not clean the dishes, or anything else. Once he told me that I would have to tell him to do these things as he just never thought of it (ie, be my mom). He would break dishes and never tell me, just leave the glass on the floor so I could sweep it up. But the worst WORST thing is we came home one day to find him sitting in front of the computer on the computer chair wearing only a towel... he said he was just searching but the last thing he had searched for and downloaded was porn!! I had to explain to him how disgusting, unethical, and the potential lawsuits that could come from it, who cleaned the keyboard? ME! cause he was so embarrassed he had to go hide again

A friend of mine had to leave the peace corps and feeling sorry for her my roommate and I bent over backwards to let her move in with us.

She cooked all the time and dirtied every single dish and would leave the pile literally two weeks, knowing we had to wash a dish to use everytime we wanted to eat anything. She left McDonalds bags in the livingroom corner until the contents melted. Once I was cleaning the kitchen because there were fruit flies everywhere. She came in and asked if the infestation was because she left rotten bananas on the fridge. I said no, and it's not the pizza that's been sitting in the oven for over a week. It's this pot on the stove. She replied, "oh yeah. I burned it last week when I was making it so I put a lid on it and left it."

We had a chore rotation and she refused to help. (She did claim to have cleaned the bathroom once the day after I broke down and did it for her because it was nasty). She would trap bugs in my tupperware for her students. She wanted to do the same with a dead mouse because she didn't want to touch it.

I did break down and start leaving post-it notes because I couldn't stand to talk to her anymore. When I finally told her I didn't think we were compatible as roommates and I was afraid our friendship would be ruined she replied that she was okay if we never talked as long as she could stay in the apartment because she loved it and planned to live there forever.

My other roommate and I gave our notice shortly after. She still wonders why we're no longer friends.

kimdog -- "He would let laundry go forever (turning his underwear inside out for a few extra wearings)." This cracked me up. I would say that this is my oldest son, but he wouldn't turn the underwear inside out. He would just wear them for days (sometimes putting back on after showering) until I nagged them off him. Now he's in his own apt and brings his clothes to me to wash EVERY OTHER DAY. ...sigh...a mother's love...unconditional.

Thankfully I don't have any roomies as I live alone, however, I CAN at times be my own worst enemy for I don't have a dishwasher so have to wash my things by hand and I generally do, but it may be every other day, or in some cases, until I completely run out of bowls or something similar and on occasion have to wash one before breakfast and then get to the rest afterwards, or that evening when I get home from work. Most of the time, it's never that bad.

I occasionally leave something where I dropped it but will eventually tire of it being there and put it away and right now my place needs to have the bathroom walls and the kitchen walls scrubbed good, floors need vacuuming/mopping, carpet vacummed and the entire place dusted and picked up. It's the realities of living alone in that some things end up sliding from time to time however, I never let it get so out of hand that I'm having to take all day just to get it tidy again.

And I should add that I have in the past done a complete top to bottom scrub down of both the bathroom and kitchen twice yearly that takes a good chunk of the day while I cleaned after cooking daily, mopped the floor most weeks, things like that and I do clean the sink, tub and it's surround and toilet often weekly along with the bathroom floor too but the twice yearly cleaning is when I pull out the stove, the fridge and really get it all.

However, I've been kind of lax in all areas, especially the full scrub down although did do a fairly good scrub down of the kitchen a few months back.

This is so timely - I was just grumbling this morning about what a pit our apartment has become lately. After living with my boyfriend for 3 years, I've gotten used to looking past this gigantic short-coming of his of not being cleaner. But, there are days when all of a sudden I start noticing just how awful it's gotten. This morning... the cooler with fruit and yogurt from making smoothies with friends on Wed is still sitting in the living room (yes, with the yogurt still in it)... ugh. I swear, he is utterly incapable of seeing anything that's below about waist-level, because once it hits the floor, he doesn't even notice it. Thanks for all the other comments - I'm so glad I'm not the only one! :)

Part of the reason I just broke up with a boyfriend is because he acted like when he would stay over my place it was like being in a hotel! Leaving wet towels on my sofa, dishes in the sink with food still on them, his clothes blocking areas beacause it's on the floor and eww, his snore band aid looking things all over! Ugh! I got tired of telling him to pick up after himself plus he was snooping through everything that's why I dumped his sorry butt.

Now I really feel sick.

I have to confess that I'm prone to leave things lying around in the most improbable places... that is until I got a puppy. There's nothing like a perpetual eating-mouthing-tearing machine with a reach of 24" to keep dishes off the coffee table, papers in the file, and shoes in the closet!

So don't toss your sloppy roommate, get an untrained dog!

:)

I've got a lot of stories, but the best is when I moved in to an apartment and asked about the chore rotation. Turned out they were pretty against cleaning. The "alpha" of the group said "if there is something you want clean, you'll clean it." So basically it was a battle of who could hold out the longest!

On the other hand, I've had some great roommates, and don't want to blanketly trash roommate living!

One word: ex-husband

My S/O sets records for filth & sloth. It's unbelievable. What angers me is that I had plenty of warning, but believed him when he said he'd do better in a different environment. Yeah, right.

The single best thing you can do when selecting a roommate is look carefully at how they live their life. This is often the single biggest factor in how big a slob they will be. My husband was relatively tidy when he was a part-time househusband. Now that he works full-time and I'm a (freelance working) housewife, he has developed a lot of sloppy habits like leaving empty or nearly empty milk cartons around, dirty dishes on his bedside from late night snacking, and tossing trash on the floor (missing the can) and not picking it up later.

He isn't doing this because I'm doing the cleaning now. He's doing it because he's working a 48 hour week and is out of the apartment for about 55 hours between commuting and going to a fitness club. When he's home, he doesn't have the mental energy to attend to much of anything. He doesn't notice what he's doing and apologizes and takes care of things if I point it out (though generally, I just clean up after him as he works so hard and I want him to relax).

If you're with someone who works a lot or who has a lot of instability in their lives, you're likely to see worse behavior than with someone who is stable and works an average amount of time. It also, frankly, helps to be with someone of the same gender.