apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

ha... hahahaah... oh boy, so far the apartment we've been in for a whole week has been better on noise control vs. ALL of the other ones. We finally hit the jackpot!

Thankfully the young guy that lives above me has sex that last about a minute, but sadly for his girlfriend I guess.

we had to post a sign in our kitchen window once. "if you can read this sign, then we can see you naked!" it was for our new neighbor who never bothered to hang a curtain or blinds in the bathroom. naked people and eggs don't mix. thankfully, it worked.

How exactly can you ask someone to stop "hacking". I don't think a hacking cough is a choice where you can just stop. Geeze, someone complaining about a cough would put you on my blacklist for sure. Give me a break.

Ah ! I used to live in a place where you could hear everyone in the building. We were on ground floor and I swear someone would sneeze on the 3rd floor on the opposite side of the building and we could hear it. It turned out to be a funny thing when everyone started yelling : "BLESS YOU!" everytime we'd hear someone sneeze.

We also had a couple upstairds that would have sex in every room, we could follow their progression from the kitchen in the back to the bedroom in the front ... At some point we decided to get our revenge, rented a crazy porn movie and played it very loud.

Our neighbors were cool people though, no one ever complained about any of the other neighbors. Everyone was very respectful but sometimes things heat up and you just can't control it hehe.

haha Lori.

Had a neighbor upstairs who had noisy sex...I found his creepy humming of the Waltons theme in the shower worse though.

For the most part, I just deal unless the voluntary loudness is keeping me up. Oddly, I never hear the people I share walls with, just the ones above me. I recently traded the Elephant Man (seriously, my pictures all hung crooked when he lived there) for people who play music slightly louder than I like at all hours. Since it only ever happens in 15 minute bursts, I haven't gone up to talk to them about it, but I was thinking of going up to introduce myself with cookies sometime soon anyway.

Ha ha... I have to confess... I am the loud sex person in my apartment building... but hey I say lucky me and you can't help thin walls....

My upstairs neighbor banged on the floor and cursed to let me know that she was not amused by my hacking away one evening. I had a terrible case of bronchitis for several weeks, but apparently it never occured to her that I could actually be sick and not doing this to annoy her. I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous to get mad at someone who is sick and cannot help coughing. The next morning I awoke to find a bag of Hall mentholyptis drops outside my door. Not sure if it was a kind gesture or a message for me to take the drops ans shut up....knowing her...probably the latter.

apartment living: you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

i think surviving apartment noises comes down to just keeping things in perspective. it's not fun for you, but it's not fun for anyone else. sometimes, they're the ones who make the noises, and sometimes, it's you. no one here is a saint. i try to be mindful, but i know i contribute my share of noise. i think all you can really do is absorb it and laugh about it later.

noise-canceling headphones are quite helpful, though.

perhaps i'm too optimistic or naive, but i think having windows open could be helpful. my bathroom and bedroom windows hit a courtyard that echoes, and i know that if i were in trouble and needed help, i could just yell, and someone would hear me.

i draw the line at neighbors who complain about everything, though. if your upstairs neighbor, say, trips on a shoe, falls flat on their face, and starts crying from pain, that's probably not a good time for you to take your broomstick and bang on your ceiling, yelling at them to shut up.

I was sandwiched in the middle of a 3-unit bungalow with paper-thin walls, but luckily for me, I had good friends on both sides of me! I'd wake up in the morning and knock on my neighbor's wall...

"neighbor, coffee?!", I'd holler.
"I'll make coffee, you make waffles!", he'd shout back.

it was an ideal living situation and we ended up making most of our meals together...he'd grill, I'd make the veggies, etc. we developed a knocking system, or sometimes he'd wake me up with his morning music. we had movie nights, my dog would run between our front doors, he let me share his internet and his garage. I kinda miss it.

I understand the hacking when you have a 50 year old smoker for a neighbour, who sounds like he's coughing up a hairball every time. You can just hear the slurp of the nicotine-stained phlegm during his thrice daily extended hacking fits.

That being said, the domestic violence family i live next to would have to be the worst noise I've had to deal with.

I'm really annoyed by people who vacuum at 11:30 at night.

I live in a house and can STILL hear my neighbors! we live in a little valley where noises really travel PLUS we have some real shouters - - both when they're mad and "otherwise". :)

loud sex people drove us out of our last apartment. they were just a-holes about it, this guy was a freaking stallion and he had a different girl up there every night of the week, and only had sex between the hours of 3 and 5 am. we eventually had to move our bed to the living room :( We didn't last too long after that, only a few weeks.

I say it goes both ways- you do know what you're getting into when you rent an apartment. BUT that also means making some compromises for your neighbors too!

i think i qualify as a noisy sex neighbor =\ but it's hot and we have to leave the windows open!... BUT we live in a townhome style complex, where every unit is all 3 floors, so you only have neighbors on the sides of you... which cuts down ALOT from what you hear (a good thing to look for in a new place!)... we even live in a pup friendly complex and we don't hear them.

i only used to ever hear the people below and above me when i was typical style apartments

i can't say the same for the alley where most windows face into where everything echos and people think it's smart to walk their dogs down, causing the dogs at the home across the way to freak out at all hours

im stuck between cursing at the dogs across the way and telling the people walking their dogs to walk their dogs on our beautiful palm tree lined streets rather than a creepy alley with broken glass... i'll use the glass part as to seem concerned and not annoyed ;-)

UGH!... needed to vent- thank you!

I'd like to live near all of you.

I bought a condo almost 8 years ago and soon after got a dog who rarely barks. I do, however, take my dog out for walks, the last one being between 11 pm and midnight. That's when the neighbor on the first floor started complaining that she could hear the door shut and actually gave me a lesson on how to hold the door (which closes with a pneumatic device) so that it shuts silently.

I pretty much told her what she could do with her lessons. But I've had it with city living. I'm putting my place up for sale and looking for a house in the country. My goal: More land, fewer people!

This takes me back! I had a living situation when I first started college that had me to listening to R. Kelly's Bump and Grind muffling sexy time noises thanks to a flimsy wall every time my horny neighbor was doing it with her boyfriend. I heard R Kelly a few times a day for months!

My apartment is generally pretty quiet, with two exceptions. The one I don't mind is that we have a concert pianist and opera singer who lives upstairs, and when he plays we can hear it in our bathroom. ONLY our bathroom. The one I do mind is the crotchety old lady downstairs who thinks we're the noisy ones. I once dropped a pear on the carpeted area of my living room and she started banging on the ceiling to convey her displeasure with our loudness. The other day she called the building manager when I dropped a fork on the floor (also after banging on the ceiling for a few minutes). Thankfully the building manager understands, but still.

any recommendations for smoking neighbors? the building next to ours is full of smokers and it seeps right into our bedroom window. but it's a group house and i believe they can't smoke inside, so i don't know where they could smoke besides their porch. and i doubt they want to hear me complain about my asthma... maybe i can plant something thick between our buildings?

I live in in an apartment...A neighbor not right next to me but the next one down can be heard yelling LOUUUD obscenities at his TV. He watches a lot of sports (my eyes wandered towards his window once, and I noticed two TVs, both playing sports). Apparently when something goes wrong in the game he watches, he throws a fit (most likely fueled by beer, as I notice he takes a lot of empty beer cans to the recycling bin). Mostly, "G**dammit!!! Motherf*****!!!" Very extreme stuff. He got a bird that chirps a lot, too. I can hear this all from INSIDE my apt. I feel bad for person that lives right next to him. I'm being gossipy!!

@LoriSF -- LMAO

@my little apartment -- That's incredibly sweet. So awesome.

We just moved from Denver to Chicago... we sold a house and now live on the first floor of a 4 unit. We have two small boys and I was more worried about us bothering the other couples in the building. As it turns out... we are only noisey between 7am and 730pm, with a nap time from 1-3. Everyone is usually at work most of the day and weekends we are out and about! We have had a complaint about the boys from the downstairs neighbor. They were loud at 3pm after their nap. On Sunday morning, we were woken with some rap music... must have been payback for our loud afternoon?

Any which way, my boys have to learn to be respectful in a building with other people. Oh, and we love to hear our neighbors parrot... it cracks us all up with its whistles, squacks, music, and fire alarm noise!

Now how will I explain sex noise? Not sure... I guess I will cross that bridge when we get to it!

In college I could hear my neighbor's instant messaging bleeps, but only from my dining room. It was kind of cute; just little cheerful "doo-doo-doo?" sounds.

The last apartment I was in, though, I could hear people pee, from my bed! Not good.

I *love* having a house. : )

Special: An AC will help suck some of the stinky air out of your room. An air filter would work even better. Even a fan propped on the window to suck the bad air out would help a little. If it's still bad, maybe you should think about moving.

Getting back to the topic: Fortunately, my apartment only shares one wall with a neighbor, and it's the entrance hall. I can sometimes hear them when the windows are open, but I've never had any problems with any of the people living in my building. I'm pretty quiet in general, and I try to not do anything extra-noisy after 10pm or so.

The frat next door is much worse. I don't even mind the party noises as much as the crappy music and shrill screeching of the drunk girls who show up.

I am fortunate enough (pure sarcasm) to have a neighbor that bangs on our shared wall if I so much as open the refrigerator after 10:30 (much less do some midnight baking!), but apparently it is ok for his harem of whoreish girls come over and make blatantly fake sex screams throughout the night for all the neighbors to hear.

Once, it was so obviously fake I called it back......only time I've ever gotten it to stop.

We once lived downstairs from a yappy little dog. Worst. Neighbour. Ever. Thank god our neighbours broke up and the dog left the buildling.

Now we have musicians below us and we really enjoy listening to them jam.

i've been that guy before. when living in portland i had a neighbor leave a note on my front door one morning asking if i could move the bed away from the walls. simple enough request. that only stopped part of the noise though.

i've never heard another neighbor in any apartment i've lived in. but knowing that my guest is enjoying herself that much, i look at that as a compliment! LOL!

Wow, I am going to stop complaining about some of the weirdos in my condo - they've never complained about noise in my unit and I've never had a reason to complain about anyone else. I share walls with the unit on the right and the one above, which probably helps. I play music as loud as I want and have a jack russell (but he's pretty quiet). My windows face the street, but I actually really like the noise of the kids skateboarding after school, lol

oh the perils....my husband and i just hope we don't have to use our facilities when the next door neighbor has a "visitor" over. closing the bathroom door during her sexcapade works best!

Urrrggghhhh...

I once went to visit my mother's hometown and stayed in my aunt's house. The whole family was there for a reunion or something. My mother and father were in one hot bedroom, and I was in the next. The couple in the house across the alley (maybe 6 feet away) had very loud, screaming, moaning sex for a LONG time. I was lying mere feet from my elderly parents, trying to drown out the sound with a pillow over my head.

Worst of all was the next morning at breakfast, when my mother kept bringing up the noises. "Did you hear that lady screaming last night?! Do you think someone was hurting her? Maybe her husband is a wife-beater!"

I think I faked that I didn't hear.

Anyone else find it interesting that the loud-sex posters here are not at all apologetic about it?

I'm very glad I live in a house, on a wooded (sound-insulating) lot, and close enough only to hear my next-door neighbor who practices occasionally outside with his African drumming group...

I'd like to think that I'm not too loud...I have a 9 month old cat who still gets in his playful kitten moods, so sometimes he will run around the apartment at 3 am. I have no idea how to stop him from doing this and the downstairs neighbors havent complained yet. A part of me wants to ask but it's pointless as we'll be leaving at the end of the month anyway.

I heard them having sex once o_O it wasn't even really loud. It makes me wonder what they can hear =^\

I have to suffer through an apartment with thin walls and floors.
Luckily I only share one wall with my best friend and we hear them laugh sometimes but that's in.
ABOVE US are some freaking loud stompers. They aren't even big people but they always make our lights rattle! I always throw pillows at the ceiling or slam doors but that doesn't help because then they stand in one spot and stomp on purpose.
I know we don't walk around that loud! My husband has talked to our downstairs neighbors. It's obviously understandable to accidentally drop things on the floor once in a while but they seem to drop things ALL THE TIME ON PURPOSE! or without thought that someone lives below them!
ALSO we can hear them pee, when they flush the toilet it's like a waterfall going through our apartment. When they use their sinks it makes our walls CLICK very loudly.
We have no a/c so we have to open windows and smoke and ALL amounts of parking lot noise goes right into our bedroom.
I want to live in an apartment that is only one level or on the TOP FLOOR MYSELF! Sometimes I about rip my hair out.

oh and I can sometimes (especially in the bathroom) hear actual words that they're saying. After our walls stopped clicking I heard:
girl: "I forgot my towel"
guy: "what?!"
girl: "I left my towel in the bedroom!"
STOMP STOMP STOMP

I've been lucky with my neighbours, even the noisey ones.

In my current apartment building sound proofing is quite good and most people quiet down after 11.00pm anyway.

But in my very first apartment the young couple next door were a regular soap opera -"...I swear she didn't mean anything..." "... you don't love me anymore, you never even hold my hand when we go out..." etc. This usually happend late at night after they'd returned from a night out. It got to the stage where I'd be lying in bed waiting for the next installment of the "Young and Not So In Love" .

Some of my favorite neighbor noises:
2:00AM puking
7:00AM hair drier
7:30AM leaf blowers
8:00AM garbage truck (the smell is also delightful)
4:00PM squealing kids

My next apartment will have air conditioning so I can shut the windows.

My neighbor below me comes home plowed and cranks her music so loud that my furniture bounces.
When she's in a good mood, she sings aloud - it's bad. She doesn't know how to close a door - only slam. She has been known to slam doors once per minute for a full hour. I used to jump out my chair but now it only startles me a little. (She's bi-polar, and alcoholic, refuses meds.)

Then she complains that I go to bed after her, and hearing me in the bathroom (the flushes are really loud... we all hear each other's toilets in our wing) and walking to bed wakes her up. Wah.
She yells through the floor if she hears me walk. When my boyfriend walks she accuses me of stomping.

Her I can take... but I'm about to cut the vocal chords on the two yippy dogs in my building.


And for the record... I've been abstinent through my adulthood - so when I get married... someone's gonna hear loud sex noises - and I don't want to hear complaints. Applause maybe.
I have more tolerance if the loud sex comes from married couples than from random hook-ups - no one should have to hear that!

Last apartment I lived in, I had the Mad Vacuumer(TM) directly above. He vacuumed every second day, and always between 1 and 6 am. Oy. So glad I live in a house now. So, so glad.

On the other hand, at one apartment complex I lived in, I had a neighbour approach me at the mailboxes one day and say, "You're the one who sings to her cat, aren't you?" Embarrassing, but I guess there are worse things to be known for?

I used to own a condo built in an old schoolhouse. The soundproofing was awesome (only heard neighbor-sex once!). I don't know what was going on with the ventilation, but the distant neighbor (in the opposite, symmetrical end condo) used to fry bacon every morning, and the smell would make it through the vents to my bedroom. It was actually quite lovely to wake up to that smell!

clickchick cant be serious right? loud sex is ok if its her and her potential husband – in fact she would like us to congratulate her – but un-wed persons should shut-up because its skanky? and don't even get me started on her (not-so) subtle 'why don't people take their medicine if they have been diagnosed with something' shit. are you her doctor?

devo said it best, so ill let them close this post.
"freedom of choice... is what you got... freedom from choice... is what you want"

In my cheap college apartment I could hear all of the guy neighbors pee. That was especially weird when it was the upstairs neightbor and we happened to be in the bathroom at the same time.

I live in an 8 unit L-shaped building that I love except for the fact that 4 of my neighbors choose to smoke outside and below one of my windows.
Instead of getting a nice ocean breeze I have to keep my place shut up most of the time and crank up my a/c window unit.

When my lease is up I plan on moving to a guest house so I can enjoy some fresh air.

My neighbor down the hall (not even next door) was a fantastic old French lady who walked her dog 11 times a day and made up a song to sing to him whenever she hobbled up and down the stairs (Cukoo, cukoo, cukoooo ooooo ooooo). Quite irritating at 1AM, but in exchange I got to hear wonderful stories about how the French government kicked her out of France and she can never dance again because they also pushed her off a cliff (apparently). I'm not even going to start on my other neighbor Miss Passive-Aggressive-Notes-On-Door.

Even better than my neighbor though was living on the second floor above Avenue A in NYC. One Friday evening at 3AM I laid awake in bed listening to these two guys who had been hitting on these two girls for, I kid you not, 25 minutes. On the sidewalk. Loudly. Drunkenly. I eventually leaned out my window and yelled "Give up! They're not going home with you!" They gave up.

Sigh - sometime I miss the noise. But not the cockroaches.

"if you can read this sign, then we can see you naked!"--LOL.

We live full-time in a condo building where the units are primarily second homes (at a ski area). It's pretty much ideal--since the building is more or less deserted on weeknights, we can make as much noise as we want without bothering anybody, and there is little to no noise to bother us. On weekends, we can party with our neighbors!

@chickclick: What about noisy self-pleasuring? Is that OK by you?

The first place I bought was in a six unit condo complex. The board at the time sent a female neighbour to "speak" to me about the loud noises coming from my unit. Of course they said it was a complaint from the neighbouring building.

I told the female messenger that if there indeed was a complaint from a neighbouring building I would love to see it in writing and handed to me by someone from the board. At that point I would gladly discuss the issue. I also told her I didn't appreciate the board using my female neighbour to bring me the news because not one of them.

I found the timing absolutely hysterical as my boyfriend who would sometimes spend the night (gasp!) was at that point gone for two weeks on vacation.

When he got back we laughed until we could laugh no more as we storied the possible fallout scenarios. Like having the bylaw officer or police serve me with the ticket. We picked out our defense counsel, judge and crown prosecutor to great giggles as we work in the legal system at the time.

In the end nothing ever happened. I doubt the messenger ever spoke to the board about the issue again.

I, like many, took the whole thing as a compliment.

I have loud sex neighbors, luckily, neighbor girl got an STD and now cannot have sex so much.

Now, before you think I am cruel, I only know she has an STD because she and her boytoy had SEVERAL loud fights because he refused to tell the her the name of the "skank" he had cheated on her with. (And where neighbor girl persumed he caught the STD). It is very hard to look at this woman in the elevator without thinking about her vajayjay.

So, word for the apartment dwellers, think long and hard if you want to scream "Because I f***ing have HPV you S$%&!" at 1 AM, because chances are you just announced it to your neighbors as well.

Oh my goodness, makes me happy to be living at home again, but the dorms I lived in weren't completely dorms. there was alot of people who were old tenants but because of rent control(nyc) couldn't be kicked out.

Anyway, in my corner of the building I constantly heard the IM sounds all the time.

Moderate amounts of sex noise from above me and for a while the guy living in the wall right next to my bed was constantly having sex with his girlfriend. Other neighbor once in a while but they were into spanking. so I'd just hear the slap sounds. Across the way from my boyfriends room we would constantly see two couples having sex. two men and the other a guy and girl. My bf was kinda like ehh they can't see us but I would like demand that he close the blinds.

I was in art school so about 70% of the sounds I heard were people moving heavy objects around in their room or hammering.

I would always go over to my friends room and the old man next to her had some kinda mental illness, he was constantly screaming in different voices and about the weirdest things. I use to see him on the street screaming to himself too.

i lived next to the "have-sex-really-loudly couple" for about three years. It was my first apartment out of college and to make things worse it was the couple were live-in managers of the complex i was renting in. I never said anything but wasking up at 3am to her "Ohh God, OHHHHHHHH GODDDDD!" and then knocking on the door the next morning to turn in my rent check creeped me out a little.

Witchbaby: Was that SVA? My boyfriend went to that school and would have the best stories about those tenants.

Turn up some music to mask some of the noises -- whether they're emanating from their apartment or yours.

Ha, I live in a nice but very thin walled apartment in downtown portland. With hard wood floors, and thin plaster walls it doesnt hid anything. I have gotten so many people at my door telling me to turn down my music, and I comply nicely. Everyone here is nice due to most of them being couples with kids, but being a kid by himself its pretty funny hearing things. But one thing that is very annoying is the person above me having sex almost every night. The bad thing is that his/her bed is about 10 years too old and you can hear them from the basement and they are on the 5th floor. So one day I wrote a letter saying "please change your bed and move it away from the wall, we can all hear you..." and slipped it under their door. So far no more creaky sex.

i had a neighbor (who just moved into another apt on the oher side of the building thank heavens) who's bed was pressed against the wall, and he wouldn't make sex noises but his daughter (they were sharing a room - yuck) would lay in bed and have night terrors and bang against the wall all night. i complained to them, the man who's apt it was and to the landlord. no one seemed to care. i would bang against the wall hoping to have someone stop and no one would. this went on for about 10 months and needless to say i really hate the guy for messing with my sleep for 10 months. then he moved and i thought the noise was over. nope, the guy who's apt is was moving into the room and the moved out guy set the bed in the same place, so every night i could hear him roll over... i banged against the wall in frustration & the old guy yelled at me. so the 'squatter' knew i was banging against the wall (especially if a 72 yo guy can hear it the other guy definitely did and did nothing to be a nice neighbor). and then of all things, after letters and calls of complaint from me and pretty much everyone else in the building the landlord gave the guy his own apt. now i just have to pass him at the coffee shop... but still - it was frustration for 10 months with no respect.

A big 'yay' for home ownership.

I'm afraid we're one of the 'loud sex' couples, actually. I never felt bad about, except when we had roomates - we aren't jerks, so we kept it down, but otherwise... You just need to let it out.

I understand there is some really good sound deadening drywall stuff available. It makes me sad that landlords are too cheap to install it. It's a shame that building code can't be changed to make better soundproofing mandatory!

i've had a few "loud sex" neighbors in my days here in philly and back in new york but you know, after a year of listening to my upstairs neighbor have sex with her lumberjack of a boyfriend i didnt feel bad when i decided to be vocal. it goes both ways you know?? i figure if i can hear and recognize the moment before she orgasms in my living room, i figure she can hear me doing the same.

i now live in a row house so i dont hear as much noise from my neighbors, however the lady across the street is the block drunk and is listening to sade on her stereo and drunk dancing in the street at 10 am on a tuesday. you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBJn4BHtqqY

this seems appropriate. anyone else love kristin chenoweth??

College girl upstairs who had parties constantly, complete with breaking windows and otherwise destroying the place. When my boyfriend went up to complain (after they shattered a big picture window right outside our door) all her friends (girls) ganged up on him and threatened to beat him up (classy!)

Other upstairs neighbor who has been fine for six months but must have gotten a new sound system because now it is so loud and the bass is so booming that it shakes all the windows and doors in my apartment. I went up there yesterday to ask him to turn it down and he said "maybe I will" and slammed the door in my face. I called the landlord who came over and had a chat with him. It has stopped for now.

New upstairs neighbor, just moved in, no noise yet but a lot of smoking!

People like to say "oh the joys of renting" but at least I can move easily. When I owned my house in L.A. I got some hellish neighbors who had loud nonstop barking dogs, cars "warming up" in the driveway for 30 minutes at 5am, all day long the smell of pot wafting into my yard, crazy boom box music and screaming fights. Eventually they moved (they were renting) but if they hadn't, it would have been way harder for me to move from a place I owned than just renting.

I used to have a neighbour who would have about a half dozen two minute long sex romps with his girlfriend whenever she was over. It stopped when I knocked on their door wearing boxers and winking

One really warm night I had my window open and apparently everyone else in my building and the building beside us did too. There was a very loud couple having sex for a very long time. When it was finally over, I heard someone's stereo turn on. I was about to get really annoyed when I suddenly realized the song playing was "Voices Carry". You know the one, it goes "hush hush, keep it down now, voices carry." The whole song played, the stereo turned off, and there was complete silence. I still don't know which of my neighbors played the song, but I think they are awesome.

http://www.swankydigs.blogspot.com/

Barking dogs are a nightmare around our way. Most of the neighbours and their pets are great. But , there is one in every crowd - and its always the same profile : Dog is not walked, kept in a small space, and owner is in total denial about the problem.

Well huh. For the sex neighbors wait until they're done then applaud, whistle, "Bravo!". If they don't "get it" then buy an applause track and play it loud.

For the dog, buy one of those auto-on dog barking suppressors and mount it on your balcony pointing towards the dog's area. You may have to adjust the sensitivity or only turn it on at night. If the dog barks after 10pm, most urban areas have laws and the appropriate recourse might be to file a police complaint.

For noise in general consider a fountain, white noise generator or cd, a set or sets of pleasant wind chimes positioned in the breeze of your fan. If you have ceiling fans you can hang a small wind chime and it will tinkle continuously. Mass print some polite notices about summer and sounds carrying. One morning walk your neighborhood and stick one on every door and/or car windsheild. You can hire people to do this for extremely cheap too.

My only issue is the grumpy old lady beside me who throws a fit (by banging her oxygen tank against the wall) if I accidentally wake her up from her nap at 2pm on Saturdays. The last time I was vacuuming, the time before that I had 3 small children visiting my apartment. I wouldn't mind so much if she weren't so mean about it... there is no reason to be concerned about noise levels on a Saturday afternoon unless she tells me!

In an old apartment the girl above me got a new boyfriend. The first time they had sex, I heard the bed squeaking at an alarming rate. I picked up my Timex Ironman watch, turned to my GF in the bed next to me, hit the start button and said: "He will never be able to keep this pace up." He couldn't. Lasted about a minute, then he slowed down for another minute. Then it ended. Pace yourself!

In my condo where I live now, I finally told me passive aggressive neighbor above me to never talk to me again or leave me anymore notes after she complained of loud sex to me in front of the girl I was dating. We have not spoken in over 3 years. The neighbor also suffers from depression, which is great for me, because she sits in her condo all the time being quiet and rarely makes noise. Never any visitors or anything. Really depressed people make great neighbors!

My biggest issue now with neighbors is the one who likes to pretend he has a yard. I live in a condo complex that borders national parkland- a huge forest right outside my sliding glass door. The idiot in the next building likes to cut down trees, dump landscape waste he generates and dig up stuff behind my condo. We had words several times. He has called the police on me for telling him to stop. The board finally clamped down on him and told him to quit with the landscaping. I wish the loser would finally get a job and buy his family a house with a yard. I doubt he ever will, because he is really a loser in every sense of the word.

Yeah Wire,

Sometimes I like to jolt people out of the notion that today's society has that it's okay to boink whoever you think is attractive - outside of the sanctity of marriage.

Those folks don't believe it, but there are a lot of people who do wait for marriage - so yeah it's a little offensive to hear people sinning loudly.

More to the point, the people who think these are private decisions that don't affect anyone else. That's so naive - in a country where it is safe to say that the majority of women are on birth control pills - to the extent that it's affecting water quality and killing off fish populations.
Because the residue birth control that goes down the toilet is causing fish change genders and die off!!
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/fish-sex-change-47021801

Nice work - because the majority of America wants the right to boink without consequence... the rest of God's creation has to suffer.
Real responsible.
So that's why I like to shake things up by presenting a different point of view. Maybe eventually everyone will get it.

Wow Clickchick, thems are some strong words. Different strokes for different folks, not everyone who's bonking out of wedlock is a big 'ol slut, some of us are in deeply committed relationships but aren't allowed to get married, or are holding out until it's a human right extended to all adult humans. But that is likely a big sin also, no?

Personally, I was more offended by my downstairs neighbor's cig smoke than by the upstairs guy's sex noises. Well, he did used to drop his shoes on the hardwood floor at 2 am, on his living room floor, right above our bedroom.

The problems stopped when we moved out of that middle-floor apartment. It also helped that our downstairs neighbor was a total nut (rent control, best and worst of things), who would pound on walls at 1 am and call the cops at the slightest noise - most of which she hallucinated.

Slowdown-LOL!!

My neighbors are all so loud in their own ways, yelling at the TV, arguing with their girlfriends, talking on the phone and cackling loudly, bad techno all night, rowdy sex, terrible band rehearsals, etc.

But then again my roommate laughs so freakin' loud and I make protein smoothies first thing in the morning before work. I live next door to our manager and still we're okay.

Yet no one complains, so we don't either.

Just how it is being in an apartment.

Luckily we don't have an annoying old lady who shushes everyone. We almost moved into a building with a manager like that, but we knew there would be trouble, so we turned it down.

Most of my neighbors, weirdly enough, were a joy to listen to.

Our downstairs neighbors were constantly hosting those perfect sort of parties that you only read about in books - vibrant conversation, wine, soft laughter well into the wee hours of the morning. The sounds of their parties would soothe me to sleep at night like birds.

Our upstairs neighbors had an adorable child who never, ever cried (how did they manage that?) but would occasionally babble happily and run around on little thumping feet.

Then our neighbors across the H-shape of the building moved out, and a new family moved in. To give you some idea, their window was only ten feet away from ours, directly facing each other.

They had a baby that cried constantly, but I do not blame it because the father was the loudest man on earth. His favorite thing to do was to watch soccer games at three in the morning (not kidding!) as loud as possible, while yelling, screaming, clapping like a maniac, jumping up and down, and laughing in the weirdest, loudest drunk-sounding laugh ever. I don't think he was drunk - he just had that sort of laugh that you only hear in bars. All this hollering during the night would invariably wake up his baby, which would start to cry.

Fortunately for us, we were moving just a month after he came in, so I never made the attempt to get them to be quiet. I just lived with it for the month, quietly bid farewell to my cultured downstairs neighbors, and left.

I've had my fair share of annoying neighbors, but mosly I've just learned to get over it. The wall my bed is on is right against my neighbor's driveway. They leave for work at 5am on their motorcycle. I've learned to just sleep though it and kind of appriciate the signs of life around me. I agree that it is really gross to hear someone else having sex, but that's just reality. I think people waste too much energy trying to control everything about their environment. The fact is most of us live within close proximity of other people. My best advice is to just learn to accept it.

AlliNY:
Yep! I did go to SVA. I think the scariest tenant was the man with the girl wig and huge glasses. He scared me :(

RV park living is much like apartment living, except that when your neighbour is having loud sex you don't just have loud sex noises to contend with but the fact that their RV is rocking in rhythm with them. Try talking to them with a straight face the next morning...

My only neighbours beside me used to be loud in the bedroom, until one evening when I pounded on the wall and heard a gasp of the "Oh my God, she can hear me!" type, and I haven't heard from them again. They've also been good at keeping down the music to a decent level after I asked them a couple of times, and they have a little dog who is extremely quiet.

That said, it's almost 11:00 PM MST, and the neighbour upstairs from me has started hammering something on the floor...

Chickclick: FYI, not every woman having sex is on the pill, and not all sex involves intercourse. May I also point out a statistic from a CDC report published in December 2004, Use of Contraception and Use of Family Planning Services in the United States: 1982–2002:

"The leading method of contraception in the United States in 2002 was the oral contraceptive pill. It was being used by 11.6 million women 15–44 years of age; it had ever been used by 44.5 million women 15–44 years of age." (http://tinyurl.com/CDC-contraception)

So much for "it [being] safe to say that the majority of women are on birth control pills" in your country --44.5 million out of an estimated 157 million females (2010 est.) is hardly a majority.

As for the rest of your diatribe--grow the hell up. If I wanted sanctimony about the choices I make as a woman I'd go back to church.

One of my worst possible flat-sharing experiences (for so many reasons) was also my last! I had a co-tenant who seemed to vet his girlfriends on their vocalised enthusiasm (the quiet ones never returned for a second night...), one being so loud that she actually woke me up out of deep sleep with her "Herbal Essence" rendition... regularly. If you saw the guy you would of course realise why it was so important for him to have noisy women... I never said that they sounded 'genuine'. What was real enough though and also emanated from the same guy's bedroom to permeate the rest of the flat, was that accompanying funk. I thought his between-girlfriend-hand-substitute funk was gross enough until after his first visitor came to stay. I could come home from work and would know whether he was with someone or by himself just by the smell that hit me when I opened the front door... two floors below. You can't imagine how bad it was to be in the room next door, desperately trying to ignore that bouquet!!!

'Chickclick' (was that name intended to be a contradiction, btw?), I'm also a little perplexed by your comments. I understand the fish dilemma, inspite of your statistical hiccup and, in terms of environmental damage, I feel that pressure should be brought upon the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture oral contraception, to develop drugs which do not impact on the environment or potentially endanger women's health and however many women there are using the pill, it would probably be most effective if that pressure came from them - nobody likes to lose a customer afterall! However, pollution is a crime, not a sin.

I'm amazed by your ability to differentiate between sex-sounds made by married couples and those made by unmarried couples? I mean, it's one thing to be able to tell a fake orgasm sound from a real one but to be able to identify marital status...... you must have listened to more couples than the rest of us put together, to possess THAT ability...

Seriously though, if you don't agree with premarital sex between yourself and your partner, that is fine... it'll save a fish or two... but, you have absolutely no right to accuse others of 'sinning' if they choose to live their lives differently. Just because you're keeping your legs together, it doesn't give you the right to cast any stones, young lady!!

@Tara77, that "Voices Carry" story is pure, unadulterated, Grade-A awesome.


@chickclick, you have the right to choose not to have sex before marriage. You do not have the right to tell other people that they're wrong or bad or sinful for being different from you. Shame on you.

wow. I have absolutely no noise problems in my newest apartment. It's so quiet and wonderful. i don't miss hearing my neighbors argue and call each other the worst names then follow-up with a quickie. It was awkward. Now I have no immediate next door neighbors. It's perfect.

I love the tranquility of my new home too. So peaceful that I wake up to the sound of birdsong. Rarely hear traffic and yet there's a main road at the end of the street. Hardly ever hear the neighbours, except for the guy in the flat below, chuckling at whatever he's listening to on the radio (at least I'm assuming that's the reason for the chuckling). It's quite soothing actually. I do hear the neighbour's kid most evenings, presumably not long after they've put her to bed. She does that thing of screaming, usually "Daaadddyyyyy!!!" until she either grows hoarse or falls asleep, I'm not sure which but eventually she falls silent. Surprisingly, it doesn't bother me but then, it's about the same time as when I'm making my dinner. I'm in awe of the little darling's parents though as they never cave in to her. Perhaps they are waiting for her to fall asleep so that they can tiptoe nervously into her bedroom and wipe the green demon vomit off the walls.... heheheh!!