My roommates are pigs!!

Foxglove · 10-31-2006, 04:12 PM

I have lived in my current apartment for six months, and so far, I have been the only one who has ever lifted a finger when it comes to cleaning. It wouldn't bug me half as much if it was ME making the mess, but I'm not! They trash our living room and kitchen, but won't take out the garbage, load/unload the dishwasher, or pick up their stuff. I spend about three hours cleaning whenever I have a day off. I even have to clean up my ROOMMATE's cat's puke, with MY $10 bottle of Nature's Miracle! She doesn't even work full time, but she'll sit right there on the couch while I'm cleaning and read. I tried to just NOT clean, and hoped that it would get so bad that they'd clean. No such luck. Two weeks of that, and we had 50+ fruit flies, and mold growing in the sink of dirty dishes. What can I do? Is this how everyone my age lives? (I'm 19, and my last roommate, who was my age, wouldn't clean either.)

xayide2 · 10-31-2006, 04:25 PM

Well so far it looks like clutter from those pictures, but maybe implement a job chart or write up a housekeeping contract between you.

Maybe say something like for every week that you clean up their messes, they pay $10 more on the rent and you pay $10 less if they treat you like a maid. Most of the time the only thing that motivates people when living with roomates is money, because they usually have so little of it, lol.

~Domovik~ · 10-31-2006, 05:02 PM

Put your foot down and say "clean up or get out!"

My mom understands your situation all too well. Only her roommates were also her siblings.

I'm 18 and my bedroom looks a bit like your apartment, but really only because I have so much stuff and no place to put it :?

digitalduckie · 10-31-2006, 05:26 PM

You'd be surprised how many calls we get asking about when house keeping or the maid service will be by and how many parents make out of state trips and spend their time cleaning their kid's room. >.>

I admit my room gets cluttered and occassionally we get a pile of dishes... but we get no fruit flies and mold etc... none of us can stand the place being so messy <.<

When I do health and safety inspections, I find a lot of residents with messy rooms (nothing that merited writing them up but it sometimes was hard to get around their room to check) but then I also found residents who looked like they did their room up like it was a photo in a furniture catalog or something. Crazy.

So it's not everyone our age, but quite a few apparently yes >.>

Lilithdrff · 10-31-2006, 06:02 PM

My house is a mess, but I don't let things grow mold on them, lol. I have 2 very young kids, it takes longer for me to clean than for them to make a new mess behind me.
My husband doesn't lift a finger around here as far as cleaning. He cooks though...which usually means another mess for me to clean.

obsidianfoxfire · 10-31-2006, 06:08 PM

Ugh, that sucks. I don't have a roommate right now (thank god) because I'm in a single dorm room, but my SO has a roommate who refuses to clean up. My SO was gone for 2 weeks and his roommate STILL didn't take any of the trash out. -_-; It's getting really annoying how my SO and I are the only ones who clean up the messes of his 3 roommates.

Tell yours to shape up. It's not hard to pick things up, clean dishes, etc. If it's done at the time, it takes even *less* time than letting it pile up. -_-

diet otaku · 10-31-2006, 06:11 PM

that's messy to you? wow. that's relatively clean by my standards... after all, you can see the carpet.

refusing to clean DOES work, it just depends on the conditions you're willing to live in. if no one cleans for me, i won't do dishes until i have NO dishes left clean. then i do them ALL at once. bugs annoy me, but don't bother me enough to make me clean more often. clutter? fuggeddaboudit. i will continue stacking stuff (magazines, mail, etc) on a table until the pile topples over. then i throw out what i don't need anymore and start over. i will not vaccuum under any circumstances. i will not clean up other people's animal messes. when my roommate and i were watching her friend's demon cats, they would puke and i would just step over it until my roommate cleaned it up. *i* wasn't the one who agreed to watch them, so i refused to clean up after them. and i don't clean up after her own cat either. if the stains don't come out of the carpet, the cost will come out of HER pet deposit, which is fine by me. and every apartment i lived in during college was this messy, so yeah, you're probably just an exceptionally clean person. i doubt they'll change with age, though. i know i haven't.

skyrocketneko · 10-31-2006, 08:26 PM

That is disgusting. Do you get along with your roomates well? I used to live with some dirty people, and I ended up dumping their dirty stuff in their bedroom, including dishes. On the bed.

Maybe I'm just mean, but I refuse to live in someone else's filth. You pay the rent too, and you should be comfortable in shared space!
After you ask them countless times to clean up, sometimes you have to take it into your own hands.
:twisted:
I myself couldn't leave the mess either. There's really nobody you can complain to to take action?

moonshadow404 · 10-31-2006, 08:37 PM

Yuck, that's terrible! Do you need these room mate's to help pay rent? If I were you I'd advertise for new room mates and evict the ones you have now. Interview the new candidates VERY closely and ask for references and make sure they are clean people. You can't keep living like this. If they won't listen, they deserve eviction.

Sindel · 10-31-2006, 10:06 PM

This is probably a stupid question, but have you said something? I know that it might not do anything, but for your own sake you need to speak up and tell them to pull their weight. Try devising a cleaning schedule, where you divide the house up into sections and everyone gets a different section to clean each week. This works well in my house. Then you lay down rules you can all live with, ie. dishes need to be done every day (in my house, we do our own dishes so no one is washing up after anyone else) and "your pet, your mess". What kind of person lets their cat puke and doesn't clean up after it? That is really disgusting... different people have different levels of cleaning standards but seriously, you have to draw the line somewhere!