the daily snivel
The 7 deadly sins of roommates
[updated July 3 -- see below]
At the end of August, I will no longer have to live with roommates. I will be moving to Toronto and getting a place of my own, as is only fitting now that I am 29 and working at a law firm as a Student-at-Law. For the past several years, however, I have had roommates, and in that time I've compiled a little list of unpardonable roommate sins.
Do you have any infuriating roommate sins to purge? Leave a comment and let me know!
Comments:At the end of August, I will no longer have to live with roommates. I will be moving to Toronto and getting a place of my own, as is only fitting now that I am 29 and working at a law firm as a Student-at-Law. For the past several years, however, I have had roommates, and in that time I've compiled a little list of unpardonable roommate sins.
- The measuring cup that never gets cleaned is a deadly sin. Two, two measuring cups are in my house, and they are never clean. One is invariably used as a gravy boat, and is either missing when it is in service, or returned with greasy, sludgy old gravy that requires both soaking and scrubbing to fully conquer. The other measuring cup will be used for, say, baking, but will sit with caked-on flour beside the sink until I have a need for it. And no matter how diligently I wash it after I use it and put it back in the cupboard, the next time I need one, it is ever thus.
- If you live with roommates, the live-in boyfriend or girlfriend is, verily, living in deadly, deadly sin. While everyone should be able to have their snooky-kins over for the night once in awhile, there is nothing quite so inconsiderate as turning those sleepovers into an infestation. If they're moving in, they'd better be up front about it, and the other roommates should get the right of first refusal. If they do move in, they'd better start paying rent to make up for the extra space, hot water, electricity, and bathroom time they also occupy.
- Not buying your fair share of toilet paper? Ooh, you'd better believe that's a deadly roommate sin. And while leaving a roll with just two or three squares of toilet paper hung instead of simply replacing it with a fresh roll may not be a deadly sin, it is irritating. Damn irritating.
- The garbage is there for anyone to take out. If it starts to get full, squishing it down over and over again to the point where the lid won't even fit on it is not the answer. Tie it up, take it outside. Don't wait for someone else to do it.
- Bread tags are the work of the devil. You know, those little square plastic tags that tie the bag of a loaf of bread closed. I don't know how it happens, but they get everywhere. On the stove, in the sink, on the counters, and all over the floor. Tie it up or throw it out, bitchez!
- Pizza box towers make the Baby Jesus cry. Lordy, how those pizza boxes do stack unevenly and unattractively. Please, please, put them in the recycling box outside. All they add to the interior decor is a hint of greasy cardboard and a whole lot of ants.
- Weed, man. I agree it should be decriminalized, but that doesn't mean I want that foul reek in my home. When you get your own apartment, you can smoke it anywhere you like. You can get high and stinky with all your no-good friends into the wee-est hours of the night. Until then, smoke it outside, you dirty hippies.
update -- the eighth and ninth deadly roommate sins: - Leaving a door unlocked is tantamount to opening a gateway to HELL: Here's a little reminder for all you roommates out there. It's not the 1950s, we don't live in Mayberry, strangers aren't just friends you haven't met yet, and the back door has a deadbolt for a reason. Maybe the weed makes you forgetful on those rare occasions that you do smoke it outside on the back porch, or maybe it's the knowledge that someday you'll have to go back down to the laundry room again and why lock the back door when it would take precious effort to unlock it again next time, but leaving the back door unlocked, overnight -- or until whenever it is that I come by and lock it again -- is infuriatingly sinful. I wouldn't even bother locking it if I thought the axe murderer would stop by and politely murder you in your beds and leave me alone, or the opportunistic thief stole your nice things and not mine, but for fuck's sakes, wake up and lock the back door.
- I pity the sinner who doesn't pay their fare share: Paying your fair share isn't just about paying your portion of the cable bill, whether or not I ask you for it -- though let me emphasize that it's been about a year since anyone has bothered to pay it and I've stopped asking. How do you even watch the television without being guiltily reminded that you aren't paying anything for it, while someone else is paying over $50 a month? And the phone: I don't ask my roommates to pay for the phone because they all have cell phones and I have the land line. But the important corollary of this is: since you don't pay for the land line, don't use it. I hate it when the phone rings and it isn't for me. I hate it even more when I want to use the phone and someone else is on it. AND THEN THERE'S MY COUCH. My dead grandmother's couch. I love that couch. Imagine my joy when I came home one day and noticed the couch lilting on its side because someone, or more likely someone and their worthless friends, had broken one of its legs and not told me! And not offered to fix it. Luckily, I was able to buy new legs and fix the couch myself, and it hasn't been broken since. But grrrr.
Do you have any infuriating roommate sins to purge? Leave a comment and let me know!
Well, not so much a comment as a link you might enjoy:
http://ihatemyflatmate.blogspot.com/
http://ihatemyflatmate.blogspot.com/
Thou shalt clean the cat litter.
From accross the apartment, the foul reeking stench of unclean cat box wafts through airducts, permeating everything.
Not my cats. They can be set loose in the parking lot for all I care. But since you insist on keeping the filthy animals (i usually love cats) at least do your duty to theirs, and clean the kitty litter. (white cat hair on everything is a different problem entirely)
From accross the apartment, the foul reeking stench of unclean cat box wafts through airducts, permeating everything.
Not my cats. They can be set loose in the parking lot for all I care. But since you insist on keeping the filthy animals (i usually love cats) at least do your duty to theirs, and clean the kitty litter. (white cat hair on everything is a different problem entirely)
