Why should they clean when they know you'll do it for them? They don't care if the place is dirty and they know you do, so they do nothing and the place still gets cleaned. Score!
You might not realize it, but you are enabling their laziness by picking up after them like a frustrated mom who can't bear to see her kid's dirty room one more day, so she cleans it herself. Your roommates get to sleep while you clean because you clean.
What to do? Calling them pigs solves nothing, so nix that idea. We already know they don't care, so why bother? All it will do is piss them off and make them clean up even less than they already do, if that is possible. Besides, it's just pointless aggression that will harm your friendship. Is it worth it?
You could pay off your remaining obligation to the lease and move out, but we're talking a lot of money that you probably don't have. You can try to stay away, but that sucks--who wants to stay away from her own place? That leaves just sucking it up until the lease is done and you can move out.
Until then I suggest you clean only your own messes and leave theirs alone. I realize this will be hard for you, but if you can let the place turn into a giant pig sty, maybe even they will get sick of it and actually lift a finger.
Thanks for the question.
Great response, Cary. Good luck to the person who asked the question. I live with three messy people. It's not easy to deal with.
Stick their dishes in their shower. Buy a mini fridge for your room, and spend most of your time at the library/starbucks, and basically avoid coming home. They clearly don't care about your feelings so they don't appear to be friends. Lost 3 girlfriends bc we moved in together in a house and they were slobs!! Our friendship couldn't survive.
This one is easy.
Have a house meeting.
The home should be a place where you relax, not a place of tension.
Say you like them as people, but can't stand the mess.
Give them two options:
1. Shape up or ship out.
(cleaning rosters don't work with lazy people, only busy people who actually care)
2. You all pitch in to hire a cleaner.
If they don't want to pay for cleaner but say they'll change, or that you're making a big deal over nothing, give it a months trial.
There's a fine line between not realizing the mess you make and having no respect for another's space.
The above ultimatum will tell you which one it is.
We don't know that she has the authority to tell them to ship out. Her name is on the lease, but all their names probably are. She's outnumbered, so they would likely tell her to ship out.
Good point.
It all comes down to how livable the current situation is I guess.
I almost had the same problem with my roommates before. What I did was I let all the mess sit around for a while, then when they were all gone, I cleaned up everything - bathroom, sink, wash area, floors, computer area, even tidied up a some stuff on their desks.
Then I wrote a loooooooooong entry on our room logbook specifying everything I did and why I did it and what they would expect next time they fail to do their part in keeping our place clean. The entry was straight to the point with quotes from my own parents (which kind of worked since I was the oldest in the room). Our logbook is "holy". It's where we put down our memories, quick hellos or ciao's when we leave the door while a roomie is asleep - it's our way of communicating when we don't have time to sit down and have meetings. So writing something like that got through them.
It's hard to ignore the mess especially when you share the bathroom and the kitchen. But hopefully you can find a way to get your point across and get them to clean up. And Cary is right. Don't clean up after them all the time. Maybe try putting cute sticky notes or something on top of their dirty dishes and what nots. ;)
you should go to passiveagressivenotes.com Cute little sticky notes never work, they just make people more defiant really.
Ouhhh! I like that site! ;)
oh god the dreaded "house meetings" where NOTHING gets solved! The only thing worse than a useless house meeting is a dry erase board war in the kitchen!!!! Nope, I would do what Cary said, because I've lived it, done it, and it worked! If nothing else I was less stressed because I wasn't running around doing everything for everyone else!
I 100% agree. You can't clean for them. It is only making it worse. If you can hold out on cleaning for a little while, they're eventually going to have to clean up their messes to get to what they need. Stick to cleaning your own things. They will eventually get the idea.
I'm sorry you have to deal with that crap!
I agree with Cary, his advice is not only great for your cleaning dilemma, but in life as well. You should never feel the need to take on the roll as a mother for other adults, you are putting yourself in a very compromising situation that leaves you feel responsible for things that should be shared responsibilities. You are not only enabling them, but you are needlessly stressing yourself out..when at this time in your life you should be having a blast. You'll be a parent one day and will have wished that you used this time in your life to learn life's lessons that are character building for you, instead of trying to instill them into others.
I too am in a similar situation and I did what Cary suggested. It was definitely hard to resist the urge to clean, but when I backed off, my messiest roommate of all started picking up her slack a little bit. But only a LITTLE bit. As others have said, you can't dictate other people's behavior; a dirty roommate will not clean up his/her act (I made a pun, tee hee!) just because s/he is living with a neat and tidy individual. Said dirty roommate will (usually) only clean his/her messes when they get so bad that cleaning is the only option. And if the messes do get out of control, then you should be a little more assertive about voicing it. Don't harp on your friend/roommie every time s/he leaves a cup on the table, but do speak up if mold starts forming on the dishes in the sink because that's just plain ridiculous. Good luck to the question asker!
yeah...the problem is that when you just LEAVE the mess there, no one actually cleans it. It doesn't bother them at all, but it really bothers me and makes it hard for me to concentrate on schoolwork when everything is so chaotic and nasty, plus half the time I can't even make food. They let it pile up and since we share everything, I also end up having no plates or pots and pans or silverware. They just end up making something in the microwave or going out to eat. Things periodically get better for a few days when I initiate some sort of cleaning thing, but it always ends up back with food all over the counters and garbage all over the floor. They don't mind staying out of the house when it stinks, but I like to just chill here, so it really bothers me, plus it's too embarassing to have anyone over. I literally apologize to my boyfriend every time he comes over because it's so disgusting.