A Fine Line Between Homicidal Mania and Donna Reed....

[celendra]

Here in the house that I share with Jason and the roomates Ted and Mary, I don't really have to pay bills. Since it's actually Jason's place, he told me that as long as I keep house and clean and such, he's content. He would rather 'have an apartment that is livable than save $200 a month'. I don't really have any problem cleaning up after Jason. I

Comments

[darqstar]

1: Put some of your food under lock and key. I've lived with the horrible food sucking roommate and it isn't fair. If you have to, put a cabinet in your bedroom for the non perishables and lock it. They have no reason to poke in your room at all. Also, if they start asking you for a dish you've made, tell them, "Sure, I'll give you some, for five dollars. Which is a better deal than you'll get at any restaurant."

2: DO NOT go searching for dishes in their room. NEVER. If you notice you are short on clean dishes, tell them clearly you need dishes back and cleaned. Do not compliment them for washing their own dishes. If they fish for compliments, lean over, tie your shoe, then beam and say, "Lookie me! I tieded my shoe! I'm a good girl, I tie my shoe! Pretty shoe, pretty bow! I tieded my shoe!"

3: Gather up wet towels and put them on roommate's bed. "I'm sorry, I had to wash down the floors and the walls and needed to put them someplace while I did that. Did I forget?" If they are gone all day, remember to spray the towels with water every so often, so the sheets and blankets on the bed stay nice and moist.

4: Tell them clearly that they have no right to put their lives in the air. If you can't bring yourself to tell him that he's no longer welcome in the house, then you need to wait till the next time he says he's moving, tell him that is fine, but you have plans for the room and you will expect it to be empty on the day he says he's moving. He has no right to put your lives in a holding pattern. What if you were going to get another roommate? You'd have to start looking before he moved out, right?

Good advice.

[celendra]

While I really don't have the room to keep food in here (not to mention the ferret's delight at oodles of boxes to open and roll around in), I think your idea of offering food for a fee is a good one. They just have this way of coming in and taking the lids off of the pots and pans I'm cooking in and poking the food, saying "Whatcha makin'??" as if they're my children and it's their snack!

Once I left the dishes in their room so long that we had no forks at all. I made dinner for Jason, myself and one of his friends and ended up having to serve spaghetti with spoons. I went out the next day and bought 20 new forks, so that I would never run out again, but if I see one more cup full of three week old milk and cereal, I'm going to throw up in it. Yech!

I will take your suggestion about telling he and his girlfriend to stick to the next date. It's not that they're horrible people, sometimes they're even nice to be around. But before I moved in, no one did the things that I do now. You couldn't see the floor for clothes and models and there wasn't a clean dish in the house. Now I'm trying to make it nicer to live here (not perfect - I'm not really a very neat person myself, and it's hard to clean up for 4 when at home I could never clean up for just me!), but I'm just not getting the help I think is only common courtesy.

Thanks for being so sympathetic, Darq. You're such a great lady. One of the best I know, and that's the truth.

Cel