People with housemates/roommates

[innerslytherin]

I have a question, because it's been a long time since I lived with people (except my parents, who aren't your typical housemates).

What are things that housemates fight about?

I'll start: leaving the laundry in one of the machines, not doing dishes, leaving your crap all over the common living space.

Now add more. I'm trying to write a scene where two people are arguing about something, and I need a good, old argument that can have them shouting and slamming doors.

Comments

[runriggers.livejournal.com]

bringing people over/spending the night without prior warning
fighting over the TV/radio/music/different interests

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I haven't ever actually FOUGHT with housemates. But on the occasions when I have felt the urge to do bodily harm to one of them, it has almost always been over dishes. Well, or the one time when I said "The washing machine is broken, don't use it," and came home later to find water all over the hallway ruining the floor as the dryer tumbled happily with ONE PAIR OF TROUSERS IN. I asked, "Didn't you hear me say the washer is BROKEN and not to use it?" (Also wondering why the fucking fuck he hadn't at least mopped up.) He said "Well, yes, but my pants were dirty."

Let's see. The pan of chili left on the stove for four days, that was nearly explosive.

Stealing the other one's food, that can be a fighting point? I haven't run into it but I'm aware of it. OR taking the other one's stuff without permission. One of my housemates would have had a fight over that with another one by now were he not so very English and repressed.

[shinealightonme]

being too loud watching TV/listening to music
one or two people getting stuck always taking out the trash because no one else ever does it
leaving the light in the bedroom on all night while the rest of us are trying to sleep

[jenw118.livejournal.com]

being too loud at night or early in the morning.
not cleaning up after your animals.
Having over very loud and invasive friends.

These are all things that happened to a roommate of mine which got her kicked out of the apartment.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time! Beard hair in the sink, eating up all the cereal, noise when the other person is sleeping, resolving on solutions to issues and not sticking to them.

[innerslytherin]

Beard hair in the sink, IMO, is grounds for flogging.

Ick ick ick.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

You would not have liked living in the four-person apartment I shared for four years. There were always two men and two women, and at least one of the men shed beard hair, either because he was clean-shaven or because he trimmed his beard. How was it that they were all so hirsute?

[innerslytherin]

My dad is usually very good about rinsing the sink out after trimming his beard. I say usually, because it's happened occasionally that I would find beard hairs. I don't know why beard and mustache hairs seem grosser than head hairs. Probably a weird quirk of mine, but there you go. *G*

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot one, but it's probably not something people cope with much anymore. In the old days before curbside recycling was the norm, I had a roommate who stashed recyclables on the back porch. They had to be schlepped somewhere to be recycled, and he didn't want to bother to do it until there was a lot. One of our few vocal arguments was about the fact that "the recycling" is garbage, and that storing a whole lot of it is storing GARBAGE.

Man he was annoying.

[innerslytherin]

LOL Well, I know Peoria doesn't have curbside recycling yet. And out here in the boonies we have to collect it and schlep it to the nearest school, which is where all the collection points are.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

We were in a dense urban area and having a porch full of aluminum cans grossed me out. Curbside recycling is for me.

[sodoesrachael.livejournal.com]

Random aside: do you live in/near Peoria? I only ask because my dad lives in Washington, Ill. and worked in Bartonville for a while(both are very very close to Peoria), and I used to live in Moline, Il. if you know where that is. :D (Moline is like an hour from Peoria. On teh Mississippi River. I miss my river. *is sad*)

Okay, done now. :P

[sodoesrachael.livejournal.com]

Wait, no, I just looked at your profile. Indiana. Just ignore me. But is there a Peoria, Indiana...? I just assume Illinois. :P

But yeah, srs, ignore. *hides*

[innerslytherin]

LOL I live in Indiana, but have a friend in Peoria and have spent a lot of time there. I don't know of a city in this area that doesn't have curbside recycling, but I know she does. :P (I know, random of me to mention Peoria, huh?)

[slash-girl.livejournal.com]

Borrowing things from the other person without asking and/or not returning them when done. Leaving a mess in the bathroom after a bath/shower. Which way the toilet paper should go on the holder (top or bottom? *g*). Leaving lights on in empty rooms. One wanting the heat turned up because they're cold, the other constantly turning it down cus they're hot. (Yes. I'm cold in the winter. *G*) Leaving a mess after cooking/preparing a meal.

Hope that helps.

[innerslytherin]

Ugh, yes, I am a firm OVER THE TOP toilet paper person, and I have to have the toilet lid down (I'm always afraid I'll drop stuff in) so I can definitely see those as fighting points. *G*

[slightlyjillian.livejournal.com]

Quiet vs Noise. I would come home and want quiet. She would come home and turn the tv on and then leave the room... argh!

Taking things. I bought food for my guests, my roommate ate all the snacks. Once I thought she ate my food but it turned out to be mice... eek.

I had one roommate who always wanted to be invited along with... if the rest of us went somewhere without her. She'd slam cupboard doors and sulk for hours after we got back from a film or an event or dinner out.

Once, my roommate locked the deadbolt and I couldn't get back into my apartment with just my key. It was a mistake, she thought I was in my room... but if done intentionally!

[innerslytherin]

Ugh, yeah, when I lived with five other girls, there were three of us who were close, and three who were not as close with us...but wanted to always be included, so we were accused of being "elitist" and "snobby" and "exclusive". It made that year a living hell, and that was in a Christian house. Ha.

[kyrdwyn.livejournal.com]

Had a college roomie who left an old gallon of milk in front of her (tiny) fridge for a week or so until the cap popped off from the gasses (ew).

[innerslytherin]

Okay, I would seriously hurt that person. Milk is something that grosses me out the MINUTE it starts to go squiffy.

[kyrdwyn.livejournal.com]

Oh god did it smell. and I left it because there was no way in hell I was taking care of that. She finally did.

[dragon-smoke.livejournal.com]

When I lived with a female I would see red when she ate my food- that is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. It also annoyed me to no end that she didn't have many friends, but I did, and so she would complain and whine all the darn time that I had things to do and people to see and didn't spend all my time with her.

When I lived with a male, he was very nice, neat, respectful and clean, but we did have some major disagreements about my ex-asshole. My roomate was right about him, and I couldn't see it at the time.

[t-vo0810.livejournal.com]

i had a housemate once. i liked her alot at first but the longer we lived together, the more difficult she became and the less i liked her. she ended up marrying my brother. i like her even less as my sister-in-law. O_~

so issues i remember us having:
1. she never handled her own finances well so I was always covering her half of the utilities until she could pay me back, thus screwing up my finances waiting for her to pay up
2. she was always using the last of consumables i paid for and not replacing them. and i am not talking about groceries cause i am simply not that anal. i mean like stamps or shampoo or printer paper. the first few times it happened- no big deal. but then after the third midnight trip to walmart or office depot in as many months to get printer paper for my graduate thesis, i started to get a little pissy.
3. she was forever erasing all the messages off the answering machine or voice mail even when they were for me. that wouldn't really be a problem now. most people use cell phones instead of landlines now but i had a cell that was only for work, so all my personal contacts had my landline and not my cell. (this was like 8 years ago before landlines became obselete)
4. never taking her turn cleaning the common areas or doing the yard work
5. she would bitch for days before and after i ever had company or a party even if i gave her warning in advance by several days
6. she would use things, break them and not offer to replace them, like the vaccuum (she used it to suck up pennies off the floor after her piggy bank broke) or the dish washer (she put a platter that was too large and it caught on the spinny rotating water spout thing preventing it from spinning and the motor burnt out) or the garbage disposal (she tried to run it with a fork down it)
7. she dated my brother but was at times verbally cruel to him and his two daughters- this particularly made me crazed with anger but then my brother always took her back so i couldn't really say anything to him beyond sisterly concern
8. she was often rude to my friends or family when they were over visiting
9. she often had "crisis" that she liked to make my problem too by becoming increasingly hysterical until i paid attention to her or left the house. she often would beg me for advice and then after i relented and told her my opinion, she would do the opposite. yet she would always come back to me and beg me for more advice. i never understood why.
10. whenever she would lose something, she would insist on searching the entire house, including my bedroom. and then she would move my stuff around and not return it to the place it was when she found it. i was perpetually looking for things, like a broom or the laundry detergent. it made me crazy.
so hopefully u don't think i am a weirdo with my list of complaints. if you knew me, you would realize i am very homey and don't mind messes. it was more of a frequency issue... the more she did these things despite the fact that we agreed to be more considerate of one another, the more frustrated i got. hope this helps your fic!

[properly-stored.livejournal.com]

Having loud, obnoxious sex with your boyfriend WITH YOUR DOOR FUCKING AJAR NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE THAT, BITCH D:

Uh...honestly, dishes piss me off the most. Using up all the hot water comes a VERY close second. Having to take a cold shower when the weather is in the minuses is horrible.

[properly-stored.livejournal.com]

Oh and as someone else put: hair in the sink. Nononononono, ewwwwwwww.

It's worse when it's in the shower and well...you can tell the hair didn't come from their head.

[innerslytherin]

ewewewewewewwwwwwwww

[properly-stored.livejournal.com]

It could be worse, someone on my flist found a used pad she came back to her uni accommodation after the holidays.

[xtinethepirate.livejournal.com]

I haven't lived with anyone myself, but I have heard endless bickering from friends who have:

MONEY. If you pay for mutually decided upon furniture, rent, groceries, etc, with the understanding of being paid back and roommate (a) conveniently forgets to ever pay you back (b) roommate buys something s/he wants and claims that it "counts as paying you back because it's for BOTH of us," (c) complains about being broke whenever the situation is brought up, and then buys him/herself booze, DVDs, $200 pants.

All of the above happened to a friend of mine. Needless to say, she is no longer friends with her former roomie. Also, said roomie made off with all the furniture my friend had paid for. 0__o.

[zephre.livejournal.com]

hm. some of these may be repeats:

- not cleaning up hair in drains
- moving other people's toiletries around
- not doing their dishes / cleaning up kitchen areas
- not warning before monopolizing the only bathroom in the flat for over an hour to take a bath
- not warning before dismantling major appliance for cleaning on a work morning (i.e. taking all the bits off the stove so you can't put the kettle on, or emptying the fridge onto the table)
- being passive aggressive and posting NOTES everywhere complaining about things other people do, instead of sitting down one day after West Wing to actually TALK to each other.
- not cleaning up the hairballs from the cats she swore you would never have to deal with if they came with her
- never ever taking their turn shoveling the walk or cleaning the common areas or buying the milk
- emptying the milk (or tp or dish soap or other common supply) without buying new, or adding it to the communal shopping list
- making a fuss over missing a rerun of some syndicated show or having to pause a DVD they had on over dinner when your regularly scheduled new episode of weekday TV comes on.
- not warning before having a party / loud guests in the common areas
- not *inviting* you to the party they're having at your flat
- borrowing your stuff and not using it correctly / not putting it back / not recharging or refilling / not *asking* first
- nitpicking the flat rate phone bill or the electric or gas bills because they 'don't use the appliances/heaters/phone as much'
- never taking out the trash, from the bathroom, bedrooms, or common areas, EVER. even when asked.

[platyg.livejournal.com]

Let's see...I had quite a few things with my roomie:

Well you already mentioned dishes, that's a big thing.
-leaving dishes on the stove
-using all the soap
-not replacing things when you use it all up
-using up all of something (paper towels, trash bags, toilet paper), especially when you weren't the one to buy it
-eating the last of something that wasn't yours
-taking up all the space in the house (my situation was that my only space in the house was my bedroom and I freaking own the house)
-leaving your shit everywhere
-losing the other person's mail
-breaking things (like my sink that i just found was cracked)
-not keeping your space clean
-scratching hardwood floors
-staining the furniture
-saying your going to do something (like walk the dog when I'm at work and not doing and then leaving the mess for me to clean up when I get home from work)
-paying rent late and having to be reminded constantly
-coming in super late and waking up everyone in the house by clomping around
-turning the tv up really loud when the other person is asleep

I could honestly go on for quite some time...but those are all personal experiences for me over the last year and a half.

[platyg.livejournal.com]

Oh I forgot a big one!!!!

The TiVo. My ex-roomie would set all of her shows to TiVo and then mine would get erased because there wasn't room. Or she would have so many FUCKING shows on there that none of mine would record. Or on her day off she would lay on the couch and watch TV all day long and then when I got home from work and want to watch my one show or something, not even offer to change the channel and continue to make me watch whatever crap ass show she was watching. Oh and not sharing the couch! It was like she owned the couch. I hadn't sat on my couch in a year before she moved out in February.

My biggest pet peeve right now is that she's been moved out for 1.5 months and all of her shit is still here. It's like she still lives here and she hasn't given me any money for 'storage' or made definite plans to get the crap out.

[sodoesrachael.livejournal.com]

*Acting like you own the living room (or "common living space", as you worded it. :P). >:( I can talk there if I want! lulz. *Uh... oh! Messing with the temperature. I've had some issues with this particular one in the past... :/ *Making something too loud, like a TV, radio, etc. Especially if it's your own room and people in other rooms can hear it. *Hogging something, like the TV. *Drinking and/or eating all of something, especially if you did not purchase the something.

That's all I got for now. :D

Woo boy...

[goddessaeaa.livejournal.com]

Well this has certainly been interesting! I moved out of home in my first year of university thinking that living with one other person (who by the way was suggested to me by the uni as being a fantastic housemate) as opposed to my parentals and my 2 older brothers would be relatively stress free. The person who was 7 years older than me had a few annoying quirks...
1. Listening to heavy metal at 12:00 at night on loud
2. Dealing with the police at 12:00 because the neighbours complained
3. Locking her cat indoors at night and not letting her out (cat poo anyone?)
4. Leaving chicken thigh fillets on the floor for days at a time for her cat to eat (and she wondered why we had cockroaches the size of rats???)
5. Not flushing the toilet at night no matter what was done...
6. Not doing the dishes at all, even if bowls of cereal had to be left because there was no room near the sink
7. Having friends over till arsecrack o'clock the night before a major exam, despite me warning her weeks in advance
8. Occupying the only living space available with so much junk and rubbish it stunk
9. Leaving used tampons and pads wrapped up in toilet paper lying around the bathroom
10. Watching slasher films on full volume until early morning when she couldn't sleep

Now at first I tried to talk to her about it, being reasonable and all. When that didn't work I spoke to our landlord who said tough luck and if the place was a mess when I left, I'd have to pay part of the damages fee. We then had another discussion and nothing changed. We then had an argument. I then got so fed up I didn't enter the kitchen, use the living room etc. I ate at my friends place, and basically stayed in my room until the first year was over and I moved back home.

NEVER AGAIN!!!

[athene-51.livejournal.com]

General ignorance for shared spaces, cleanliness issues, using up shared supplies or the other person's food are usually the biggest problems.

I've only ever had two roommates (separately) and I DO NOT miss them. They were both guys, and in retrospect I can't believe I agreed to it. The first roommate brought friends home at 3am and decided to make soup - my soup, because he didn't bother to buy groceries. And I once walked out of my bedroom into the living room and found him sitting on the sofa, with his girlfriend shaving his chin. Another day, he left his toenail clippings on the coffee table.

Second roommate once used my toothbrush, because he thought it was his. He threw his old one away but didn't open the new one he'd bought, and somehow thought my toothbrush had magically appeared (complete with my out-of-province dentist's name/address printed on the handle) for his use.
Worse: This went on for a few days before we realized what had happened and still grosses me out.
WORST: We realized at 12am on a Tuesday so I couldn't go buy a new one, and he used the brand new one leaving me with the 'shared' one.

[chibirisu.livejournal.com]

For the most part, I got along pretty well with my renter -- she spent a lot of time partying at other people's places rather than mine, and when she was at home she pretty much stayed in her room long enough to sleep. I didn't mind her drinking elsewhere as long as she wasn't like obnoxious when she came home. She was always really considerate about being quiet when she came in around 3-4 a.m.; the cat woke me more often than she did.

The one trouble I ran into with her being a party person who liked to drink was that on more than one occasion, when she came home in the middle of the night, I'd wake up the next morning to the front door hanging open with her keys still in the door because she must have pretty literally stumbled in and fallen asleep. Finding an open door with keys still in it set off ALL kinds of WTF NO panic alarm bells in my head. The first time was bad enough; the second and third times made it kind of hard to get to sleep when I knew she was out on the town...

[nebula99.livejournal.com]

I've known housemates take each other to court over all kinds of stuff - including a threesome that ended up with one person leaving their partner for the third party. *g*

But the main squabbles seem to be eating other people's food, not paying their share of bills, not washing up/cleaning up.

Having said that, there have been times I could have murdered my husband for snoring . . .

[sophie301.livejournal.com]

My biggest problem with my housemates this year is them never buying / paying for things we all use eg - bread, milk, loo roll ... I pay for this stuff far more than either of them, also paying bills (monthly v quaterly, who pays for what)has caused our only real argument do far.

I ended up sleeping in the kitchen shared between my room mate and i last year (my uni halls were wiered)and she left sauseges in the bin in my room over the month long christmas break *shudder* that i'm vegaterian only makes it worse.

My current room mate and her boy friend lying on top of each other on the couch when im in the same room is also pretty annoying.