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Four months ago I moved in with a friend of mine with whom I went to school with. She got the bigger bedroom so she pays about 2/3 of the rent, especially since she didn't tell me the cost of the apartment and went against my rule, which searching, of no rent over $500. We agreed to split grocery bills, but she pays at the checkout so I owe her a decent bit of money, but I think that my debt should be cut down in maid services! For three months of our time there, I cleaned daily in an attempt to keep the apartment immaculate.

She can go days without a shower, she doesn't shave, she often forgets to wear deodorant so her clothes end up smelling like BO as they pile up anywhere between the living room and her room, tossed across her bed, chair, desk, and everywhere else. Who gets to clean this up? I do. I get to find every sock she leaves around the couch to every pair of panties she has behind her door so I can take them with my clothes to my fiance's house to wash them to save her the $4 she'd otherwise pay to wash them in our laundry unit.

After this, I get to wade through piles of books and manga left tossed around the same route as her clothing. I get to put these away on their proper shelves that they were pulled from just in order to make her bed so that when I return with her clean clothes I can put them all away. I have tested to see how long I could leave them clean in the basket in the living room and she hasn't touched them in two weeks. It's my job to hang up and fold her clothes and put them away and organize her hangers which may remain laying wherever or pulled helter skelter about the rods they were left on.

I fold her socks, 30% having holes in them, quite a few not having any matches, and put them away. Then I get to play "find the dirty dishes!", my favorite game! As half eaten food is left laying across the apartment anywhere from the living room through the dining room and into the kitchen where they congregate in a giant collection in the sink, along with discarded ingredients for whatever she was making.

Food wrappers litter the counters festively as other wrappers and papers, old mail, and school papers are left to litter the floor all over the apartment that I must pick up, discern between trash and "important", and discard or throw them on her desk which is stacked with wavering piles of papers that she doesn't keep track of or organize, somewhere within holding our electric bills. Is that hidden electric bill paid? Was it paid on time? You've got me. She's in charge of the finances, the bills, the receipts, the debt... confused and forgotten in this unknown martial filing system.

I wash the stack of dishes and put them away, I wipe down the counters, wipe down the fridge, sweep the kitchen floor and then mop it, twice or three times if I must. I take out the trash and I bleach the trash can; the smell of rotting meat blood that managed to dribble over the bag and into the can weeks ago when she couldn't be bothered to pull the bag up to assure the discarded package was truly within it.

The stench of rotted meat fills the air like some sort of acrid perfume as I light a yankee candle to cover up the remaining stench. I empty all of the trash cans and take them to the dumpster and refill the cans before traveling to the bathroom, that horror of a room. The sink covered in hair hair from her hairbrush that she leaves in the way on the sink, two brushes no less, no matter how many times I try to return one to her room.

The rinse cup giving leave to a wonderful circle of watery dirt, the mouthwash leaving a pretty green ring of sticky alcohol and fluoride residue, melding into the other dirt and hair stuck to the sink. I get to wipe and scrub this off using clorox wipes, same as the toilet, which by some miracle of god or some other amazing being remains stainless in the bowl; our only saving grace. The shower, now up to the brim of the tub with brown and black gunk that I have been slipping on while showering now needs an endless dowse of Kaboom, the tile managing to stay a lot less filthy since I use daily shower cleaner that she insists I use too much of, though it says to spray all shower surfaces. This leads me to believe that she's not using it properly, making those small efforts all in vain. My only annoyance at this point is that it has gone 4 weeks without being cleaned when this was the only responsibility that I openly endowed to her as a chore that she and she alone would be doing.

I vacuum the towel mat and sweep the floor. Lots of my hair, I confess, gets swept up, but at least I'm not finding a brand new, yet discarded, razor cartridge that has long leg hairs sticking out of it. I mop the floor, twice if I must, and walk out into the living room. I dust what little shelving we have and I vacuum, moving the furniture because all of the dirt gets in the most amazing places.

I go into her room and clean the litter, because she usually forgets which leads to her cat pooping on the floor right next to it. I vacuum the excess litter off of the floor, before she can take up camp on the couch as she had all week, unable to tolerate her own mess and the smell of dirty litter box. I'm usually too tired to clean my own room. When people visit, all blame of the mess is mentally laid on me but never spoken.

I make her bed and place her stuffed animal on top and put her things in order before wiping the walls down, finding black dirty finger prints on doors, doorways, random places on the walls, and light switches. Amazingly, I don't manage to often find these marks in my own room. I fill the cats food and water dishes, as she's been too depressed to notice the cats are dehydrating and starving, and then I go to make dinner.

I keep things clean, I serve dinner, and afterwards I clean all the dishes again and put them away again. After this I retire to my room to find that during the weekend she'd taken up camp at my desk, as I locate an empty chip bag on the floor and my things are scattered around my desk, a drink still sitting on my desk. I clean this up and recall finding a banana peel on the chair earlier, and wondering how long the dvds and tapes I found thrown all across the floor would stay in their place in the cupboard area below the tv and I lay myself down to sleep, 11pm and I must be up at 3am. When I hear this loud laughing, or sometimes yelling, coming from the living room. I prefer the former. The latter indicates that once I hear her door close, I must go back out and clean up the new mess she'd left, enraged that I'd cleaned, paranoid that this was a message that I'm calling her lazy.

After I clean this up, I manage to get some sleep for about an hour, sometimes two, before she comes out of her room to see I cleaned up what she'd done and does it again, only less so, in her anger. I leave for work and I return... more food wrappers on the counter, her breakfast dishes sitting on the table, while she lays across the couch with a bent up book laying nearby. The floor sticky with something that might be juice, and a glass sitting on the counter next to the completely empty dishwasher.

Mouthwash garnishes the counter top again, while the mirror is splashed with toothpaste. Clothes laying on her floor again, next to the empty basket and new clothing stickers stuck onto the full length mirror closet door I'd just cleaned. And... do I smell rotting food again? Ah, but this is nothing to leaving her alone on the weekends to her own devises, as I walk in with my fiance who is completely disgusted with the mess that has exploded within the apartment while we were at his house that was not present when we'd stepped out of there carrying hers and my own clothes to wash. She doesn't make it to school all week, or the week after. No one knows why.

She has a trust fund which pays for her bills, her rent, her needs and wants. She keeps a very part-time job as practically a hobby. Whether or not she makes it to work depends on if she wakes up on time or not. I walk to work about two miles, less if someone takes pity on me and drives me, so that I can earn rent and pay my bills. And she enjoys screaming at me, which wouldn't be so terribly bad if it wasn't for the fact that she most enjoys screaming at the top of her lungs at me over something idiotic if it wasn't 2am that she decided to do this. Ah, having a room mate is so fun!