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I lived with one of my closest friends for three years only to realize that his style of slobbishness is unbearable to me. It's one thing to leave a couple dishes in the sink but it's another to leave dishes unrinsed with a thick coating of slimy navy bean soup on them, or an old bowl of cereal with sour milk and two cigarette butts and ashes. He also had a small dog that was supposed to be litter trained. By litter trained I guess he meant trained to spread kitty litter all over the kitchen floor and to pee on the shallow piles of it found anywhere in the house. He is seriously disgusting when it comes to hygeine also. For atleast 6 months, he didn't even have a toothbrush in our bathroom. This prompted me to take mine to bed with me each night, fearful he'd decide to finally brush and use mine. I tried talking to him. This only got me alot of defensive excuses and promises to try harder. I came home one day and he announced he had cleaned. By cleaning, I guess he meant straightening up because although there were no dishes in the sink or dirty laundry in the bathroom, the floors still felt sticky and the bathroom mirror still had specks all over it. And to boot, I found several dirty dishes in his bedroom. At a certain point, I had to go buy more silverware and drinking glasses because he had taken to hiding dirty ones or just throwing them in the garbage, apparently allergic to washing them. Eventually, I gave up and because he was my friend, I tried to accept his piggish nature. I began leaving my own dirty clothes in the bathroom and short of being able to actually leave dirty dishes set out, I started eating only takeout and filling the garbage can with my containers. I stopped vaccuming and pestering him about the dog. I started keeping my bedroom door shut so that the mess would not overflow into my private clean space. At first it was fine. Everytime I would start to get angry about something he did (broke in through the kitchen window and left a mess of glass on the floor...etc.) I would quell the feelings and remind myself to let it go. But, eventually I got depressed from spending so much time in my bedroom with the door shut. I felt like I was paying half the rent for a tiny, clean bedroom, not a whole house. And having give in and contributed to the mess, I felt I had lost all authority on the matter. I announced, after three years that I would be moving out in two months. He was wounded, a bit, but got over it. These days, I live alone in a clean apartment while he also lives alone, but in hideous squalor. You can't change people, especially those with exteme tendencies. You either have to grin and bear it, do the best you can, or just live alone from the getgo.