Roommate Rehab: Coping with Messy Roommates

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Roommate Rehab: Coping with Messy Roommates

Staff Writer · Aug 24, 2009

Messy roommates undermine even the best efforts to keep a clean home. Cleaning your apartment is essential to living in a healthy environment. Learn the best tips to improving your situation when you’re living with uncleanly roommates.

Communicate But Don’t Aggravate

If you don’t let your messy roommates know there’s a problem, nothing will change. It’s possible they’ve grown up with their parents cleaning up after them and they don’t even realize there’s a problem. If you continue cleaning your apartment without letting them know how you feel, you’ll grow resentful and the living situation will become tense. That said, don’t confront your roommates when you’re angry. Sit down with them and explain the situation and how responsibilities should be shared equally. Don’t accuse your roommates of intentionally causing problems and don’t call them names. Give them a chance to improve before you assume the worst of them. Decide to Schedule Shared Responsibilities Separately, or Together To make cleaning your apartment easier for your messy roommates, draft up a schedule of daily and weekly chores and divide them evenly. Don’t stick one person with one chore exclusively; rotate responsibilities so that everyone has a day or two washing dishes, vacuuming, doing laundry, taking out the garbage, etc. Make sure everyone performs some chore every day.

It’s quite possible your messy roommates were never taught how to clean up after themselves, so maybe they need you to show them. If all of you spend an hour each day doing chores together, you’ll be more productive. Cook a meal and then spend time doing the dishes together afterwards.

If Your Roommates Prove Uncooperative You have a number of options should your roommates keep up their poor cleaning habits or have “excuses” not to help out even after you’ve tried to talk to them nicely and divided the chores evenly. Try the following:

  • Show them the results of uncleanliness. If rotting food on dirty plates strewn about has invited bugs and other pests into your apartment, show your roommates the result of their uncleanliness. If dirty clothes stink, ask your roommates to smell them while imagining going out on a date dressed in those clothes. Make it clear that a dirty apartment is a health hazard and you’re not being unreasonable by stressing the importance of cleaning your apartment together.
  • If messy habits aren’t hazardous, know when to let the issue go. A disorganized desk and a mountain of papers may be unsightly, but it’s not necessarily unhealthy. Some people can’t work in a disorganized room, but others function just fine. Let your messy roommates keep their rooms disorganized and only press the issue if their disorganization affects your shared living space.

If you get along with your roommates for the most part, these strategies should work to make sure you live in a healthy and manageable environment. If your roommates still prove problematic, consider moving out because your roommate relationship does not work.

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