Who knew that living with you best friends could turn into such a nightmare? Signing the lease with your pals, you envision the next year of living in student paradise. But living with roommates is different than having consistent sleepovers with your pals. True colours get revealed and things start to get messy, literally.
The following encounters are based off the little annoyances that plague my life with stress on a daily basis. These types of roommates may not even know how truly annoying their bad habits are but we can all agree that we have encountered or currently live with one.
The slob
This roommate treats their space as if they are permanent residents of the Toronto Zoo. Garbage, food, used tissues, you name it’s on the floor, being ignored while you listen to them ramble on about how messy the house is. They’ll probably use phrases such as, “Yeah I have no idea whose plates those are, I did all of mine”.
If you’re a neat freak, you need to either move out or take serious action to come to a solution. If you just don’t appreciate living in a dumpster try the ol’ switcheroo and give this messy roommate a taste of their own medicine. Take all their used plates, garbage and whatever else they have laying all over the common areas and dump it in their room where it is out of site and out of mind to you.
If this approach is a little too dramatic, simply enforce a cleaning schedule where everyone pitches in to keep the house looking bearable.
The human boom box
This roommate’s whisper is usually louder than a foghorn. Their obnoxious laugh can be heard from any and all rooms no matter how quiet they swear they are trying to be. Studying in a house where a human boom box resides can be a nightmare so I suggest if this really gets on your nerves parade around the house when you know they’ll be sleeping, banging on pots and pans and insist it’s your new midterm stress reliever technique.
Less dramatic solution: simply move your study space to the library or another quiet area, buy headphones or earplugs or confront this noisy roommate by telling them your doctor thinks you may be suffering permanent ear damage so it would be best for your health if they learned to shut up.
The food snatcher
This roommate has a complete disregard for any and all food they find in the kitchen. All your favourite snacks slowly start to vanish and you realize there is a thief residing in your house. If you don’t already label what’s yours, this can be a good way to keep a mild thief out of your favorite foods. However for serious food snatchers, the only way to avoid this problem is to catch them red-handed.
If you’re one of those people that doesn’t have the time to sit around waiting for someone to steal your Oreos, a nice subtle comment such as “Wow, I swear someone’s been eating my food” can scare this bandit off.
If all else fails and you are about to go nuts, just think of this: Reading Week is coming up.