Renter’s Advice and Resources

Moldy dishes, dirty clothes, spoiled milk, mildewed shower tiles, bags of garbage (or, worse, garbage scattered all over the apartment), overflowing litter boxes, and a toothpaste-laden sink—living with a messy roommate can be a unique form of odorous, cluttered hell. Regardless of how you found your roommate—through the world wide web or through a friendship of ten years—you’ll probably need to address the issue of apartment cleanliness at some point in your rooming relationships. This article contains tips for dealing with a messy roommate in a constructive way. You might not be able to persuade a persistently untidy individual to help keep your apartment absolutely pristine, but you should be able to make your situation much more tolerable.

“After college, I got an apartment with an old friend from high school,” says Brooke, a 25-year-old media relations assistant living in Washington, D.C. “We were both single and loved going out. It seemed like the perfect living situation until my roommate started dating a guy from her grad program. All of the sudden, I had a third roommate. He hung around the apartment while she was in class, eating my food and hogging the bathroom. I didn’t even like the guy.”

Having a roommate can be beneficial in many ways. For one thing, they help you out with the rent each month, but they also provide companionship, someone to talk about your day with, and an automatic Netflix buddy. If you’re not quite ready to live alone or you can’t afford to, having a roommate is […]

You put your key in the door, rest your hand on the knob and let out a deep sigh before entering. You know that your roommate is lurking somewhere in the darkness with a snide remark that insinuates a bone they have to pick with you, without actually picking it with you. Sharing your space […]

Out of all the inconveniences you may encounter living with a roommate, having to share a bathroom tops the list. Having a roommate is great in terms of lowering your living expenses, overall safety and constant companionship, but sharing personal space, specifically a bathroom, can be problematic. You and your roommate can make it work […]

Confronting your roommates about disruptive sexual activity can be a delicate, perhaps even embarrassing, topic to broach. However, you have the right to feel comfortable in your own apartment, so you’ll have to speak with your roommates so that the living arrangements are fair for everyone. Sitting Your Roommate Down Since the topic of sexual […]