Roommate Drama (I Guess I Had to Have it Some Time)

I have three new roommates. Out of three. When the last roommate decided to move out, we had a lot of people come to look at the apartment, and the others were getting annoyed that I didn't like any of them. I finally picked one. Well, two weeks ago, the new roommate moved in and decided to take over, make lots of changes without conferring with us all, and become the clean freak of the century, even after recently breaking an arm. A lot of things disappeared--the doors to the kitchen, my stuff in the closet, and even the stickers that made the bathroom window translucent (a.k.a. protection for my neighbors so they don't have to see me naked).

Not everything was bad--my towels got washed, and the heater was even de-dusted (and yes, I was looked at like I was psycho when I said I didn't even know you could clean heaters--come on, I'm used to them being IN the wall! By the way, can you clean central heating?). Attempts to communicate about my reactions--not the actions themselves (mostly), but the not asking--ended up in me being yelled at, me going on the defensive, and me being told that I should consider living in a different apartment, though I'm now the senior roommate and it's always worked until now! Not fun. Totally stressful as I started to worry what my future was looking like.

However, I persevered and tried to be loving (and calming) in my pursuits, which ended up in me asking what I could do and receiving the assignment to mop the kitchen floor. And I mean mop.

But I had other priorities, like my job, and money, and university, and, and, and. (I'm not going to die if the kitchen floor doesn't get mopped immediately.) So the assignment got put off and I got an annoyed knock at my door the next evening at 10 PM, which in turn annoyed me because I had already written "wischen" ("mop") in my planner for the following morning--early morning, so I could get other things done, too. I mopped at 5:30 AM and it took about an hour. And honestly, I tried to be quiet.

Well, after I stressed that the other roommates might agree with me if they were to hear my point of view, we set up an appointment to talk apartment matters. I was so scared it would end up three against me or one against one with two passive members. But, it went really well, even if some voices got a little intense at some points.

We talked about everything from job charts to paint to junk in the cellar to internet to my dislike of laundry hanging in the hall to getting better lighting there to the disappearance of three rolls of toilet paper within two days of their purchase (yeah, we didn't solve that one), and so on. I'm happy with the decisions. And getting up at 5:15 to mop the kitchen floor turned out to be a good thing, because it got one of the roomies to be on my side concerning the keeping of the kitchen doors as noise control. Hee!

I'm glad, though my curtain being stuffed in the bathroom window is getting old and I hope the new solution comes along soon. Then again, I don't have time to worry about such things. I hope it stays positive from here on out, but I'm also scared to see the high expectations of our new cleaning lady (a.k.a. roommate) who somehow seems to have nothing better to do. I thought I liked things clean, but not enough to clean that much. I guess it would be better to say I don't like clutter. I just don't think much about slowly-accumulating dust and such as long as I vacuum now and then.

Roommate two is a young, giggling freshman, but I don't think I could ever get mad at her because she's so sweet. Roommate number three lives most of the time in Dresden, so we practically have an extra room for hanging our laundry in.

So, now I've joined the ranks of people with roommate stories. I've heard Melissa's, but maybe she should tell it again here just so we can all be entertained/shocked. I'd love to hear other stories as well.