We are three people in a flat, two of whom (let’s call them Emily and Caty) share a bathroom while I have my private one. Emily is a bit messy and that is starting to get on Caty’s nerves. The main problematic areas are the kitchen and the shared bathroom. As for the kitchen, I usually do the dishes (as I lowkey don’t really mind but would rather have a clean kitchen) and Caty does the floor, and that’s going great. Emily however leaves stuff all over the place in the kitchen and manages to mess up the restroom within 24h of it being cleaned (we just have some new hair-color stains that are not easily removable). Since I am “responsible” for the kitchen, I always clean her stuff too, and avoid mentioning anything as it’s really not a big burden to me and doing so I also ensure a chill nice livable environment. Caty can’t however take it anymore and already confronted Emily about the restroom situation more times, the most common answers are: “that wasn’t me!” (spoiler alert: it was clearly her), or an angry-cleaning (not very deep either) followed by storming off/being pissed off.
The first technique has been being nice and politely ask to take more care of the area, which was replaced with a more “tough” tone when the first approach clearly didn’t work, but the latter didn’t solve anything either. Now, frustrated about the new stains, Caty wants to confront Emily again; I however told her to hold-off for a second until we figure a better way out, as lashing out at her wouldn’t solve a thing anyway. What would a working approach look like? What are your recommendations?
P.S. Here are just a couple ideas we had, although tbh I don’t feel strongly about them:
1. Charge Emily an extra cleaning fee each month (in Caty’s words, she feels like she is “Emily’s cleaning lady”)
2. Threaten to use exclusively Emily’s part of the deposit to pay off eventual restroom cleaning/repairs needed at moving out time.
3. Telling her that once a-week we will call a cleaning person and split the bill (note: we don’t really want to do that but since it would be expensive-ish, Emily may realize that she doesn’t want to spend the extra money, but this could backfire if she is okay with the idea)
1 comment
I would recommend you to bury the axes and come to her aid. The reason she is acting this way *(I don’t want to use the word irresponsible here)* might just as well be a symptom of ADHD or depression. I suffer from both and sometimes it used to take me a month to do some basic cleaning besides laundry and bodily hygiene. I would always feel better if I were talking with somebody as I cleaned or there was somebody helping me clean.
And, FWIW, you seem to be babying her by taking care of everything and cause yourselves to fume. I wouldn’t dare say stop cleaning, but **involve** her rather than leave her alone to deal with her responsibility the way she was ment to.