I (f30) live in a shared house with two other people (both male, early 30s). We all get along great apart from the odd tiff over cleaning.
Unfortunately, one of guys’ bedrooms absolutely reeks of bad odour. He doesn’t smell himself, just the room – and sometimes the bathroom after he’s been there in the morning. The problem is that he without fail leaves his door open and window shut, so the whole hallway ends up smelling. I sometimes close the door but worry it will come across as weird/passive aggressive as he’s obviously not aware of how bad the smell is.
It’s such a tricky topic – does anyone have any advice for how to approach? He’s super nice and a good housemate mostly, and I don’t want to upset him.
Tldr – housemate’s bedroom stinks of sweat, which makes the hallway smell very, very bad. Don’t want to upset him but it’s also getting unbearable with summer temperatures. What to do?
3 comments
*”Housemate your bedroom smells very strongly of sweat and it is making the hallway smell. This is getting worse as the weather gets warmer and it would be great if you could take care of this.”*
That’s it. Make him aware without making it a confrontation.
“Hey man, your room is smelling kind of weird. Can you give it a good clean [or suggest something more specific… not sure what the odor source is] and open your window to air it out?”
And express gratitude if he does put in the effort to fix/reduce the stank.
When I was in the Navy out for operation Desert Storm I was flown around the world to an overpacked Frigate in the Persian Gulf and was sleeping in the passageways due to the overcrowding. Eventually they tore out the crews lounge furniture and stuck 10 of us in very tight quarters on cots. Well 2 of the guys had very poor hygiene. I mean they reeked. The crew shares communal laundry hampers and every uniform item gets stenciled with your name. Now you could smell these guys in the rack next to you but… Anyways one day we are gathering the laundry from the chute to bring it to the laundry and out flops this thick racing striped underwear with yellow crusty stuff along the sides of the crotch. They were stiff like they had been dipped in wall paper paste. We start poking at them with the broom handle and found the other guys skivvies and they are equally nasty. These things had to have been worn for a week or longer while having bouts of diarrhea and a nasty case of crotch rot. Their white T shirts were sweat stained and yellowed. It was gross, the worst you could imagine. I went to the ships store and bought them both deodorant and soap and left them both notes that we were tired of this and that I expected them to use this gift daily or as close to that as ships water hours permitted. Did it help? Somewhat. They were not quite as nasty as before but remained the two worst in a coop of 58 men.
That was me being nice. We had Seaman Kang in that group who was very annoying and inconsiderate. When lights out would get called he would take the emergency lantern from the wall and light up the entire space keeping us up as he chuckled reading his book, eating food he swiped from the mess decks. We would ask him to knock it off and he would tell me to go F*ck myself. Kang was all of 96 lbs dripping wet and I was 230lbs. One day he was gone and we were on water restriction for 3 days now and I was getting baboon butt from pulling my time in the ships scullery for 16 hours a day. We looked in his pillow and found the fruit he was stealing. I decided it was time for revenge. I dropped my drawers in front of the other guys and rotated his fruit inside of my moist and irritated buttocks. I made certain each piece was good and ripe with my butt funk but before I put things back I used his pillow case to completely clean my nether regions of any funky crotch sweat or remaining anal leakage.
That night when Kang took the lantern down and lit up the sleeping area and began munching on his booty I asked how that fruit was. He said good, why are you asking. I said nothing as everybody started laughing. That became our standard way of dealing with him. Nobody liked him, even the guys from his division. Every night he settled down with his face on my as*.
The interesting bit was when I was getting discharged years later my Combat Systems Officer who I was somewhat friendly with (if you can be friends with any officer, though we did jam together while deployed) asked if there was any truth to the Seaman Kang story. This was years later and I did a doubletake. Apparently my exploits had gotten all around the ship, to include the Ward Room with All of the officers. This meant even the Captain knew about this now. I said I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of any fruit stolen from the mess decks having residing between my buttocks at any time. I then was discharged from the Navy.
I think you should try talking with your roommates because my methods probably would not serve your goals. I wanted revenge because beating that twerp would only get me in trouble regardless of how badly he deserved it. I did body slam him once and he went flying down the passageway but his complaint to the Master at Arms went nowhere.Your roommate may not be aware of how bad he smells or how disruptive it is. In the end you are helping him out if he manages to get his act together as most females have an acute sense of smell and don’t want to bed down scroads. Point out no female would want to get her face near his crotch as things stood. Tell him that if he cant get the odor down and be considerate by closing his pigsty down he will need to find alternate accommodations. It’s not likely that the next roommates will appreciate his particular funky odor either so it’s best that he change now and maintain a certain level of cleanliness or the world will become a difficult place to navigate be it Work, interpersonal relations or the fairer sex.