Hello mustachians,
Longtime lurker here, driven out of my nice, shy hidey-hole by frustration over how to handle a housemate. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!!
Let's call this problem housemate "21", which is her age*.
It's gotten to the point where my Partner and I are having 1-2 grumpy/angry conversations with each other about it every week, and I'm seriously considering either asking her to leave (something we've never done before to a housemate) or moving ourselves (something we'd hate doing). What would you do?
The house: 21, plus me, my Partner, and Great Housemate (all late 20s-early 30s), in Perth, Australia. We have a positive steal of a house in a neighborhood I think is the most convenient in the city (public transit, walk to library and shops, easy to cycle along the river bike trails to work). The house is spacious, has perfect areas for entertaining friends, fruit trees in the garden, and "sections" of the house so the housemates can have their own areas. It is hands-down the best place Partner and I have ever shared.
Partner and I have lived with 13+ housemates over the past seven years, and we thought we'd gotten good at living with idiosyncrasies. We've overall had such good housemate experiences and wanted to keep up the stashing rate, but I can see this situation is starting to cause us real strife.
The problems: 21 is inconsiderate of people and things, and a lot of annoyances are starting to add up to drive me and Partner crazy. In rough order of severity:
- She was late with fortnightly rent about 5-6 times in the first six months, and it took THREE serious conversations from me before she finally set up an auto transfer. She still is a bit hit-or-miss with paying bills without multiple reminders.
- She STOMPS through the house (super old wood floors) and SLAMS doors. Great Housemate (a big tall tradie dude!) sneaks across the same floors whisper quiet on his toes. 21 does this at all times of the day and night, and it honestly concerns us that she'll break something. She's reduced this slightly in the past few months, but it comes back full force when she comes home drunk late at night. She wakes us up stomping when she goes to work every single morning (she flies out the door in a rush).
- I am 99% certain she has never taken the kitchen trash or recycling out to the bins. Partner and I went away for a 4 days once, and it was the same trash when we returned (full before we left, overfull when we came back). She takes trash from her own room, puts it in the kitchen bin, and leaves it there. If the recycling bucket is full, she sets her (unwashed) recycling on the shelves next to it instead of taking anything out.
- She leaves dirty dishes next to the sink or on the stove frequently. Last week, she left a box of chicken on the sink for more than 24 hours until I asked her if it was hers; she said "yes" and I said "That's gross, 21" (in a disapproving mom voice...) and she silently/sullenly picked it up, dumped the gross chicken in the bin, threw the dirty box in the sink without washing it, and walked away.
- She has never - not a single time, my hand to god - cleaned a common area off her own bat in her nine months of living here. We resorted to chore assignments (Partner sends out an email asking each housemate -including me and Partner- to do a job that benefits the whole house, like clean the toilet or sweep the floors), but she usually doesn't do those until weeks later, after multiple email reminders. Great Housemate does his promptly with no fuss, and goes well over and above on fundamentally improving the house (I love living with a tradie!).
- She occasionally forgets to lock the front security door. She has never closed the bathroom or toilet windows before leaving (which someone could use to break into the house).
- She leaves makeup removing cotton pads on the bathroom vanity every morning (dirty, used ones).
- She borrows things without asking, namely my plastic food storage boxes, and she doesn't wash them properly afterwards (mmm greasy spag bol plastic...).
- She uses aerosol dry shampoo every morning, and the smell wafts through the house. Partner and I find this particular smell really, deeply unpleasant. Similarly, she's got aerosol "air freshener" in the toilet that is even more disgusting.
- She leaves wet clothes in the washing machine for days, or on the line for weeks.
- She never ever puts dry dishes away. Never ever! In previous houses, we realized the drying rack was a source of contention, so we have FIVE drying racks, so there's always plenty of space for dishes to dry. If I set aside her things on the counter, they are there for weeks, until I watch Great Housemate put them away himself.
- If she takes something from elsewhere in the house (e.g. clothes drying racks), when she's finished with them, she leaves it outside her room in the hallway and never puts it away again.
- She locks the front door (from the inside) instead of the security door, which no one has keys for. She is actually locking us out. She said she did it because she wanted to nap, but can't provide any coherent reasoning for why she didn't lock the security door instead.
- "Oh maybe she's just a really busy, intelligent person and that's why she does all this inconsiderate stuff" you might be generously thinking (you're a very kind-hearted mustache). Alas, she has no time to take out the bin because she is watching Netflix. Literally. CONSTANTLY. She carries her laptop from room to room. She carries her laptop into the toilet to keep watching.
- She chain smokes cigarettes on the front verandah. She and Great Housemate fill up the entire recycling wheelie bin with beer and gin bottles every single fortnight.
/end rant.
TLDR: Our house has become a dirtier, noisier, smellier place since our housemate "21" moved in. Partner, who is normally a very generous, relaxed person, has gotten more and more frustrated. They now say things like "21 is so horrible" under their breath and feel trapped by the situation. The resentment has resulted in Partner letting slip angry comments to 21 about minor offenses (e.g. never washing her hands after the toilet), when I think we have to save the behaviour-correcting conversations for the big items.
The financials: Partner and I leased this house, and when the lease lapsed last year, the landlord never got her shit together to give us a new one (she lives in Adelaide), so now I guess we're month to month. Our rent in this house is laughably low, partly because the landlord lowered our rent to keep us here, and partly because Partner and I unevenly distribute the rent amongst housemates. The distribution is based on room size like this:
me+partner = 1.1x
Great Housemate = 1.3x
21, the newest housemate = 1.6x
Our options:
Financially, we should stay so we can build our stash. Emotionally, we're getting worse instead of better, and we need to find a way to feel less trapped by this teenage monster.
1) Stay here, don't try to kick out 21, try to fix our own perceptions of the problems. We've been trying this for 9 months, but it feels like it's getting worse instead of better.
2) Start nagging her/preparing to ask her to move out. This option is the most confrontational, unpleasant emotionally, and doesn't necessarily mean we'd get a better housemate the next time around. It is severely complicated by the fact that 21 and Great Housemate appear to be sleeping together sometimes (but secretly, hiding it from us, and not apparently dating). He does a lot of chores for 21 as well, e.g. washing her dishes after she's left them in the sink for days. We would be sad if getting rid of 21 caused Great Housemate to leave.
3) Move out, either into our own little place together, or into a room in someone else's sharehouse. Rents in Perth are coming down and Partner has a recent raise, so it might be doable to maintain our stash rate, but it almost certainly won't be as good value for money as we have here. Plus, when I suggested this option to Partner, they were angry that we're considering leave *our* house because of her.
Mustaches, what would you do? Anything that helps us gain perspective so we can choose option 1 without losing our minds?
*Not a dig at all 21 year olds, I'm just bad at code names.