A Cleaning Freak

My Very Worst Roommate is my older brother, C. Due to our mom’s obsessively clean tendencies, he has no idea how to maintain a household. I didn’t know how extreme it would be until we started sharing a house with roommates. He has cleaned literally three times in the year we have lived here. The first time I was at work when I got a text from him declaring: “I cleaned the hardwood! Tell me what you think when you get home.” When he asked me a few days later I said they looked fine.

Him: “Thanks. There’s still some smudges…”

Me: “Hmm. Did you mop?” (Note: our Swiffer Sweeper and Clorox WetJet live right next to each other.)

Him:”We’re supposed to mop?”

I heard about his second brush with chores from another roommate. She cleaned frequently and told me, “Once I was doing the floors and I asked C if he wanted to help. He ran the vacuum for literally three minutes, then went, ‘Whew! That was hard!’ and went back into his room.” The most recent time was about a month ago: I got another text from him saying, “I cleaned the bathroom so try not to mess it up.” When I got home the only difference I could see was that he had rinsed his whiskers out of the sink, something he has not learned to do consistently despite being 27. By his next shave it already looked “normal” again, but that didn’t stop him from talking about cleaning the bathroom over and over for next few weeks including bragging to our parents.

The worst, however, is his inability to handle dishes/food-related garbage. He leaves dirty soup cans, to-go boxes, frozen food packages and dishes everywhere. One time he cooked stew, ate about half of it, and left the rest in a huge pot in the sink for three weeks until I threatened to leave it in his bed because despite the lid I could smell it rotting. It gets so bad that my boyfriend (who doesn’t even live with us) would clean up the kitchen while waiting for me to get home from school. After C got sick of me requesting he not leave crusty dishes in the sink until they’re evolving into intelligent life (and we HAVE a dishwasher!), he decided the best solution is to eat in his room and leave everything there. Multiple times I’d go in to collect trash and would find a precarious tower of fossilized/molding food-crusted plates and bowls and utensils in the middle of a forest of old fast-food cups, some leaking soda-sludge through their soaked bottom seams.

I don’t go in his room to take care of his garbage anymore. And I’m so glad our lease is almost up.