MVWR unfortunately still lives with us, though hopefully, not for much longer. L, my significant other and I were living in a large city with my son. My best friend J was living in the Midwest. He had just broken up with his psychotic ex-girlfriend so I suggested a fresh start and offered him a place to stay until he got a job.

 I know, I know, big mistake right there, but when you care about someone, common sense usually goes out the window. For the first month or so, J filled out a good dozen applications a week and helped me with housework. Then the job applications petered out to zero. However, he had no problem eating what was left in the pantry and smoking our last cigarettes.

 A lot of other crap went down and L and I decided to move about an hour and a half south to be closer to his family.

Of course, since he had nowhere else to go, J came with us. We’ve been here barely a week and already he’s not only more whiny, but indignant as well. Everything is some Holden Caufield/Morrissey-esque ordeal for him. For example: most people would say they’re “going out to pick up some job applications,” J states that he’s “going to battle the vicious rain and cold and pray to see a help wanted sign.” (Yes, that is verbatim.) How many applications did he brave the vicious drizzle to acquire? Two. He managed to complete one.

The food freeloading and cigarette bumming continues, as well as sleeping until noon, but the real kicker? He’s been lying to his widowed mother the entire time. She lent him a grand to come out here and get himself settled. That money was gone in about a week and a half. When we moved down here, he lied again and said he already had a job (even more a slap in the face considering the amount of money he owes ME). This morning he muttered that he was going to the pawnshop – to sell the camera that belonged to his dead father (a photographer) for over 40 years. Oh, and he wants to give his mother MY phone number since we were so mean and didn’t just give him money to pay for it. Guess what – I’m telling her everything, and kindly asking her to purchase her son a one-way ticket back home.

I knew I was taking a risk when moving in with a friend, especially a friend I’ve had for five years, but it turns out “C”, my friend and current roommate is MVWR.

However, C, my boyfriend and myself we desperate to move off campus. We found a nice place that was a little expensive, but otherwise perfect. From the second day we lived there, C was always bragging about money and treating us like we were dead beats. He frequently mentioned that he made more money than my boyfriend and I combined ($15 more) and that he had just so much money and savings. He insisted on a 50/50 rent split because “I’m so financially set I can afford to make your lives easier.” He banned us from buying furniture for three months because he didn’t believe that we could pay our rent and he didn’t want to cover us (we bought furniture anyway, and still paid our rent).

He blew an entire check on an iPad, and then told us that we would be paying more rent because he didn’t have enough money to cover his share. He didn’t understand why we were so pissed about this, especially when he started treating us like we were the poor beggars and continued to brag about his wealth. We ended up going to a 60/40 split, 40 for him, with him telling us to make sure we were more careful with our money.

He randomly decided to buy a cheap car with cash, and then pump thousands into repairs for it. He had the nerve to mention to me that he might not be able to cover his portion of the rent, to which I told him that he better get it together because we weren’t lending him the money, which magically made him get the rent together. However, he’s been acting very mean about it, saying things like “well I can’t eat on campus because I don’t have any money now, do I?” as if it were my fault.

His personal hygiene is questionable; his bathroom (also the guest bathroom) has fecal matter spattered all over it. He doesn’t do any chores or help out around the house, expecting my boyfriend and I to do it all for him. He makes the same industrial sized portion of pasta to eat off for the week with a fake cheese sauce that makes the house reek. I give him rides and help him out all the time, but he still treats us like we are trash and need charity.

He constantly talks about how he is never going to move in with a couple again, and that living with a couple is a terrible experience. However, he started to look for people to replace us and he can’t find anyone to this day who wants to cover our portion of the rent. We’re out in June and have no concern about what he’s going to do when we’re gone.

My Very Worst Roommate is supposed to move out in three days. She was randomly assigned to me by the school. There are four of us in the apartment and she and I share a bedroom. She spends at least 18 hours a day in our bedroom. She showers about once every other week, and has done laundry once in the four months that we have lived here. When we moved in, she told me that she wouldn’t be home much because she has a very demanding major. The first three weeks she never left the apartment, except for one trip to the grocery store.

After that, she started attending class about once or twice a week, and complaining about how busy she is. The rest of us in the apartment are all under 20. She is 25 years old, yet she acts like she she is 14. She talks in a condescending childish voice, and is very manipulative. She rarely talks to people directly, instead choosing to leave notes for people. She is easily upset and if you accuse her of anything she gets very defensive. She acts unpredictably, and if you ask her something as simple as if she would mind doing her dishes you never know if she going to break own and cry or yell at you. She has no friends and spends at least 12 hours a day online with her laptop in bed, and never studies or does schoolwork of any kind.

She made it a point to make sure that we all knew that she has food allergies. She can’t eat milk or eggs, or a few other random things, like carrots and honey. She posted a list on the fridge of everything she can’t eat on the fridge, with sad faces next to the things that she claims will make her “instantly projectile vomit.” She complains often about her food problems. When she moved in, I felt bad for her, because she is rather overweight and she seems to not be able to eat much. I thought it must be a medical condition. It turns out, the things that she can eat, she eats a ton of. Several times a week she will get 2 foot-long Subway sandwiches with extra onions and a jumbo diet coke for lunch, and eats it in her bed so out room smells like onions for several days. The only usually only 3 foods she will eat; Subway, pizza, and taquitos. Other than that, she occasionally will make food but usually leaves it sitting next to her bed for several days after cooking it until it starts to mold and rot. She also will eat almost anything of mine. I have asked her a few times to ask me before eating my food, but she always denies ever eating my food, even when I confront her while she is eating it.

Our room has started to smell like something is rotting. After a while, I realized the smell was coming from her. She sits in her bed for so long and doesn’t shower that she now smells like death. It is so strong, that when she comes into other rooms of the apartment, you can see people holding their breaths until she leaves.

She refuses to clean. She brought cleaning supplies, but will not use them. The rest of us living here are very clean people, but she won’t clean up after herself. She leaves dishes in the living room for several days, but regularly complains that we are out of clean dishes even though none of the dishes are hers. Her only contribution to the apartment is dozens of old videos. She claims to be allergic to dust and mold, yet wont clean up anything. We have the end of the semester cleaning check tomorrow and the apartment complex gave everyone a checklist that will take about 4-5 hours each. She won’t do anything except vacuum because she said that she is allergic to cleaning supplies, even though her summer job was as a janitor.

We go to a very religious school, and it is mandatory to attend church, although it is not enforced. She never goes, which really isn’t any of my business. I don’t care whether or not she goes, but she always brings it up on Sunday mornings and has a strange excuse as to why she can’t go. One week, she had a baby shower, but the baby died so it was cancelled. Another time, she had to have a webcam party with her grandmother, because she was turning 100, even though she had previously told us that she had no living grandparents. The first two weeks, I believed her stories, but after that it because too obvious. As time went on, all her lies became more funny. I’ve been counting down the days until she moves out for the past two months.

S was a nice and fun guy and we became friends really fast so when he got kicked out from school and needed a place to crash, I thought, sure I’ll help out a friend in need. And you see, friendship is a tricky thing. Because sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time you’ve set yourself up for a mountain of disappointment. So S moves in, simply crashing on my couch and we decide on $80 per month( The entire rent was $500) and at first everything is great. The apartment is clean when I come home from school, S welcomes me in the door and says, “Hey how was your day.” This last for about two weeks. After that (I let him stay for about one year), he owes me a total $5000 for food, rent and smokes that I have so ignorantly given him. He can’t clean up after himself, my apartment literally looks like a dumpster simply because I can’t clean faster than he can make it messy.

So one day I tell him help me clean this up or he is gonna have to move out. Turns out he had gotten his money that same week (Approximately $2000). So when I asked him to help clean he runs for the hills faster then you can say the word “rent” and leaves me without my $5000, debts over my ears and several years of friendship behind. Still to this day, not a word from him. The only thing I’ve heard is when people have met him and he’s been telling them that I was suffocating him, asking him to clean up. I just want to tell S to give me my money and I’ll never speak to him again.

My second roommate I picked a girl instead. I thought girls are cleaner and will actually listen. But man I was wrong. When she moves in I tell her that the only rules I have is that the apartment will be hygienic and you’ll pay the rent on time because I don’t have the money to cover your share of the rent. Of course is all she says. I have now lived with this girl for six months (she only got to stay because I haven’t found a new roommate) and all she does is lie to my face, use my stuff, make a mess, play loud music, steal my stuff and not once been on time with the rent. But the most disturbing part is her room. It’s insane, this person must have seriously lived in a dumpster before my apartment. There’s stuff everywhere, it stinks so much that once I actually threw up after going in there. She has at least 10 trash bags in there that’s been standing there for months with rotten food in them. The floor is covered in dirt, food, rat poo and old Q-tips. Oh and did I forget to mention that she collects dead animals? And not the stuffed sanitized kind, no, the “this is the skin of a fox, hey look it still got its eyes left” kind. It smelled better in the elevator at the train station where I lived for a month. A lot better!

Safe to say I’m giving up on roommates completely!

A friend and I decided to move in with another friend for school. M was the second roommate, and E was who we were moving into a house with. E’s apartment should have sent up a red signal. This girl never cleaned anything. She would spill rice, glitter, anything on the floor, carpet, countertops, and just leave it. She never threw anything away. Trash littered the floor, tables, even her bed. Well, we figured the two of us could make her clean her own messes, so we decided it was no big deal; she’d been living on her own.

E moved in first. It was a few months before M and I could move in for good. No surprise, E barely unpacked anything. She was fine turning the house into another version of her apartment. She got a cat, and insisted on feeding it canned food although it gave it the most terrible diarrhea. She cleaned the litter box rarely, and got angry when we suggested she clean it. She left open cans of cat food everywhere, letting it spill and not cleaning it. I can’t even tell you the mess she was making out of this house because it won’t be submitted!

One day, E and I said, “Get up. We’re cleaning this house.” She threw a huge fit and started to cry, saying she needed things the way they were and that if she had to clean them, she wouldn’t have any use for them, and blah blah blah. She had to go on vacation with her family, and we told her flat out, “While you’re gone, we’re cleaning. We won’t throw anything of yours away, we’ll stack it up in your room.” She reluctantly agreed. E and I had a week to clean, and routinely gagged cleaning the kitchen.

I should mention we had a roach problem. Roaches had been living and laying eggs on E’s plates and in her food because she didn’t bother putting anything away. We filled up seven trash bags of just trash, and from the kitchen alone. Her cat had been having diarrhea that was stuck on the walls behind the litter box (she took the cat with her). As I said, I can’t mention every little thing we cleaned. But we threw away upwards of 25 trash bags in total, all filled with just trash. The house wasn’t spotless when we were done, but now at least you wouldn’t get sick just walking into it. E came back, and was surprisingly calm.

The house isn’t as clean as we left it now, but it’s better. M, who has a backbone, flat out told E she was either getting rid of the cat, or keeping the box and food in her room, because the rest of us can’t live with the smell. E was also very angry that we shoved all her crap in her room. We told her she can bring it back down, but she has to keep it tidy and can’t leave it on the floor. She hasn’t brought anything back down. I now have to clean up her computer desk everyday because she flat out throws a fit whenever I try to get her to. M and I clean everything in the house besides E’s room. E doesn’t clean a damn thing. It’s like raising a pissy messy toddler. Roaches are still around, but there are a lot less of them now.

Again, I can’t say how much we hate living here and how disgusting she keeps the house. If not for M and I spending an hour cleaning every day, I’m sure the health department would kick us out and burn the place down within a week. We signed a 2-year lease. We’re 25% done! We’ll still be friends with E when this is over, but we’ll never live with her again! Pray for us!

In college, my roommate C wanted find a person to take her place while she went home for one summer. We found J, with her puppy, they moved in and C went home. The problem was the smell. The puppy was not potty trained yet and all J did was putting down potty pads and left. The puppy, not recognizing the difference between potty pads, and well, the carpet, proceeded to pee on basically every inch within its little fenced-off area (size of a twin bed). J only “cleaned” by putting towels on the affected, but already dried-off areas after she got home. I didn’t know if she realized that towels were not naturally deodorizing. Potty pads, though, easy enough to get rid of right? J thought so too, and she placed the potty pads, facing up, ON the trash can under the kitchen sink. She also never took out that trash.

After a month, J had found a new place to live, and told me she’d be moving out a month earlier than planned. When I told her that I could not afford next month’s rent all by myself if she moved out, she said she’d “help out with money,” wrote me a check for a couple hundred bucks, and moved out anyway. I paid the rest out of my own pocket. The rest of the summer, I was invaded by an army of fleas and had to call the exterminator.

C came back. Passive-aggressive friend issues are all “she said, she said,” so I’ll fast forward to the end of the school year. C had gotten an internship out of state for the summer and also no longer wanted to live at the apartment. I, being the doormat I am, let her off our lease and gave her share of the security deposit back from my pocket. When she moved out, I was left responsible for two more months worth of rent and $100 left in my bank account.

After a minor meltdown, I went to Craig’s List trying sublet my apartment for the summer. I found two working guys, CW and S. I moved out all my things, and CW moved in. I went home to my parents’ place and S moved in a week later. I guess the following cannot be described as MVWR since these guys were my tenants.

S called me and complained that CW was smoking inside the apartment a lot. CW was always very nice to me on the phone, and he promised he’d stop smoking inside. When I went to collect rent, S informed me that CW had not stopped, and my apartment now smelled like a smoker’s lounge. S moved out soon after.

I had signed a lease for the next school year. CW was supposed to move out by one Friday, and the front door lock was to be changed the next day per my new roommates’ request. On that Friday when I went to collect his last rent payment, CW was not there. Not only had he not moved out, he had added to his belongings a week’s worth of fast food wrappers, paper cups, and cigarette butts on the balcony. There were also cigarette burns all over the carpet inside my bedroom. I couldn’t stay long, so CW told me when I called, that he would clear out his things later that night and mail me a check.

When I came back after the weekend, my front door lock had changed, but I didn’t need to use my new key to get in, because it was unlocked and left ajar. My window next to the front door was on the ground outside of the apartment. CW had left with his things but he left me his dirty mattress, all the garbage, and some dirty socks. He had not moved his things out before the lock was changed, broke into my apartment, and left the front door open. Of course, he no longer answered my calls after that, and I never got the last rent payment.

I never wanted roommates again, but somehow I ended up living with my slob of a brother. My grown-up, with a good job, also in the mid-twenties, brother. Now I deal with his leaving dirty dishes everywhere, keeping moldy food in the fridge, losing my mail, paying bills late, etc. Well, at least it’s just the classics.

My MVWD and I have been friends since high school. So when her parents got divorced and sold their house and she needed to find her own place I agreed to find an apartment with her to help pay the rent.

Roughly two months after we moved in together things started going down hill very quickly. Her drug dealer boyfriend got kicked out of his apartment and needed a place to stay “for a few weeks.” It’s five months later and he still hasn’t left. To make matters worse, he just moved his dog in with us and nobody asked if that was okay with me. Three people, two cats and a dog in our tiny basement apartment is just not working anymore. I’m uncomfortable with dogs, which is not a surprise to her since I always have been, so she keeps the dog locked up in her room. I feel terrible for the dog and it cries all the time, but I have no interest in a canine roommate. Since she always has her bedroom door closed to keep the dog in, her cat doesn’t have access to his litter box or food. Which means that I feed and clean up after her pet.

The dog and boyfriend are just the tip of the iceberg though. She’s a complete slob. Not once have I seen her wipe the counters, mop or sweep the floor. She leaves unwashed dishes with food caked on them all over the kitchen, and doesn’t pick up any food that she drops on the floor. The ventilation in the apartment isn’t great so leaving food out stinks the place up pretty quick.

She’s also terrible with her money. We make roughly the same amount of money, pay the same amount of rent and both have car loans, yet she’s constantly broke. We each buy our own food, but share things like milk, butter, toilet paper and dish soap. The only issue is that I end up buying all of it! I decided that the next time we ran out of toilet paper I would go buy my own and keep it in my room to see how long she would leave it before she went out and bought some. That was about 10 days ago, I guess she’s using Kleenex.

Basically I’m at my breaking point with her and am currently apartment hunting. It sucks that this situation is going to likely end an eight-year friendship, but it’s not worth the frustration. I’m telling her tomorrow that she’s on her own.

About five months ago I was looking to get out of a crappy lease and an acquaintance, J, needed a subletter. His asking price was within my budget, the neighborhood was great and we got along okay, at first. J finally found a job after months of searching. It was supposed to be a work-at-home position, which was great, because he has an elderly bulldog who is stubborn, arthritic and incontinent. The dog can’t be left alone. A few weeks into the new job, J was shipped cross-country for a project on 12 hours notice for 10 days. I volunteered to watch the dog. Big mistake. The dog hates stairs (we live on the second floor), hates being walked and he pees and poops all over the hardwood floors and bathroom. He’s not neutered, so his pee is really strong, and the smell never fades. Still, I put up with it, because I said I would.

Ten days became three weeks. I asked J to board the dog. He didn’t really respond. Three weeks turned into six. On my birthday he emailed me to say he’d be gone for two to three more months. I asked him again, politely and firmly, to board the dog or hire a sitter. He wrote back, “I’ll think about it.” From then until he came home a month later, a dogsitter came twice a day. Most of the time. Sometimes she only came once and sometimes she never came at all. She was completely unpredictable, so I had to be home all the time anyway just so I knew the dog would eat. Once I came home from work early and the dogsitter refused to walk the dog, because, as she put it, “You moved in with J to help take care of the dog” (One hundred percent not true). Ten minutes after she said that, I had an ad on Craigslist looking for a new place to live.

J came home about two weeks ago and immediately began complaining about the dog-pee smell. While I was at work, he cleaned the bathroom with bleach and left a note (followed up with an email) forbidding me to use it for several hours. Why he couldn’t do it in the morning, when I wasn’t home, is beyond me. The next day while I wasn’t home and he was, the dog got injured and they ended up spending the night at the emergency vet. He blames me. Since then, he has refused to talk to or be in the same room as me. He won’t touch anything I own, including my dish soap. He gets angry when I talk to or pet the dog. Meanwhile, the dog is recovering from his injury in a cage too small for him to stand up or turn around in and is left alone for hours at a time without food or water. He doesn’t care about the creature who was his only companion during his divorce and extended unemployment.

I’m moving out in a month and until then, I’ve decided if I can’t be happy at home, at least I can make him as miserable as he’s making me. I’ve taken over the living room and I’m not moving. I win.

I am currently living with MVWR. Long story short: my 40-something brother got a divorce and lost his job, and for whatever reason, my parents let him stay at our house until he finds another job and a place to live. Originally, the stay was supposed to be for two weeks. He has been here for three months now, and I am quickly losing my mind. Granted, he isn’t one of those disgusting roommates that leaves dirty dishes out and never showers, but it’s his personality that bothers me most. He stays up all night talking to his girlfriend on the phone, he leaves his stuff all over the place, and he eats my food without asking or offering to pay me back when I ask where my food is.

He also annoys my cat, who now takes swipes at me and everyone else who tries to be nice to her because he’s pissed her off so much. That actually caused me to have a really condescending conversation with him about how we should “be nice to the kitty, because she will hurt other people if she is mad. We want to be nice to kitty! We pet her fur like THIS.” He leaves without locking the doors or shutting the windows (we live less than a mile from a freeway and our neighborhood is frequently burgled) and complains when we ask him to lock the doors! His two kids come to our house every other weekend (per a custody agreement with his wife) and he does NOTHING to entertain them. He naps while they watch TV for an ENTIRE weekend because there is nothing else for them to do.

When I wake up in the morning to go to school, he bombards me with asinine questions about school, and even when I give him one word answers he continues to ask if he can “go to school with me.” He also likes to brag about how much money he spends on clothes, “hey, how much do you think I spent on these jeans? I mean, look! They have holes in them! But I spent over $100 on them! Is that kind of ridiculous? Why would someone buy jeans with holes in them?!” Basically, he is a 14-year-old in the body of an older man. It’s terrible. I can’t fully express how irritating it is. I’m hoping now that since he finally found a job, he will be moving out soon. That way I can be at peace in my own house, instead of ripping my hair out at the thought of going home.

My junior year I was entering into a housing situation with a group of mutual friends on campus. In order to live there, we all needed to room as doubles, and I was given the new girl, Rowena [name changed], because “our zodiac symbols matched” and we were “sure to get along.” I’ve been burned by roommates before, but since I snore, I’ve accepted that I will never be pleased with my room arrangement. Still, I was determined to make the best of the unfortunate situation. Little did I know, Rowena suffers from some sort of low-grade autism. This means she has difficulties adjusting to change, responding to stimulus, remembering what she is told and about a hundred weird little quirks, including paranoia.

I’m a heavy sleeper, especially when I fall asleep with headphones, but I find it hard to sleep nowadays. For starters, Rowena talks in her sleep. Actually, calling it “talking” would be generous, since the noises she makes are usually wails, kissing noises, slurps, chittering (like a squirrel), and occasional shrieks. This happens multiple times per night, usually 3-5 days a week. To make matters worse, about twice a week she’ll become comatose, and sleep for periods of greater than 24 hours. During these times I cannot use the room, turn on the lights, etc. or there will be HELL TO PAY.

For reasons I will never understand, Rowena keeps three alarm clocks, which she hides all around the room, and they’re all turned on maximum volume. The alarms begin at random intervals sometime between 4am and 5am, and will literally go off for hours. The alarms are so loud that some of our roommates have complained, but to no avail. Once I went to class while they were going off and when I came back four hours later, they were still going. The only way they get shut off is if I get up and shut them off. If I wake her up, she simply resets the alarms and return to bed, so this cycle happens a couple of times each morning. When I do shut them off, she rages for hours about how I have no right, even though she still misses class when I do wake her up. Either way, I lose

There’s also the generic bad roommate behaviors. She’s very messy, doesn’t do her part around the suite, eats my food and lets her trash pile up and turns the lights off when I’m in the room working. Several times I’ve found rubbish, pill containers, boots and even her underwear in my things. Once I found a wrapped tampon in my desk drawer. But I think the thing that makes me angriest is the fact that she’s been pawing through my things. I recently found pages in my diary dogeared and it’s pretty obvious she’s been checking my history. She constantly spies on me and often accuses me of things I didn’t do such as sabotaging her, stealing from her and spreading rumors about her. Even when we’re on good terms, she is constantly disapproving of my activities and friends, nagging me like some demented harpy.

I’ve tried many times to tell her my concerns, but each time she agrees with me, and continues with the behaviors. My RA can’t do anything, since the situation isn’t hazardous and I don’t have any proof. I can’t believe I have another year of this crap left.