I lived in an apartment that my campus owned my senior year in college. My best friends “C”, “K” and I decided that we wanted to move in to one of these apartment together, and we asked one of our friends, let’s call them “Sal,” to live in the other half of the apartment.

Everything started out just fine, we all got along well and we set up clear rules and boundaries for community spaces. It wasn’t long until things went south though. Sal was fairly messy, and after the first few weeks of living together, this became a bigger issue. He was constantly leaving dirty dishes (all of which I provided) all over the apartment to sit for days on end until old food was dried, crusted and sometimes moldy. We consistently had problems of mold in our trashcan because he would throw away old rotting food and not take the bag out, causing the apartment to smell. Sal was particularly bad with leaving dirty pots and pans (again, provided by me) on the stove after cooking, and being from the south, he often pan fried things in grease, and left it all out to make the whole apartment smell like greasy fried food for days. We talked about it and he would promise to be better about it, and then go right back to his old ways a few days later. We would try to passive-agressively leave notes about it, or wait until he finally took care of his dishes, but many times one of us would finally get sick of the smell or would need to use a pan and we would scrub pans he had left lying around. He started using our food without asking and promising to repay us for it, but never would. He would mysteriously be very hard to get a hold of when the electric was due (thankfully, that was the only bill that didn’t come directly out of our student accounts)

Occasionally, we would host small gatherings with friends at our apartment (only after hours of cleaning up, largely cleaning up messes Sal had left). One particular occasion included a surprise birthday party for a friend whom Sal did not know, but he joined in anyway. He took the liberty of eating an entire pizza that night, along with partaking in all the other food and drinks we had bought for the occasion. We had bought a family size tub of ice cream and it was hardly touched by guests the night of the party, but Sal managed to finish of the entire tub by himself over the span of just a few days. Sal also took advantage of C’s TV and game systems in the living room, and would leave them on and running when he left the house. We were all consistently picking up after him, and K always had to buy the toilet paper for their shared bathroom and Sal never cleaned it, not once the entire year.

The final straw came when Sal left the house early one morning and locked his bedroom door, apparently forgetting he had set his alarm. His alarm began going off at 7:30am. He did not return home until 9pm. This was just a few weeks before the end of the semester and all of us had tests, projects, and papers. The alarm would have gone off all day if after several hours or beeping frustration, I took matters into my own hands. I discovered that you could open the locked doors pretty easily with a credit card (yes, like they do in the movies) and I went in a turned off his alarm clock. When he returned home, I was upfront about the incident and I apologized for the intrusion, but explained that the alarm was hindering everyone’s work.

Sal was outraged. He immediately searched through everything in his room to ensure that nothing was taken. He then began making wild accusations that I stole some money out of his desk, and that a lighter was missing. He began claiming that we were all conspiring against him and all the passive-agressive notes were attacking him, specifically because we all hated him (which may have been partly true). The fight wrapped up and everyone went to bed. The next day, he had suddenly written his name on all of his food along with messages like “Don’t touch!” and “This is not ‘apartment property’”. He was out of the apartment or shut in his room most of the time (which helped with the TV issue, but only worsened the dishes issue).

At the end of the year K, C, and I spent hours cleaning up the apartment after Sal moved out so that we could get our security deposit back, even going as far as to break into Sal’s room and clean up all the trash he left behind and taking all the pictures of nude women off the walls (which it’s fortunate that I did, because I found two of my cups, dirty, in the bottom of his closet. Ew!). Sal never paid for the last electricity bill, because he had stopped speaking to any of us after the big blow-out fight, but it was worth the extra the three of us paid to never have to speak to him again!

In first year university, I was paired up with three other girls.
While two were decent, if not a little messy, Mel was a disaster. She
never seemed to have any class or work, and spent most her time
tanning, drinking, partying loudly, watching “Bewitched” on her computer
in the common room, shopping for discount Juicy Couture, eating
McDonalds, playing Britney Spear’s “Womanizer” ad nauseum, and being a
general laze-about.

She never did the dishes, but instead would stash
her dirty cutlery in her room, depriving the other housemates of
dishes and glasses. Her blankets, shoes, hair accesories, hair balls
etc would be left scattered around the common room. Her own bedroom was an
utter disaster, and she would often bring over loud, drunken friends
at odd hours.

She left, mid-semester, to go on a trip to Florida and
returned with a Chihuahua puppy. Our apartment had a strict no pets
policy, and the other roommates were a little appalled she would bring
home a pet without telling anyone. The dog was untrained, scared
stupid by loud noises and she would use our dishes to feed it kibble,
not washing the smell of oily dog food off before dumping them off in
the sink for us to clean.

When we confronted her about the dog and the
lack of responsibilities on her part, she had a fit and said we didn’t
get her, that her dogs were the only creatures who truly loved and
understood her, and her awful childhood left her with such a void in
her life only a bug-eyed Chihuahua could fill it. Also, she wanted to
leave the school so the dog was a ploy to get kicked out of residence
without having to break her contract and pay a fine, although she (and
by she, I mean her parents) would have to pay a fee for having the dog
in the first place. Luckily by second semester she was gone and a nice
french girl had replaced her.

My final year of school I lived with three other girls, two of them, Jessica and Katie, were great and I remain friends with them, but the other one, Crystal, was a disaster. The four of us lived in a three bedroom apartment, Jessica and I had our own rooms but Katie and Crystal had to share a room. The first couple months we lived together, everything was fine – nobody did anything too terrible. Then, all of a sudden, Jessica and Crystal had a fight and stopped talking to each other. I figured it was just their problem and as long as they could be civil with each other and not involve Katie and I in their feud, it would be fine.

However, soon after this happened, Crystal started becoming unbearable for any of us to live with. First it was little things, like talking on the phone late at night. We’d tell her to quiet down, sometimes she did and sometimes she didn’t. Then it was loud music early in the morning while she got ready and the rest of us were still sleeping. She’d apologize whenever any of us complained about it but her behavior didn’t change.

Then it progressed further. She stopped doing her dishes and they just piled up in the sink, making it impossible for the rest of us to use it. She left all her belongings in the living room constantly even when she wasn’t there, so the rest of us weren’t able to use it. She also left nasty hair in the tub, sink, etc… and this is despite her telling all of us that she was a clean person and lecturing us several times about cleaning up after ourselves.

She started bringing all these guys over and having loud sex in her room, and because of this Katie often felt like she couldn’t sleep in the room so she’d end up at the library. She was sleeping with several different guys and then constantly complained that none of these guys actually wanted a relationship. She even had a pregnancy scare at one time. They were loud frat guys too, so whenever they were over, the rest of us wouldn’t be able to study or do anything productive.

Finally, she smoked weed all the time and all over the house. Now, I don’t mind what people choose to do, but at the least, when she lives in an apartment with three people who don’t smoke, she should go smoke outside or at a friend’s place. But no, she’d smoke in the living room and make the entire place smell like weed. When we confronted her about it, she switched to smoking in her bedroom (except when she was home alone, when she’d still smoke in the living room, which didn’t change the fact that the place would smell when we got home). But since that was Katie’s room as well, that was still a problem. Eventually we all got so used to Crystal being high that we couldn’t imagine her when she wasn’t.

After several attempts by all of us to talk to her about her behavior, she basically said she refused to change the way she was. By this time we only had a couple months left to live with her so we just decided to deal with it. The last few weeks together, the bathroom got increasingly dirty, including the sink becoming clogged. We all knew it was from her so the rest of us didn’t do anything about it, and instead left her to fix it along with cleaning the rest of her filth (she was the last one to move out). She then wrote a long tirade on Facebook about how we should all go to hell for making her “clean the whole place herself.” Sorry girl, but all that filth was yours. Thankfully she unfriended us all so we don’t have to deal with her anymore.

MVWR was a girl that I lived with my junior year of college. Lets call her M. After transferring to a new school, I had decided to live in the dorms in order to meet new friends. However I ended up having to live with the most annoying, “OCD”, territorial and passive aggressive person I have ever met.

I had arrived first to move in to the dorms so I was pretty much already settled in when M moved in later. This girl was a petite blonde who liked the Ed Hardy/Jersey Shore Douche look. She also had the loudest voice I have ever heard! Now, I’m not a slob and I did some initial cleanup/sanitatition upon moving in to the apartment; but M went crazy with the cleaning. She scrubbed down all the walls, doors and doorknobs. She also cleaned both of the bathrooms including mopping. At first I thought it would be nice to live with someone so clean, but it did not turn out so great.

A week later, M asked me and the other roommate (X, who is a MVWR story all of her own) if one of the bathrooms could specificly belong to her while both of us shared the other one.  At first I said no, because it did not make any sense since there were three of us, and what if someone needed to use the bathroom while someone was in it etc. These logical statements made M burst into tears and cry/sniffle about how “it wasn’t respectful.” So we ended up letting her use the small bathroom while we used the big one.

A month into living with M, I noticed that her “OCD cleaning problem” appeared to not be a real issue because M was actually a very messy person! She would make ramen with my pots and never clean after (even though she somehow managed to burn the ramen and thus the pan). She would also clip her toenails on the living room coffee table and never clean it up. Gross! Then there was “her” bathroom. It was utterly disgusting, with the toilet never flushed, dust everywhere, used tampons on the floor etc. There were also red lipstick kiss marks on the mirror that were a bitch to clean off later.

The last problem was her psychotic ex-boyfriend, who shall be called Duke. She had broken up with him because he had abused her, so I have no idea why she would get back with him. The climatic moment was one morning when they got into a fight and Duke shoved M up against a wall. Somehow something glass was shattered, I found tiny shards of glass right in the hallway for months after.

Eventually X and I filed a police report against Duke because of his violent behaviour (he would try to start fights with us over imagined slights, even if we were sleeping or our doors were closed) and this was the final straw for M. She finally moved out, but never really cleaned up after herself and also left about 20 huge nails in the wall from pictures. We calculated that M probably got fined about $2,000 for her apartment damages.

I had a few roommates in college, but by far my very worst roommate was living with me earlier this year. Thankfully, she didn’t last more than three months in my house. I rent a family friend’s house and my mother, husband, and my stepkids share it. Someone close to the family needed a place to stay in my city to go to school.

She was a slob. She would make food in the kitchen and dirty nearly every dish, never cleaned up after herself (mac ‘n cheese juice boiled over and baked onto the stovetop, dishes everywhere, etc). How hard is it to rinse it off and throw it in the dishwasher? She would leave her dishes and dirty clothes all over the living room and tried to take over the whole bathroom, which wasn’t all that big. She would do laundry and then leave it in the middle of the floor in the living room and then complain that the dogs would tip over the basket.

She had a lot of annoying little quirks, like chomping her food with her mouth open and was completely irresponsible and rude. She didn’t have a job or go to school yet and let someone else pay her bills, she would sleep until 2PM or 3PM and be noisy all night even though I get up at 4:45AM. She wouldn’t take the garbage out or clean up around the house. She would ask me to take her places right before I was going to bed, ask to loan her money, and ask me to go places with her and call in to work the next day.

By far the funniest part happened after a really bad snowstorm (about 17 inches). I had fractured and dislocated my ankle the week before, so obviously couldn’t be much help but I did get out and shovel for about an hour until my mom (who lives in the upstairs half of the house) made me go inside. We had to beg and threaten and basically push my roommate out to get her to go help.

After maybe 10-15 minutes outside, she came back in and said her part was done. When I questioned it, she told me that she was starting to sweat (after 10-15 MINUTES) and if she stayed out in the cold she would get hypothermia and DIE. Needless to say, I made her go back outside (with her swearing under her breath about me not helping – hello? Cast on the ankle?) and a few weeks later she moved out and complained to other people that she was tired of being treated like a child.

MVWR was truly one-of-a-kind. We lived together for a little over three years in college, with one year actually sharing a room.

She was a party girl and constantly vomited all the time from excessive alcohol consumption. She threw up in my other roommate’s car, on my side of the room, the bathroom floor, on our couch, and on the ground numerous times. She never offered to clean up. When we confronted her about controlling her alcohol intake more, she said she doesn’t throw up THAT much.

At 6:00AM one morning, she opened the freezer to find that there were a few missing sausages that she bought. Instead of waiting for a more appropriate hour, she stormed into my other roommate’s room, woke up the entire apartment, and screamed at her for stealing her sausages. After my roommate said she didn’t take them, she called her MOTHER to vent (please note that MVWR was 20 at the time). It turned out that my other roommate had accidentally dropped the sausages when getting something else out of the freezer and threw them away because the ground was gross at the time. MVWR never apologized.

A few other quirks included judging other people if they weren’t a Christian, proclaiming “purity” but would perform sexual acts on countless guys, performing a sexual act with a guy IN MY OTHER ROOMMATE’S BED, believing her boyfriend when he said “the Bible says you can have premarital sex as long as you know the person,” being ungrateful if someone didn’t give her a gift up the her standards, buying fast food chicken nuggets and freezing them instead of eating them (I never understood that one), blaming ME for running over the curb when picking me up from somewhere, and throwing a tantrum and said we weren’t good friends because she shouldn’t have to pay the late fees on our energy bill (she never had paid her share of the bill… which is why we got the late fees).

But the final straw came when I came back from my summer break to discover her boyfriend’s USED condom on MY desk, along with several empty wrappers. When confronting her about this, she said she didn’t know how they got there and that her boyfriend just flung the wrappers all over the place. I told her how disrespectful it was, not to mention unsanitary. We stopped talking to each other and a week later found another used condom in a water bottle on my desk. She moved out of the apartment soon after.

MVWR was my first. M and I had been acquaintances for years and became very close about one year before we lived together. We moved into an apartment my first year of college. I came from a less-than-ideal household and had very little money to my name as I was completely supporting myself. However, I’m an extremely proud person and would never accept help from anyone – my rent was never late, bills were paid (and they were in my name), and I bought my own food. M sneakily figured out about how much I made at my jobs and would casually find out how many hours I worked during the week so she could calculate my paycheck. She would bring it up and ask me how I planned to pay for this or that, or if I came home with a pizza how I could afford to buy it, and my answer was simple: budgeting. M seemed to think that because she had (way) more money than I did that I was out to get her.

She insisted that the cost of anything having to do with the apartment be split halfway immediately. I was okay with buying the paper towels while she bought the toilet paper, but she still insisted that we exchange money. She constantly bought unnecessary knick knacks for the house (without telling me first) and insisted on immediate payment. Sometimes this would catch me off guard and as I was on a very tight budget I wouldn’t be able to pay her until my next paycheck – but I still did, even if I didn’t think we needed placemats or a new napkin holder. M and I started out with a chore schedule, but it didn’t really work out because the two of us were busy with work and school. Eventually, every Sunday I cleaned the apartment from top to bottom by myself. M would conveniently be away on Sundays. At first I thought she worked every Sunday, but soon found out that she went to her mother’s “for dinner” – a dinner that apparently lasted from morning until night.

She soon admitted that she felt that her contribution was “monetary” and that she didn’t feel that she should have to share chores with me because she bought things for the apartment (even though I paid her for everything). She and I both had boyfriends who were over a lot, but her boyfriend was an absolute pig, just like her. I once found an overturned half-empty pop can in the living room and watched it to see if either of them would pick it up. Two weeks later, I did. He was a good cook, but our kitchen was constantly a mess from his meals. If there was ever any left over and I was offered some, they would hold it over my head for weeks that he “cooked for me” so the least I could do was clean up. I once accidentally ate a frozen pizza that belonged to M. Instead of saying something to me about it, she wrote DO NOT EAT in permanent marker on any food she bought (this is after I had recovered from an eating disorder – she would also say insensitive things to try to trigger it during fights, but that’s a different story).

M would constantly start fights with me but would never speak to me face to face. I didn’t have a text messaging plan on my cell phone, but could receive messages.  At first, she’d shut herself in her room and send me nasty, passive-aggressive text messages knowing that I couldn’t reply. I would stand outside her door and ask her to come out and discuss it. Eventually she would just storm out and sit in her car to send me the messages. I had decided that I’d had enough and was going to ask her to move out. Another friend of mine from school was looking for a place and was content to wait until I had sorted everything out. A mutual friend of ours had recently moved back from Florida and we had a Welcome Home party at our apartment, so I decided to wait until after the party to discuss it with her. I later found out (weeks after) that M and our friend had already planned to move in together and she had told everybody at the party.

She put on quite a show, telling everyone how much I depended on her and that she had stayed so long because she didn’t want to “screw me over” and that I was going to go back to live with my parents.  M sorrowfully told everyone how guilty she felt for “sending” me back with them, but they assured her that it wasn’t her fault I couldn’t “pull my weight.”  As I said before, I’m an extremely proud person and this insulted me. I flipped a shit and finally let M have it. Our last few weeks together were chilly and filled with M’s passive aggressive battle tactics (she threw my clothes on the floor to take back a laundry basket that a mutual friend had given us as a housewarming present filled with cleaner because she was “better friends” with her so it was hers, left a half full garbage bag on the floor in the kitchen – which was immediately attacked by our cats – to take back the garbage can she bought even though I paid for half of it, refusing to answer me about the final bills which I eventually just paid by myself, and turning all of our friends against me – what I get for not discussing our situation with any mutual friends), but the best came at the end. She left one thing behind in her room – a photo of the two of us. I burned it.

MVWR was the only roommate I ever had while attending college. Let’s call her D. I had spoken to her once before we moved down to start college. She agreed to bring an iron, mini fridge, and her computer. I agreed to bring, a TV, microwave, and an ironing board. She was in the band and so got to school two weeks before the incoming freshman arrived. We were paired to live in the smallest dorm on campus because it was considered housing for ‘Honor Female Students’ which by the way she kept study habits I found hard to believe that she had gotten into that dormitory.

One of my issues with D was that she would always invite her band mates back to our room after they had a long practice in the humid Southern heat. The only seating available was her bed, a computer chair, and my bed. I didn’t mind so much her band mates being there except for on several occasions I walked in from class to always find the fattest, sweatiest, band mate sitting on my pillow. The only pillow that I had where I laid my face on. I would usually leave and go to common area downstairs until they left. Not to mention that one of her band mates kept stealing my utensils. Over time, D’s hygiene and sloppiness really shined through. Being that there were only 16 girls on our floor, in a weeks time you would run into at all of the girls in the shower. No one ever saw her in the shower.

I didn’t think much of it until one morning I woke up to a weird sound. I opened my eyes and to my horror I saw D wiping her vagina with a baby wipe. And when she realized that I saw her, she just stared me down until I rolled over and pretended to go back to sleep. Her smell got so bad that even her band mates started calling her “Spoiled Milk.” One day I walked in from class only to find her wiping her vagina again and this time she had left a brown-stained baby wipe in front of my microwave. I told her to pick that shit up or we were going to have problems. On top of that she had a boyfriend who was a pothead and spent every possible moment he could in our room. To make matters worse, he smelled just like her.

As the year progressed, her side of the room became unbearable to look at. Unfortunately, the computer was on her side and so I had to suck it up and sit over there to do reports. I sat down to do a report one day when I felt something on my leg. I looked down real quick and thought that it was her windbreakers rubbing on my leg. I took a second look to find the biggest daddy long legs I’d ever seen. I screamed and ran out. All her filthiness had worn out my patience and by the end of the first semester we weren’t speaking to each other.

But that didn’t stop her from helping herself to my food in her fridge (that was clearly labeled) and my pantry as well as moving my TV to her side of the room because as she put it, “It looks better on my side.” After a few weeks of going back and forth, I’d had enough. She had just purchased books for the new semester and had complained that she spend $572 for four books. I sold them and made $350. It was the least I was due for putting up with her ‘Spoiled Milk’ smell and pothead boyfriend.

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.

My Very Worst Roommate was one of three other girls that I lived with during my sophomore year of college. At first we all got along well, but it didn’t take long for things to get ugly.

Three of us were good about putting our dishes in the dishwasher right away and running it when it got full, but MVWR would leave her gross dishes “soaking” in the sink until my stainless steel silverware rusted and left rust spots all over my dishes. We would come home and the apartment would be like a sauna because she would turn the heat up all the way and then leave (no matter what the weather was like outside). She would constantly take our clothes out of the dryer when they were still damp so she could do things like warm up her towels before a shower, and then didn’t even put our stuff back in after.

The crowning glory of the experience happened on one night when she went out drinking with some of her friends, as she frequently did. When she came home later that night, she had lost her key and was thumping on the door for someone to come and let her in. When we opened the door, she was sitting, bare-assed, on the gross carpet of the hallway, pissing on the floor. At least it wasn’t in our living room, I guess, but it was still disgusting.

I moved out the second that I could afford to. One thing I will say is that the VWR’s mother came and cleaned all the common areas of the apartment after we all moved out. But it didn’t quite make up for half of my kitchen things needing replacement.