Domestic Bliss

It's a few months now since the decision to get a flatmate. She moved in, and nothing has really been quite the same since. You'd hope I meant that in a good way, but really, no. It's not that we hate each other, or bicker, or anything drastic, really. But there is a chronic incompatibility looming on the horizon, and I don't think she's even noticed it.

She's a nice enough person, I suppose. Quite friendly, not hugely annoying, and keeps very much to herself. In fact most of the time, I'm not entirely sure if she's home or not. I have to peek through cracks or look for light shining under doors to get a sense of whether I'm alone or potentially have company. The general consensus is that it's an odd relationship in the flat. And that was before she started eating all of her meals in her room, as well spending the rest of her time holed up in there. In some respects, I guess she's the perfect flatmate. She pays bills on time, she's quiet, and she never hogs the couch or forces me to watch TV shows I don't like. But although I'm never sure of her current presence or absence, I can usually tell when she's been around.

Now I'm not the greatest with all things housekeeping. I vacuum the carpets once a month if I'm lucky, and do the shower once a quarter. Dishes are washed only when the pile on the sink gets too precarious, or there's a danger of being so many that need washing that they won't fit on the dish drainer. If I remember to change my sheets regularly, and actually have them washed by the time it occurs to me to change them again, I'm doing pretty well. But there are some things that I figure it's only fair to keep on top of when you're sharing. I think it would have been even more important if that sharing involved the use of someone else's things. But no, apparently not.

When I moved into this flat, everything I owned was new. Except my couch. And my kitchen table. And the antique bits and pieces. But you get the picture. The plates had never been eaten off. The sheets had never been slept on. The towels had never been used. The saucepans had never cooked anything. It was all still in quite good shape when she moved in. That can no longer be said about some things. It's to the point where, after helping me out while I was laid up with my back, my mother has been forced to offer me advice on how to get the saucepans back into something like a good condition, after months of things being cooked onto the sides. You can pick which pans she uses most often; they're the ones which are the most filthy outside, to the point that I can't get them clean even with steel wool, and have a soap scum residue inside them. You're supposed to wash pans AFTER cooking, not before.

And I could write it off if it was just pans, even if my pointed scrubbing of pans I haven't used has failed to have an effect (passive aggressive behaviour? perhaps, but direct suggestions for a cleaning roster have failed to have any impact). But being flat out with back pain and seeing your flatmate take the vacuum out for the first time ever, only to do her own room, having never cleaned the shower, never mopped any of the floors, it's getting a little much. I think the final straw came this weekend.

I haven't been using the cooktop much recently, at least partly because of the depressing state of my pans. But it drove me to the point of action on Saturday. I tried to clean the cooktop, because it was beginning to look like a bio-hazard; baked on sauce, overspill, actual chunks of food. But it wouldn't just wipe down. It required an actual cleaning product. I've never had to use a product to clean a cooktop before, I've always been able to manage it along the way. When I picked up the metal grate that covers the jets and found it was sticky and coated in a thick layer of baked on sludge, I was fuming. It drove me mad, to the point where I actually finished a cleaning job and looked for more - an unheard of phenomenon. I vacuumed. I spot cleaned the carpet. I swept. I mopped. By the time my sister-in-law popped in for a visit, the place was worthy of my mother's stamp of approval. I even changed the tea towels on the kitchen rail - yet another something that seems to fall into my area of responsibility. The flat was gleaming. The stove looked brand new. It was pristine. Then I headed out for dinner.

I was out again tonight. When I got home, there were once again unwashed saucepan lids on the stove. There was also cooked on sauce and a chunk of unidentifiable vegetable. There was also a load of washing that had been sitting in the washing machine all afternoon. Too bad if I needed to use it.

Individually, most of the problems I'm having with this girl aren't major. But the whole package, from the way she acts like she is responsible for inspiring any physical activity I take up - hello, woman, I have 2 prolapsed discs, you think I'm going to be taking up marathon running right now? But you're the only reason I might decide to start an activity? Or wait, you're the one who "inspired" me to take regular walks all summer until my back got screwed up, even though you didn't move in until February? Genius - to her complete inability to realise that you need to clean the kitchen floor when you spill stuff on it, or that pasta sauce will stain white cupboards if you leave it caked on dribbling down the front of them for a week or more, it all adds up and it's all driving me completely insane right now. And I'm at a loss for how to approach the problem in a way that won't blow up in my face, because clearly just leaving it until she notices have absolutely no impact at all.

How do you tell someone that you think they're a slob and that if they don't pull their finger out you're not going to be letting them use your stuff anymore? How do you suggest to a flatmate that the experiment isn't working, and that they should find somewhere else to live when the lease is up for renewal? And how do you bitch and moan to a friend who is about to buy a 4 bedroom house, without any intention of accepting the invitation to share that house?

Because L is about to take the plunge into the real estate market. She wants someone to share her mini-mansion, and I fit the bill quite nicely. She knows I'm fed up with my current living arrangement, she knows we rub along well enough as flat mates - or at least she knows she can put up with my more annoying habits, and that I won't kill her for hers. But I don't think I'm ready to go and live in her house, and that's another conversation that I don't know how to have. That said, I think I have more clues on that one than I do on how to kick out my current flat mate. If I could re-negotiate my rent, I'd be happy enough to stay here on my own. But dear god, something better change soon.