April 4, 2025 at 9:48 pm

Sick Of Cleaning Up After Her Lazy Brother, This Woman Sets New Boundaries, But He Isn’t Keen On Respecting Them

by Kyra Piperides

Dirty dishes, tissues, and leftover pizza on a nightstand

Pexels/Reddit

When you’re a tidy person, living with a messy person can be the most testing thing.

And for a messy person, a tidy roommate’s standards can feel unnecessary at best, and controlling at worst.

But what if you are living in your family home and are expected to take care of not only your own chores, but your brother’s too?

Sick of the inequality, the woman in this story took a stand.

But the results were not what she expected.

AITA for refusing to clean up after my brother?

I am nineteen, female, and still live at home with my parents and my older brother, who is 22.

He’s been home from college for a few months now and I’m not gonna lie, it’s been kind of annoying.

He treats the house like a hotel and just expects things to be done for him.

Yikes! Let’s see just how dirty this brother’s habits are.

He’ll leave his dirty dishes in the sink, drop his laundry in the hallway instead of the basket, and just in general act like cleaning up after himself is someone else’s job.

My mom babies him a lot so she usually just does it, but she was out of town for a few days and I was not about to pick up after him.

I told him straight up that he’s grown and can do his own dishes and laundry.

Read on to find out how the brother reacted to her boundaries.

He got all mad and was like “why do you care, just leave it.”

But like… it’s our house???

I don’t want to live in a mess just because he’s lazy.

So i just ignored it and let everything pile up.

Uh-oh. Things just kept getting worse from there.

By day three, the sink was full, his clothes were still on the floor, and the living room looked like a war zone.

Then suddenly he was mad at me for “not helping out.”

I told him that’s funny coming from someone who hasn’t lifted a finger in months.

He called me selfish and said “family helps each other” but, in my opinion, that only works when it goes both ways.

My mom says I should’ve just cleaned up to avoid conflict, but I feel like that’s just enabling him.

AITA?

Their mom is totally enabling his gross behavior.

Her brother not only has disgusting habits, but his expectation that the women in his life will clear up for him because that just what family does is entitled and a little sexist too.

Let’s see what the people of Reddit thought to this.

This person agreed that the mom is doing neither of her kids any favors by enabling him.

Screenshot 2025 03 13 at 13.47.02 Sick Of Cleaning Up After Her Lazy Brother, This Woman Sets New Boundaries, But He Isnt Keen On Respecting Them

And this person made a great point.

Screenshot 2025 03 13 at 13.46.26 Sick Of Cleaning Up After Her Lazy Brother, This Woman Sets New Boundaries, But He Isnt Keen On Respecting Them

And this Redditor truly laid down the law.

Screenshot 2025 03 13 at 13.47.58 Sick Of Cleaning Up After Her Lazy Brother, This Woman Sets New Boundaries, But He Isnt Keen On Respecting Them

It seems like there’s double standards in this family, and they have old sexist traditions written all over them.

She’s not his maid.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.