Living in shared spaces comes with difficult challenges.

Imagine living in a building with shared laundry facilities.

If your laundry was done in the washing machine and you wanted to switch it to the dryer, would you consider taking another tenant’s laundry out of the dryer, or would you wait?

This man was living in an apartment building where tenants shared limited laundry machines.

One afternoon, he was in a hurry doing his laundry, so he decided to move the neighbor’s clothes from the dryer to the folding table so he could use the same machine.

Now, he’s wondering if that was the wrong thing to do.

Read the full story below for all the details.

AITA for taking my neighbor’s clothes out of the communal dryer?

I (38M) live in an apartment building, and most units do not have their own washers and dryers.

Instead, each floor (about 10 apartments each) has a shared laundry room with two washers and two dryers.

This can sometimes cause a crunch, especially on weekends.

Today, I went in to do laundry and shared some polite banter with a new neighbor. She was putting her clothes in the dryer, while I put mine in the washer.

This man gently removed the other tenant’s clothes from the dryer so he could use it.

When I came back some time later, both cycles were done.

I was on a bit of a time crunch and the other dryer was in use, so I removed her items carefully and placed them on the folding table by the windows.

When I returned promptly at the end of the drying period, she was waiting there and asked, very aggressively: “Are you autistic?”

The tenant berated him for touching her clean clothes with his hands.

She then berated me for touching her items with hands that she “didn’t know where they’ve been.” And placing them on the “dirty” folding table.

The table wasn’t even dusty, much less dirty.

After I apologized and promised that it wouldn’t happen again, she insisted that I pay for her to wash her items again, which I did.

She also told him to wait for the owner of the clothes next time.

After all this, she insisted that I “wait next time” and that she was there 10 minutes after I’d switched out the loads.

If true, that meant that she’d been waiting for me for 35 minutes.

Normally, I would have waited for some time before handling someone else’s items, but I was on a fairly tight schedule this afternoon, and I’m away from the building for a good chunk of time.

I didn’t want to leave my own items sitting indefinitely in the washer or the dryer and thereby, inconvenience other residents who need to use the machines.

This was the first time such an incident had happened to him.

I’ve resided in group living situations with shared laundry facilities for years, and nothing like this has ever been an issue.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this myself and have never thought anything of it.

But I’m worried this is a generally accepted faux pas and I’m actually in the wrong here.

AITA?

Was he too impatient, or was the lady the rude one since she was late getting her clothes out of the dryer?

Let’s see how others reacted to this story on Reddit.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

This person gives their honest opinion.

Here’s a valid point from this person.

Her reaction was wild, says this user.

Finally, people are calling out the neighbor.

Stubborn neighbors can be unbelievably close-minded.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.