Living with roommates always comes with a few unspoken rules: clean up after yourself, don’t leave dishes to rot, and maybe don’t let trash migrate into the bathroom. But in this house? Those rules seem more like…suggestions.

She mostly keeps to herself, staying in her room and cleaning up after herself, but the shared spaces have turned into a full-on mess, thanks to everyone else. Now, subtle comments and jokes are starting to suggest she should be pitching in more.

And she’s stuck wondering does “shared space” mean shared responsibility, even when it’s not your mess?

AITA for not trying to clean the house

I moved to a rental house this January to continue my study and there are 2 shared rooms and 1 room for one person. I live in the one person room.

I don’t hang outside my room and I don’t come out the room unless I want to drink water, cook and shower. Despite this house only having rooms for 5 people, there are 6 of us with one of them living in the living room full time.

The house outside my room is messy. There are trashes in the sink, in the kitchen, on the table, simply put there are trashes everywhere that it would sometimes fly to the bathroom.

Gross.

My housemates would jokingly call me ‘boss’ because maybe I don’t come out of my room so I don’t think about it so much but I just heard one of my housemate tell me “the rule in this house is you must do your work (house chores)”

But after he was done telling me a joke and the tone is slow and fading out. So maybe ‘boss’ in the question is someone that just watches while not doing any work.

This suddenly unsettled me because do they think I need to clean ton of trashes that they create?

THEIR trash? No way.

Look, I understand. We live together so we need to work together. I did throw out their trash and clean the messy kitchen for only 3 times in the beginning but it gets so overwhelming after that because the house is getting so much more messy that I just let it happen.

I feel guilty because at least I should sweep the floor and mop the floor every once in a while. But I also think that this is different from my parent’s house because they cook, buy groceries, pay bills while I just clean the house.

In this rental house, everybody pays for their own self, nobody owes someone else something so I have no incentive if I clean something that I don’t create. I’m honestly a bit confused.

Reddit leaned toward NTA (with some ESH), with many agreeing that she shouldn’t be responsible for cleaning up excessive messes she didn’t create. At the same time, some pointed out that in shared living situations, contributing something (like occasional general cleaning) can help avoid tension, even if others aren’t pulling their weight.

This person says NTA, but a chore chart could be beneficial.

This person says there are no AHs, just a need to come together.

But this person votes ESH.

It’s their mess, but in a shared house, people can’t agree where “not my problem” really ends.

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.