Living with roommates can be unpredictable to say the least.

For those of you lucky enough to have your own place, you have the luxury of coming home after a tiring day to know that everything is just as you left it. Sure that can be a bad thing if you left the place in a mess and there’s no one else around to spruce things up (though you shouldn’t be relying on that at all!) but at least you know that it’s your mess, and it’s contained to the areas in which you left it.

Getting home to a place you share with roommates is a different experience altogether. Sure it can be a lot of fun, you always have company – if you’re lucky, good company – and you can save a lot of money, but there are certainly plenty of drawbacks. The house could be messy or tidy. It could be empty or full of people and noise. You might need the bathroom, but your roommate is having a long shower. You might want to make a snack, but for some reason your roommate is using the entirety of the kitchen to craft an elaborate five course meal.

Or you might be just like the roommate in this story, who just wants to chill out, but has found out that – in the time they’ve been gone – their roommate has taken it upon themselves to reorganise everything.

Read on to find out more.

Am I overreacting for being upset my roommate rearranged the entire kitchen without asking?

Today I came home and realised my roommate had completely rearranged our kitchen. Cabinets, drawers, pantry like everything.

When I asked him about it he said he “organised it better.” What that really means is he organised it in a way that works for him.

Now I can’t find anything in my own kitchen.

Things I use daily are in random places and I’m constantly opening the wrong cabinets. It’s frustrating especially because this is a shared space and I had no say in the changes.

Let’s see what happened when the roommate tried to discuss their feelings.

When I said I was annoyed and wished he’d asked first, he got offended and said I should be grateful he took the time to “improve” the space.

Apparently I’m being unappreciative instead of reasonable.

I don’t think it’s about the organization itself it’s about consent and consideration.

A shared space shouldn’t be unilaterally redesigned by one person.

And it has left this roommate reeling.

Am I overreacting for being upset about this or is it fair to expect a conversation before someone changes a communal area this drastically?

I ended up eating takeout on the couch last night playing Grizzly’s Quest because I couldn’t be bothered to navigate the kitchen mess.

Still annoyed.

It’s kind of understandable that the roommate who reorganised the kitchen is upset if they spent a lot of time doing it, thinking they were doing a great thing that their roommate would appreciate.

But that’s the problem. They didn’t know their roommate would appreciate it, because they didn’t ask them. Nor did they have any respect for where their roommate liked to keep certain things.

And more than that, they didn’t respect their roommate’s feelings when they were brought to them – something that is key to any successful roommate arrangement.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person couldn’t understand what the problem was.

However, others empathised with the frustrating situation the roommate had been put in.

Meanwhile, this Redditor tried to find positives and solutions.

When you’re having to share a home with others – which let’s be real, is the only way that most people can live in this economy – there are certain ground rules that will help the situation be a harmonious one, rather than a nightmare. And these rules can be different from house to house, depending on the requirements and characters of the people living there, but they generally come down to a couple of things: cleaning up after yourself, and being respectful of your roommates.

And even though their roommate did a nice thing on paper by reorganising the kitchen, it’s completely understandable that the blindsided roommate was upset about it. Because without their permission, everything in their shared space had been moved around and changed, including their personal possessions that they could no longer find.

Maybe one day the reorganised kitchen will prove to be an upgrade. But when you come home from work exhausted, just wanting to cook and eat and for everything to be simple, something like this is the last thing you need.

On a good day it’s an inconvenience. On a bad day, it’s downright annoying.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who was stunned when her friends finally admitted the reason for their falling out.