Pexels

Until you have spent some time living in a new home, you can’t have a full idea of what the ambience in your place is really like. Do the floorboards creak? Are there tiles that rattle in the wind? Can you hear your neighbours through the wall? Is the plumbing loud at night? They’re all important factors for your quality of life, but until you actually live there, you won’t really understand for sure.

The family in this story have lived in their apartment for over a year, so they’re very used to all the quirks of their home now – including some upstairs neighbours who fight loudly every now and then. But when a downstairs neighbour came and accused them of being loud, they were very confused – after all, they are a quiet family of three, and now they’re being made to feel bad for every footstep.

Read on to find out where the problem was here.

Trying to keep peace with a neighbour…

We have lived at our apartment for about a year and just re-signed our lease. Recently, we had our downstairs neighbour (they have been there about four to six months) knock on our door and asked if we could be quiet as her husband works nights and sleeps from 4:30am-2:30pm.

She said we wake him up between 6:30-7am and again around 1:30-2pm. She mainly complained about our running kids.

Well, we only have one, but she mentioned multiples several times. And at 6:30-7am he’s not even awake yet, it’s my husband getting ready for work. He’s not running laps, just uses the restroom, gets dressed, makes his coffee, walks the dog, and leaves – all under thirty minutes.

I don’t know where the 1:30-2pm stems from, as several times a week the kiddo has summer activities that we’re gone for majority of the afternoon for. And during the school year he’s not home until 4pm at the earliest.

But there was something fishy about the woman’s claims.

She mentioned that it’s better on weekends probably because we’re not home. But I said I don’t leave on the weekends because I don’t like crowds, and we don’t have our weekly activities then.

School just let out five weeks ago, and we were always home on weekends during school to allow us to decompress from schedules. She seemed surprised.

She also made this complaint after we have been gone for two weeks (got home three days prior).

She seemed surprised when I told her this information that we haven’t been around, especially as it was when she’d just got done telling me her husband is just EXHAUSTED by the lack of sleep because of the noise.

Let’s see how they tried to figure this out.

I tried to reason with her, saying that I’ll hold off running the vacuum, laundry, or dishwasher until later in the day. But she continued to complain that it’s only about our toilet flushing and the ‘kids’ running.

She even went so far to say that our toilet flushing is too much for him and we are being too noisy with that.

Also, kiddo mostly plays in the opposite bedroom during the day. He plays puzzles, or colours for the majority of the day. I do not let chaos ensue constantly around the house, especially as we get later in the day.

And she admitted at night we’re super quiet (kid is in bed by 8-9pm and we’re in bed by 9-10pm).

Regardless, this woman tried her best to empathise.

Now, I know you can hear everything in these apartments. With my neighbours upstairs from me, I could hear them use the bathroom and shower, and I could hear their fights too. And they fought A LOT, throwing things and chasing each other around.

Some other neighbours called the cops on them according to the office, and I made a complaint to the leasing office one night when I was woken at 2am with them screaming and wrestling with each other.

From my experience dealing with them, nothing can be done from the apartment without a police report. Police will only respond if it’s outside of city noise ordinance of 8am-10pm Mon-Thur and 9am-11pm Friday-Sunday.

And even then, they will deem if it’s outside of normal living noises (like if we were blaring music or had a dog that was barking all night).

Now she’s feeling at a loss for what to do.

I really don’t know how to handle this as legally, though lease wise we’re in the clear. The other part of me just doesn’t want drama.

I understand the noisy neighbour ordeal, and I have sympathy for her husband as mine used to do night work. But at the same time it ****** me off that she expects us to walk on eggshells when the whole world is awake and living.

Like not using my toilet so much, and a kid that barely does anything crazy inside but can’t even be in our house just seems like a crazy request. Complaining about my husband simply getting ready for work. She even told me she had no clue we had a dog because she doesn’t hear any dog noises.

A friend said just keep doing what I normally do and let her handle it with the office if she has a problem.

Her friend is right. She is well within her rights to use the toilet during the day time, and if her neighbours have a problem with that, they need to just move out.

It’s completely unrealistic to expect a family to not make any noise during the day, and it sounds like this is a quiet family as it is.

It’s upsetting to have a neighbour treat you this way, but she has every right to live her life as normal.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit said about this.

This person agreed that there’s no way she should be trying to walk on eggshells around these neighbours.

While others wondered if the noise was actually coming from elsewhere.

Meanwhile, this Redditor wondered if they’d actually taken measures to help the husband sleep.

If the husband is a very light sleeper, then perhaps apartment living just isn’t for them. Especially if he’s having to sleep during the day when everyone else in the apartment complex is, naturally, awake – to expect a whole apartment building to be quiet just so he can sleep is wildly unreasonable. Instead they need to be investing in measures to help him sleep – soundproofing, earplugs, or a white noise machine would be a start.

Because in the end, just because someone is your neighbour does not mean that you need to live your life for them. You may share a wall but that is all you share – your lives are completely separate, and unless you’re making unreasonable noise (like yelling or playing loud music all night) they really have nothing to complain about. And if they’re that bothered, they should move.