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When you’re at college and living with roommates, it’s suggested that you set some boundaries and schedules from the very beginning. Why? Well because if you agree things together at the outset, there will be no ambiguity when it comes to who buys the dish soap or when the bathroom is cleaned and by whom – everyone will be clear on their responsibilities, so will hopefully either do them or take accountability when they don’t.

However, there’s always going to be one person who is doing a little less than the others to contribute. Maybe they were raised differently or have different standards for what ‘clean’ or ‘tidy’ look like. Maybe they have less money and are less able to chip in for stuff. Or maybe their parents have been doing everything for them their whole lives, and it’s taking them time – or an actual reason – to adjust, and in the interim they’re sitting back and letting others do the work.

That’s exactly the situation that the roommates in this story have found themselves in. But unfortunately when they confronted the issue with the lazy housemates things got, if anything, worse.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for wanting my roommate to be a decent roommate?

I have been living with my two roommates (we’re all twenty and female) in a small flat for about a year now.

When we moved in we talked about a cleaning plan, and talked about how to organise getting cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc, and since we all are wanted the place to stay clean and nice, we agreed on cleaning the kitchen and bathroom twice a week.

We also agreed that we would clean on a rotating system.

Concerning the household stuff, we all agreed on sharing those things, since it’s unnecessary for everyone to buy their own stuff. This implied that when something is empty we take turns on buying stuff, so no one had to pay all.

Let’s see how this agreement went down in practice.

For the first three months the cleaning plan worked fine. Of course sometimes we were stressed because of university work and forgot to clean the second time, which wasn’t a big deal and nobody of us had a problem with that.

But my one roommate ‘L’ and I noticed that our other roommate ‘C’ kind of started to stop following the cleaning plan. Neither of us said anything, because we thought that she was really busy with uni. So I kind of took over her cleaning weeks.

After our first exams L and I thought things would get normal again, but it didn’t. C didn’t clean anything – and even worse she left things dirty. For example, after showering she left her hair in the tub and left the bathroom with a lot of water on the floor, or she left used pans and pots on the stove for a long time.

The other thing was that she never once bought anything for the household, like we agreed on. So L and I bought everything.

Eventually they decided they had to confront the issue.

All of this really started to annoy me and today I told her that she has to start doing the things we initially agreed on.

She just looked at me really ****** and told me she is too stressed and that she doesn’t have the money for that like L and I do. After that she went in her room and started to ignore only me.

The thing is, L and I are studying too, we are stressed too and we don’t have a lot of money either. C however has a new car, a horse, always buy fancy groceries and just recently bought shoes for 100$. She has the money but lets us buy everything.

And she can’t possibly be that stressed. She only has uni four days a week and she doesn’t have projects to work on, whilst L and I have uni five days a week and we both have to work on two projects currently. But we both manage to do our stuff. So am I wrong for wanting her to participate in our agreements and be a decent roommate?

AITA?

Roommate agreements are so important for this very reason – because otherwise one person will be left doing all the chores and buying everything, and that really isn’t fair.

But that also means enforcing them, which isn’t going to be easy when one person doesn’t want to do their fair share.

And C really isn’t taking into account that her roommates are in tough situations too.

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

This person thought that her roommate was clearly taking advantage of them.

And others encouraged them to do what it takes to stop letting her.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this postabout a man who installs a fence after his neighbors cut a property line rope and move a canoe.

While this Redditor thought they needed a big talk.

When these three roommates moved in together, they agreed to split the chores equally, keep on top of them, and each contribute to household consumables. Given there have been no renegotiations of the agreement since then, it can be understood that what they spoke about still stands – meaning that C is responsible for a third of the chores and a third of the consumables. She has to understand that – and the fact that simply shirking those responsibilities makes her not a good person at all.

If she was struggling to manage her finances or her workload, all she needed to do was talk to her roommates. They likely would have understood and covered her for some time. But that wasn’t what happened at all – instead, they did cover for her, but when they eventually brought it up they faced her backlash. Maybe she felt ashamed because she knew that she wasn’t doing enough and was taking advantage, or maybe she was really so entitled that she thought they should just be doing those things anyway. Regardless, neither suggests that she’s a good person or a nice roommate to live with.