She Asked Him to Stop Running Late-Night Laundry—Then Shut the Dryer Off Mid-Cycle and Left His Clothes Wet
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Shared-house rules only work when everyone remembers they agreed to them in the first place.
Late-night laundry becomes a problem when one housemate repeatedly runs a loud dryer well past the agreed quiet hours.
After several warnings, OP sleeping nearby finally follows through and shuts the machine off mid-cycle.
Here’s how that fun interaction played out.
AITA for turning off the tumbler dryer and making my housemate go to work with wet clothes?
I (21F) am in a bit of an argument with my housemate right now, and I’m wondering if I’m justified here.
For context, I have a chronic illness that causes chronic fatigue. If I don’t get enough sleep, I feel very unwell, and it makes my pain and other symptoms much worse, as well as just being horribly tired all day. I try not to use earplugs for reasons I won’t get into, but they cause my ears to get blocked and very painful quite easily.
I live in a student house on the bottom floor (I can’t manage stairs, so it was the only option for me), across the hall from the tumble dryer.
To prevent issues, she warned all of her housemates about the dryer.
The dryer is Loud. It rattles the floor and beeps when it’s done until someone (usually me) opens the door or turns it off. It keeps me awake, and if someone puts it on while I’m asleep, it’s guaranteed to wake me up.
Given my condition and general need to not have my sleep interrupted, I asked my housemates not to turn it on after 11 p.m. We all agreed to this arrangement, and there were no problems.
Recently, one of my housemates has been consistently using the tumble dryer late at night. I spoke to him and said if he keeps doing it, I will just turn it off after 11 pm, regardless of whether his clothes are dry.
Unfortunately, this guy didn’t listen very well.
This is where I might be in the wrong. He put clothes in the dryer at about 2 in the morning and woke me up. I was extremely mad and turned the dryer off so I could sleep.
When I woke up, he had sent me a message saying that because of me, he had to go to work with wet, musty-smelling clothes. He had only put the dryer on that late at night because he had no other option and couldn’t I have just put up with it for one night.
He has done this 3 or 4 times, and I didn’t complain, so maybe he thought I didn’t mind that much? I probably should have spoken to him before I got fed up and just turned it off, but I did warn him that I would turn the dryer off if he did it again.
I do feel bad that he had to go to work with damp clothes, though. It really wasn’t that bad of a thing to do, but he is quite upset with me and wants me to apologise.
AITA?
Eek! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but there must’ve been another way to handle it.
Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about what happened here.
This person thinks that if he wants freedom, he should live alone.
For this reader, there’s no reason to use the dryer at that time.
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Yet another person who thinks his behavior was out of line.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who refused to let her neighbor have access to his spot, telling him to drive over the curb instead.
As this reader points out, he could hang them to dry.
She turned off the dryer at 2 a.m. after her housemate ignored both the 11 p.m. rule and her earlier warning.
He complained about wearing damp clothes to work, even though he had forgotten about work and started laundry after coming home from the club.
Nothing says “emergency laundry” like creating the emergency yourself.
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