caitlin_chan

Got up this morning to go to the Farmer's Market and found this note on the fridge:

"To: Everyone

1. Clean as you go

2. Keep [k]nitting in room unless it is being used

3. Keep items in room unless using them

4. Keep all but one or 2 pairs of shoes in room"


This note was from the other roommate (that is, not daimeera or limetreebower ), and really pissed me off.  Until today, she had done literally nothing around the apartment (she moved in Sunday) - we did her dishes - and she didn't say anything to any of us about any of this.  Personally (daimeera and limetreebower , you guys have already heard this, haha) I found this approach very passive-aggressive.  Plus the tone of this note implies that, well, the common area can't be common - that is, it seems like I can't even leave a book of the fucking coffee table if I'm not right there.

It isn't even entirely what she said that's pissing me off, it's more how she said it - leaving this note, written in the imperative voice, as if these are The Rules and That's All There Is To It.  I have to admit, though, the fact that she went through the stuff on the coffee table and moved it all to the edge of the living room (throwing out daimeera's afghan pattern and nearly making me have to tear out 200 stitches from one of my knitting projects in the process) also irritates me.

Today, she washed dishes (ignoring what I had told her about my cast iron pan, and putting it away with water in it), emptied the garbage and recycling (while putting recyclables in the garbage, recyclables that we can get MONEY for in the normal recycling, and subsequently leaving it in the hallway outside our apartment), and piled the things from the top of the coffee table in a milk crate on the edge of the living room, including my afghan, which I brought for the living room.

So, yes, she has finally done something other than make the mess, but at the same time, I am really ticked by her passive-aggressive behaviour.  Like, she seems to want everything to be totally spotless and, well, this isn't JUST her apartment.  I should be able to leave a scarf I'm knitting on the coffee table, or a book, or whatever - it's the living room, it's a common area.  We should be able to LIVE in it, hence the name "living room".  And her "clean as you go" is irritating me because, well, I do DO  dishes every day.  I don't think that doing the dishes in the evening or whatever is unreasonable - it takes less time to do them all at once, less water, and is less tiring (particularly for one of my other roommates, who has CFS).  The other night I left some stuff in the sink because it was after midnight and I had just got home from work and was tired and wanted to go to bed.  It isn't like anything has been left long enough to go mouldy or something - I don't think anything has been left for 24 hours even.

It just feels like it'll start with this and then, y'know, grow to "no TV after X" or "no cooking before Y" or "no friends over between Z and A" or something.  And if it gets to that, well, I'll probably stop being reasonable and give her a big ol' FUCK YOU, particularly since she has, so far, put on music loud enough that we had to jack up the TV volume super high, and on another occasion I could hear it over my music in my room with my door shut.

Neither I nor anyone else has talked to her yet because 1) she went home for the weekend this morning (which makes it seem even more passive-aggressive to me) and 2) I wanted to find out if I was the only one irritated.

So... yeah.  I'm pissed off, but am I overreacting?  Honest opinions, people.  Srsly.