Rules for Roommates

Here are just a few tips and pointers for those of us who live with a roommate or spouse. I have found these to be very useful in a trial and error sort of way.

• If you have a driveway that is exactly wide enough for one vehicle and you know that vehicle has to get in and out quite frequently, it would make sense then not to park behind it. This will save you the trouble of working yourself into a fit of high dudgeon when the owner of the blocked-in vehicle asks you to move it.
• There is, for your convenience, an innovative contraption located directly next to the sink called a dishwasher. Because it’s so close to the sink, so close that you don’t even have to move, try opening that door one day and check it out. That’s where we put our dishes when your roommate doesn’t feel like washing your crap by hand, which will most likely be quite frequently. It washes the dishes for us. That being said, the drying rack in the sink with the clean dishes in it is for clean dishes. Not the dirty ones you put in there because you felt like the other side of the sink was boring. The technological marvel of the dishwasher does, however, have the annoying setback of being unable to empty or load itself. Thusly, it may require that you move your hand about six inches from the sink to the open dishwasher to place your dirty dish inside. I know this is asking a lot, but it really does work.
• Silverware doesn't work well in the disposal.
  
• Putting a coffee mug or cereal bowl in the sink and filling it with water and leaving it for your roommate to decide what to do with doesn’t count as cleaning it up.
• If you decide to take it upon yourself to clean the kitchen, oh happy day, it is much appreciated. However, due to the bleaching properties of bleach, colored and/or decorative dish towels should not only not be used to clean the counters, but they should certainly not be used with bleach to clean the counters.
• If your roommate has told you a hundred times not to turn the temperature on the clothes dryer up past low (because it gets very, very hot and will shrink your clothes) , this is for your own good and the good of your clothes, and thus you have no reason to complain or point fingers when your favorite pair of winter socks comes out of the dryer as a pair of finger condoms.
• If you are a male roommate and you are above the age of five, there’s no excuse for pee on the toilet seat. You have no problem finding and aiming at other things, so you shouldn’t have any problems with the comparative Grand Canyon of the toilet bowl.
• If you are a male roommate and you use all the toilet paper on the roll, please replace it with a new roll. The reasoning behind this is simple. Women use toilet paper every single time they use the toilet versus your once or twice a day, and drip-drying is really unpleasant, as is looking like a stroke victim as we lurch across the bathroom searching for another role of toilet paper.
• No one is interested in the reasons why you can’t find the dirty clothes hamper.
• If you are a female roommate: While your efforts at maintaining a shower drain clear of hair are appreciated, it is a bit off-putting to find that the shower wall looks like it’s grown a pelt.
• Open tin cans in the refrigerator are gross. Not only is it unsanitary, but the fact that there’s even a possibility that the remaining contents of that open tin can will be ingested is just vile. Not that botulism isn’t fun or anything.
• For male roommates, when you shave your face it would be lovely if you would wipe up the beard/nose/ear hair clippings out of the sink.
• A word of advice – do not use a fork to scrape your scrambled eggs out of your roommate’s Teflon nonstick frying pan. For those of you who are unaware, the pointed fork tines will ruin the nonstick coating, thus making the pan no longer coated with Teflon, and thus rendering the pan useless for nonstick cooking activities. Note: Nonstick cookware is generally not what we would call generously priced.
  
• Do not leave items made of plastic on a hot stove. Fire Education 101: They will melt.
• If you are making toast in the toaster, generally toast only requires a minute or so of toasting, even to get nice and black and crunchy. If your toast bursts into flames you’ve probably had it in there too long, and there’s nothing like having your kitchen smell like charred buffalo for two weeks.
• It is detrimental when you berate your roommate when you discover that you have no clean clothes. Last time I checked, you can’t deposit quarters into your roommate’s open mouth and expect your clothes to get clean. This was most likely not a dispensation in your lease agreement.
• Do not use a sponge relegated specifically to cleaning the bathroom or the cat's litterbox to wash dishes. If you choose to do so, please mark the area where you store these dishes with your name so as to avoid confusion.
• It's a funny thing about houses - they burn down. Just because the oven dial says that the gas is turned to low does not mean it's off. There is a difference between "low" and "off". You'll remember this perhaps as you drift off into a delightful carbon monoxide-induced eternal sleep, or when the house spontaneously combusts when you light that candle.
  

There is, however, a solution to all of these problems that will restore the roommate relationship and create harmony and peace in the home:

Live alone.