Mr(s) Messy

There are many benefits to sharing a house but there are, however, equally many - or possibly more - drawbacks.

After sharing this house with these flatmates for some months, I was coming to the conclusion that perhaps I was an incredibly, scary neat freak - however yesterday I met up with a friend who I shared a house with at university for several years and she pointed out that I wasn't. She'd lived with me and while I was quite tidy, I wasn't anywhere near as tidy as she was. She also didn't think I was mad. Then I described the house to her.

The living room is permanently covered in the wet washing of one flatmate (everyone else manages to get their stuff to dry in their bedrooms, despite their rooms being smaller than hers). It gives the place such a lived in touch, having the living room resembling a laundry. There's that, the fact that all her work is always strewn across the dining room table so you always have to move her stuff to eat there. Admittedly she says that's fine, just shove her stuff out of the way but tbh I think it's kind of missing the point. Surely if it ever occurred to her to clear up after herself then I wouldn't find myself daily clearing a path for myself in order to use a work surface in the kitchen, trying to ignore the mountainous pile of washing up (and if she actually does that, she ignores the towering pile on the draining board as she has never cleared that - I think she believes that fairies do that), emptying the washing machine so I can use it because her washing has been in it for two days, moving her stuff so I can use the table..

However this is all my problem because no-one in the house is bothered. I have been labelled as a neat freak by her and my other flatmates who just accept and add to the mess. Even my ex who isn't the tidiest guy in the world was shocked by the state of the place.

I think I will need to either find a place where I share with someone normal or live alone...