<p>I'm a freshman [in California] and I'm loving it! I have two great roommates one from the area and one from texas, but the one from texas is a freakin slob!!!!! not to say all texans are like of course LOL.</p>
<p>I'm really clean but him... anyway, he leaves his army stuff everywhere and we've talked about it before but we can't seem to work out an arrangement on where to put anything. I even found a pair or metallic spandex pants lying around and that just confused me too haha. his food, his assignments, his film equipment, everything!</p>
<p>So I mean obviously I've talked to them about it, but it just seems to come up again and again. Any advice from a parent perspective on how to deal with a messy kid? I'm never on this website but I figure I might as well give it a chance lol.</p>
<p>Just pile everything that is in your space on his bed or dresser when it gets in your way. You could talk to your RA and see what they advice they have.</p>
<p>agree with bessie--I use to put each kids stuff lying around in their own laundry basket. Whatever happened with the stuff did not matter--at least I was not stepping on it. So! splurge and buy this guy a purple or green basket and just consistently pick things up and put it in the basket next to his bed. Fair? NO but sanity keeping? Yes!</p>
<p>D is in no way a neat freak, but her freshman suitemates ranged from bad to worse. Actual roommate was messy, D tended to push that mess to the other half of the room. However, my description of the second bedroom in the suite was "it looks like a department store threw up". Those girls lived like PIGS, but at least they were nice.</p>
<p>I couldn't stand it, but she managed just fine. It was a 2 semester learning experience. Every roomie since has been a vast improvement!</p>
<p>Our S's first year roommate was like that. Clothes were literally above my kneecaps on every inch of available floor space. It was like walking through deep snow drifts every time we went into the room. Luckily, S didn't mind particularly, although he did note that no girls would come into his room because of the mess. If the roommate left clothes on S's bed, which also happened, he just swept them onto the floor. This situation also ironically forced our son to become neat or his clothes would have been lost in the mess. </p>
<p>I would have been horrified to have to live in that environment, so feel your pain. I think your only recourse is to establish a clean side to the room, tell the roommate you want to keep from this imaginary line over (your side) clean and then just consistently kick his stuff to the other side. A single pile or basket wouldn't have worked with our son's roommate because there was just too much stuff to fit. The pile would have been above bed level if put on only half the floor, so even this suggestion is somewhat theoretical without some sort of retaining wall, like perhaps a bookcase. If he is leaving food out to rot (which also happened) you may have to fill up a big garbage bag on a regular basis.</p>
<p>You will not change him. My advise to my D was to ignore mess from her roomate and try to be on the best terms with her. It has been working for 3 semesters, they signed up together for sophmore year, although D still mentioned to me about mess. She knows that some people made their situation unbearable by fighting with roomates. So, see bigger picture and ignore small staff like messy room.</p>
<p>If you're inclined to be neat and he isn't, what if you ask him if he'd like to have things a bit straighter? If so, perhaps you could trade 15 minutes daily and 1 hour weekly when you're allowed to straighten his stuff a bit more reasonably; and he does some kind of errand or skill task that he's great at but you don't like to do for yourself. Sometimes folks like that make their place look much worse than it really is by never piling like things together, mish-mashing the food and papers together, and generall intermingling everything. If you could get at it daily and just make it all LOOK a bit better daily, you might find it easier on your eyes. He might pull it apart faster than you can believe, but it'll improve just by tidying it once daily for him.</p>
<p>I don't know what you can ask of him, but think outside-the-box for something really great that you wish you had and he thinks is easy to supply (as easy as it would seem to you to straighten up someone else's massive stuff superficially for l5 minutes).</p>
<p>You could agree to try it for 2 weeks, then both meet to evaluate how it's working, if it needs to be tweaked or abandoned.</p>
<p>My S's gf cleans up the roommate's side of the room whenever she visits. He doesn't seem to mind. I never thought my S was neat until it was in comparison to his roommates!</p>
<p>My freshman S is a neatnik. His three roommates are slobs. S regularly dumps all the garbage and deposits recyclables, most of which he doesn't generate. He accepts the situation calmly, but is looking to be in a single or with different roommates next year.</p>
<p>Speaking as a former male adolescent slob, Oregon101 has it right. Acquire a large box, cover it in Army camoflage, and dump roommate's mess into it.</p>
<p>Like every one above said, chances are he won't change, but if you care and he does not, just tell him it drives you crazy when the mess is spread around the room and let him know you will put his stuff back in his space whenever it is bugging you and then do it. Do what you need to survive, but do it kindly.</p>
<p>My daughter has her bed on risers and has three good sized storage bins under the bed. She uses one for laundry. She slides it out and drops laundry into it when she's changing clothes. Sometimes she drops other stuff into it when she has something that she is "not sure where this goes" or it is late at night. </p>
<p>I don't think you are going to be able to get the roommate to clean up after himself.</p>
<p>You have a right to a clear floor. Dirty socks and underwear on the floor will attract dust bunnies and scare off the nice young women who might stop by.</p>
<p>If you wanted to be assertive and clean up a bit after a messy roommate with a very minimal effort on your part, I bet if you talked to him in advance about this, he wouldn't mind. (It is not that he prefers the mess - he just doesn't think of cleaning or if he thinks of it, he doesn't have the energy to clean.) It's a $15 investment. Buy 9.99 bed risers from Target Plastic</a> Bed Risers - Set of 4 : Target and a $5 laundry basket or storage bin. Slide the bin under the roomate's bed. When roommate's junk is on the floor and irritating you, slide the bin out, throw the junk in the bin, and slide the bin back under the bed.</p>
<p>If the quantity of junk is more than one bin's worth, get one or two more bins. Now we are up to $25, but this may be a cheap price to pay for your sanity.</p>
<p>If he wants to leave his dirty laundry and old newspapers on his desk or on his bed, I'm afraid you might have to live with it. I think it is fair to ask that he keep his junk off the floor.</p>
<p>1) live with it
2) pick up after him
3) one of you move out</p>
<p>Believe me, stepping over spandex is nothing compared to roommate stories I could tell. From the one who was into mind altering substances to the one who coo-ed like a dove 24/7, nope messy is way down on the list.</p>