Maybe except for the rural folks, chances are, one of your neighbors does something that annoys you. Waits too long to cut their grass. Leaves their holiday decorations out too long.
And guess what, chances are YOU do something that annoys your neighbors! What might that be?
You can be a good neighbor and have good neighbors but because different things set us off, still have an annoyance.
Hopefully this keeps to be a fun, light thread - and interesting to see the things that bother us/others - and make light of it.
Letâs try not to judge each other too much for our gripes!!!
Iâll go first.
Neighbor annoyances:
Pool parties that go on for hours and hours and then the invited cars that line our streets and sometimes block on end of our driveway!
Another neighbor who parks his truck sometimes right in his front yard instead of the street! (when his wifes car is in the drive)
How we might be annoyingâŠ
Occasional firepit fires to help burn off some of the brush from our large yard. No one has said anything but for people sensitive to smoke that can be bothersome.
We have a neighbor whose kids yell rather than talk. Not the usual kid noise - this takes it up a few notches. Then there is the family my neighbor calls Sanford & Son, who has a whole lotta stuff all over his yard. The neighbors next door sit in their garage & talk nonstop ⊠H is painting the siding on that side, and he has to wear earplugs to avoid inadvertently hearing their conversations. None of these things are horrible in the scheme of things, but we do discuss them.
And this is the fun of the thread - hopefully many things are not horrible in the scheme of things - but interesting to read - and perhaps chuckle - at what ticks people off!!
Neighbor annoyances:
I have a nosy neighbor right next door. Sheâs weird. So many anecdotes of her idiosyncracies.
6+ months of constant construction in her backyard to put together a combo pack of Taj Mahal/Caesarâs Palace. 6 months of jack hammering and construction workers leaving their trash and junk in MY front yard.
when her 6 month construction was done, she wanted us to come over so she could show us the finished product. She had a fountain installed and said, âNow your fountain and mine can compete with each other!â UmâŠwhat? She also had an enormous concrete statue of a tortoise installed in the backyard, yet called it a turtle.
regularly used to ask me weird questions like âHow come I never see your kids playing out front?â Um, itâs 110 out and itâs the summer. How come I never see YOUR grandkids playing out front? Oh yeahâŠitâs hot out.
weird questions like âHow come I never see your husband?â Asked this repeatedly for awhile until I got fed up and said, âHeâs busy. I promise, he really does exist.â
she divorced her husband, got engaged to somebody else, suddenly ended the engagement, and remarried the husband right away. And assumed that I knew all about this. umâŠnoâŠthatâs your business, but congratulations?
every time her grandchildren come over, they scream outside like theyâre feral. Super loud, sounds like somebodyâs being murdered next door. usually continues until about 11 pm. Theyâre fond of throwing food over the fence into my yard. So I throw it back over when I find it.
built the biggest pergola youâve ever seen, but didnât get HOA approval and had super bright lights installed which she leaves on 24x7âŠall night long. Thereâs so much lighting in her side yard in between her house and mine that itâs lit up like Las Vegas Blvd.
asked me once (when I made the mistake of agreeing to go on a walk with her around the neighborhood), âHow can your husband allow you to walk alone at night like this?â Allow me? I donât ask permission. I just tell him.
I had a big load of compost delivered once. She thought it was horse manure.
asked me once if Iâm planning on removing the yellow lantana bushes in my front yard. I said, âNo, why?â She said, âBecause I hate the color yellow.â Guess what? I planted more yellow flowering plants in the front. She also hates sunflowers because theyâre yellow. I now have several.
voluntold me on too many occasions to go and collect a package delivered to her front door, store it at my house for weeks while she was out of town, and then deposit it back at her front door when she was back. Finally stopped when I said no.
voluntold another neighbor to collect her mail every day for 4 months while she was out of town travelling. Other neighbor foolishly said yes. Thankfully, she never asked me. I would have said no anyway.
she filed a complaint with the HOA because leaves from stuff in my yard, thanks to the wind, made their way off of the trees and bushes into the pool in her backyard. Yet all of her bougainvillea flowers fall off and end up in MY yard. But thatâs ok since this is all about her.
The biggest annoyance are those who block our driveway. We park in the back of the house and canât see the driveway entrance from our house. We have no idea that itâs blocked until we are in the car going down the driveway - between 2 retaining walls. This hasnât been as much of an issue in recent years, once the house next door was sold to a more normal landlord who followed the law. But it still happens, and calling the police/tow truck takes a solid hour+.
When the house next door served as the local uni football team clubhouse and then a frat house, we lived the life as seen in the movie Neighbors. People coming/staying 15-20 min constantly throughout the day/night, loud parties all over the lawn spilling over onto our property. Lighting a bon fire on their property, but < 15 feet from our house. Hazing activities taking place in the backyard. But they are gone⊠thank god⊠When they left, they left the side door wide open and it stayed that way for > 2 weeks until we told the managing realtor company. There was trash 2â deep covering the entire kitchen floor and holes in the wall.
The neighbor behind us has a pool and often has loud parties into the night. We can look the other way until after midnight on weekends, especially if it comes with adults shouting and cursing at each other. But to their credit, this summer has been better.
Iâm sure some people hear me leave every morning to the gym at 4:45. They probably donât love that either. But except for the car engine, I try not to make any noise.
And in good neighborly fashion⊠We have a small set of apartments on the other side of us. It used to be rented exclusively to elderly people. Thereâs a mix now, but still no students. Two of the apartments have youngish (to us) single guys who each recently adopted a dog. H loves dogs! And he lets them use our back yard (our property is 300â deep) as a dog park, and also lets them use our water to fill up a splash pool. They are most appreciative, and so are we. Watching those pups play together brings us, especially H, great joy.
Oh! I thought of a thing my neighbors do that irrationally annoys me!
Our lot backs to a strip of wooded town property that isnât kept up by the town in any way. Some of our neighbors dispose of their grass clippings and fall cleanup debris by dragging them the full length of our yard to the unkept area and dumping them there. I just think it feels inappropriate and rude! But it doesnât truly hurt us in any way.
And here are thing we do that probably annoy our neighbors:
This summer we only contracted to have our grass cut every other week, but it has rained a lot so it often gets pretty long
our Kia beeps loudly when it backs up & there is no way to turn it off. Sometimes we have to leave the house very early on the morning.
we have a pool, but weâre not very good at maintaining it (even though we try!) so sometimes it looks like a stagnant pond
We are the only house that doesnât decorate for holidays
Nope. My neighbors donât annoy me. Sometimes people at the park behind my house annoy me by playing music too loud, but I live in a very chill live and let live no HOA neighborhood. Weâre not best friends but weâre all friendly and appreciate that everyone does their own thing.
Do neighbor stories also count as neighbor annoyances? Hereâs some:
-Neighbor across the street drove his car in reverse through other neighborâs living room, accidentally.
-Weâve had to live on guard because of the neighbor boy (18 now) across the street had some behavioral issues for a few years and would threaten his mom (single mom) with violence and had several episodes of the police having to show up to talk him down.
-Other neighbor across the street (whatâs going on with that side of the street?!) drove his car through his garage, down his back yard and through the neighborâs garage behind his yard on the next street, accidentally.
-Neighbors next door, wonderful people, have 2 dogs and they never/rarely pick up dog poop so the smell wafts over to us when the wind is right (or wrong). We put up with it because our dog loves their dogs and these neighbors are super nice.
-About a year after we moved into our house, neighbor directly behind us cut down our 40 foot long, 8 foot high hedge in its entirety claiming she thought it was her hedge, even though weâd been trimming & caring for it since we moved in-- her husband, before he died, told us when we moved in âyou know, thatâs YOUR hedgeâ. Guess wife never got that message.
-Neighbors kitty-corner to us in the back yard have had screaming kids for about 15 years. Why donât they ever grow up? How many are there?! Is it an illegal day care?
Of course weâre perfect. Except when we have a family âdiscussionâ and have to shut all the windows in the house so neighbors wonât hear the yelling. LOL!
It was several years ago, but for about 6 months, my neighbor across the street had someone park a HUGE pickup smack in front of my house from 6 am to 5 pm Monday - Friday. My side of the street has no driveways, they are in the back, itâs not a well traveled street since itâs only 4 blocks long. At any given time there might be 5 cars parked on the whole thing. My neighbor and his wife worked, so not only was there tons of parking in front of that house, they have an enormous driveway that would fit over a dozen vehicles easily. I was a SAHM, my elderly parents were here frequently, in the rain theyâd have to step on the grass because his truck (at times the only vehicle parked) blocked the concrete slab to the sidewalk. We asked nicely but there was red truck, day in and day out.
As for being bad neighbors, my 20 and 22 year olds lose track of time when they have dozens of friends over for a fire or wine night, only one of my neighborâs gets mad and texts me (Iâm always sleeping soundly with my white noise on, plus walls are plaster, doors solid chestnut), or if theyâre on the big front porch she starts yelling (sheâs known them since birth, her kids are 27 and 32). Two of them are away at college so tend to be very social when home. I gave her my daughtersâ cell numbers and told her to text them (they really are pretty considerate, but it seems to get louder without them noticing).
I know! But they even admit that they canât keep up with all the poop cleaning, so they do know itâs a problem. Theyâll do a massive clean up maybe 1-2x/month or something.
Our lots are only about 60 feet wide, and our next door newborns have 3 young boys into sports (like our kids were). Their built in pool takes up their entire back year, so we encourage them to use our front lawn too for baseball and football. No sprinkler system so looks pretty brown anyways.
Our neighbors had a huge menacing dog that always got out of their yard because they constantly left the gate open. Well one day I was out front with my dog and it ran full speed into her. Long story short, she had to have an eye removed. I made them pay for it and they didnât talk to us for a few years. Then their new dog got out of the yard and attacked me! Thankfully, they were right there and intervened. A week later it bit their daughter so they had it euthanized. We are actually very friendly now - go figure.
We are the people with the RV parked in the driveway. We planted trees and itâs well cared forâŠbut still, I understand any annoyance.
We are very fortunate with our neighbors but having big lots helps. We do have a guy near us that burns green grass clippings every so often. They donât burn, grass clippings only smolder! And years ago, one neighbor kid was beginning a life of crime by sneaking into houses and stealing things. That ended when another neighbor caught him. Kid was very lucky as the neighbor said he didnât sleep with his gun like he usually does.
We probably annoy people. Our back yard (we have 2 acres) is a prairie meadow and most of my gardens are rather cottagey. We also burn dead sticks and tree prunings but at least are dry and burn quick!
She also had an enormous concrete statue of a tortoise installed in the backyard, yet called it a turtle.
usually continues until about 11 pm. Theyâre fond of throwing food over the fence into my yard. So I throw it back over when I find it.
!!!