I think the girls should negotiate and come to an agreement, they could both benefit from it. D1 had a roommate like OP’s daughter.
D1 roomed with her best friend sophomore year. The friend was very OCD. She told D1 that she needed the room to be very neat, things couldn’t be out of place. She would put her hair brush, makeup in the exact same spot and lined them up just so. She couldn’t see anything out of place, no clothes lying on bed or shoes on the floor. I was really worried about the living situation because even though D1 was very clean, she wasn’t always neat.
D1 worked it out with the roommate that she would always make her bed, put her books away, had her dresser looked very neat, but the roommate was not allowed to move her stuff (clean up after her).
D1 did her best to keep her side clean, and her roommate tried not to get out of hand. By the end of year, D1 noticed her friend would not make her bed every once in a while, and D1 definitely came back as a much neater person. D1 also picked up a lot of decorating points from her roommate.
Whenever D1 complained to me about her roommate, I just let her vent, I didn’t add more fuel to the fire. She often felt better after she vented. They are both over 25 now and are still great friends.
IMO - vacuuming and sheets once a week is not deep cleaning, and making one’s bed when sharing a room with someone is just common courtesy. If you were sharing a room with a friend on a trip, wouldn’t you make your bed? My kids know to make their bed when visiting friends.
No, the university does not typically clean dorm rooms at all. As I mentioned my son’s school has staff clean the suite bathrooms but that is unusual. And I assume there’s no tidying involved in that, just cleaning the sink, toilet, and tub.
@dustypig am I right in thinking your D is at Scripps? I know that part of their Orientation Schedule was to draw up a roommate contract last night. My D is at Pomona and they did the same thing. D’s room is incredibly small and it’s in both of their interests to keep their stuff from getting out of control. Anyway, my point is that I don’t think this came out of nowhere from the roommate. It’s also probably a good first experience in negotiation and compromise. (Scripps is a great school. Love the 5C’s!)
PS: The (Gender Inclusive) restrooms and showers at my D’s dorm are in the hallway so no need for my D to worry about cleaning the sink.
@DrGoogle at most colleges, the cleaning of what is in your dorm room is totally up to the occupants. The housekeeping staff cleans only the common areas…not the rooms.
However…I believe ther was a thread on this forum about places where folks hired cleaning services for dorm rooms.
Back in the dark ages…when I was a freshman…the housekeeping staff did vacuum the dorm room floors once weekly. But not if there was ANYTHING piled on the floors. We also got clean sheets weekly, provided by the,school…but only if we stripped the old ones off and left them piled on the bed for housekeeping to take away. The school doesn’t do that any more!
At home she had her own room and her mom thought she was a bit of a slob with unmade bed and stuff on the floor. After 3 days in a dorm, do you think she is making her bed or picking up her things?
Other than the deep cleaning stuff, I think roommate is being somewhat reasonable. She probably should be wiping the windows herself, although if your daughter puts a big palm print on the window, she could wipe it off.
If your daughter can’t keep what is now a common area cleaner, she will have to find a fellow slob and they can leave stuff all over the floor together. In a 10x10 room, this will quickly become hideous.
personally, I am hoping my D has to fix her ways.
This is not much different from sharing an office or sharing a home. It is inconsiderate to make people step over your stuf or look at your suff or deal with your stuff at all if there are drawers and desks to put things away.
If she likes this girl, she needs to stress a little less and clean up.
The good news is that a 5x10 area is not a lot of cleaning, so this is a few minutes a day and maybe 30 minutes on the weekend.
D2 is living with 2 princesses this year. Those 2 girls have maids and cleaning staff at home. D2 told the girls they were hiring a cleaning person for their apartment, because D2 doesn’t feel like being those girls’ maid, and didn’t want to nag at them about doing their share.
But OP’s slobby daughter does get to control the space? Dorm rooms are small. Unless someone builds a theoretical fence and separates the space into two distinct halves (which may not even be possible in some configurations), the slob’s detritus will be everywhere. I lived with a pig freshman year. While everyone else was able to arrange their rooms in a pleasing way, we kept ours divided down the middle so I didn’t have to live in her mess, and I still had to constantly kick her crap over the line. It was a lousy way to live. OP may have tolerated her D’s slobbiness at home, but a roommate doesn’t have to. While some of her suggestions were a little over the top, how can you deny that an unmade bed with grody sheets is disgusting to have to look at and that a sink used by two people will need cleaning at least once a week? A quick vacuum of the floor–5 minutes?–once a week is basic cleanliness. I don’t know why OP is defending her daughter’s bad habits.
I’m on the “washing windows every week is weird” and “it’s my desk, darn it” side. But, I did learn in college that I’m much less likely to crawl back in bed after a shower if the comforter is pulled up. Could be useful info in case of any 8 am or 9 am classes.
Ha ha, I know of a girl who was assigned a single because she put herself in the “total slob” category and they couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to be in that category… Most people probably choose something in the middle–the land of compromise on what exactly “neat and clean” or “sort of messy” means…
Sheets will eventually start to smell, true. But it takes a lot longer than a week in most cases. Until it gets to that point it’s not the roommate’s business.
Most of the roommate’s requests seem reasonable to me, although it sounds as though they may have been expressed awkwardly. (I do think asking the OP’s daughter to wash her sheets once a week is a bit much.) Some posters have been using the term OCD in a descriptive way, but I would like to suggest that if the roommate does in fact suffer from OCD, the stress associated with moving into a new phase of her life may have triggered an upswing in her behaviors. A little compassion and patience on the part of the OP’s daughter may go a long way. I would suspect that as the roommate becomes more comfortable in her new environment, she will also become more relaxed in her expectations.
As an aside, I am surprised that the two girls were placed together to begin with. I know my D had to fill out a form that included, among other things, placing her room at home on a scale that ran from pristine to slovenly. As it turns out, all the young women in her suite keep to the same level of housekeeping, so the self-evaluation must have been taken seriously!
I think cleaning the bathroom sink and mirror regularly has to be done. Keeping the floor reasonably clear and cleaning it regularly also needs to be done, especially if you don’t remove shoes (kind of gross in my opinion). If you do, I doubt it’s necessary to clean it every week. Cleaning the windows in a dorm is something I never heard of and seems totally out of line to expect someone else to do that every week. I would invite her to keep the windows to her specifications. As far as the sheets and desk go, that is none of her business unless it involves food or begins to smell or something. She may just have to get used to the fact that some people in the world aren’t sleeping on sheets as clean as she would like or having desks as tidy as hers. Maybe she should get out more often. Making the bed, also in my opinion none of her business, but I would do it in case it gets used as a sofa and because it will smooth tensions.
"Well, if not making my bed is piggish, then OINK OINK.
I didn’t know a single person in my dorm building who made his or her bed."
Yes, everyone was just too busy thinking intellectual thoughts I’m sure
There’s no virtue in deliberately being sloppy / messy, you know. I guess common courtesy is dead. You’re in a shared space. It’s inconsiderate to be a slob and say “deal with it.”
Agree, it’s one of those things you learn when you live with someone who is ‘different’ than you. She might even pick up some new "good’ habits picking up and cleaning.
At the same time, the person who can’t stand anything out of place ever will hopefully learn that what another person’s desk looks like isn’t really in their control.