When I watched my older son fill out a roommate questionnaire he initially put himself down as far neater than I thought he would ever be and told him so. Perhaps if I’d stayed out of it, he’d have learned to pick up after himself, but I kind of doubt it. He ended up with a pretty messy roommate. As far as I know they didn’t have any fights about the cleanliness of the room, but because the room actually had a full kitchen there were lots of opportunities for the roommate to make a huge mess in the kitchen which I ended up cleaning at the end of the year. GRRR. (Roommate had vanished and wasn’t answering his phone.)
I think the Mom should send a second message saying she might have overreacted a bit. I think we all agree that the sink should be clean and that a once a week quick vacuum might be a good idea. (And really it will take five minutes.) Making the bed if it’s pulling up a comforter is a pretty simple task too. I’m a natural slob, but when I lived in a dorm I tried to keep myself in check. But most importantly the roommates should try to work it out together and only pull in the RA if they can’t come to an agreement.
I don’t wash the windows in my house every week. That was the only thing on the neat list I found odd.
I think at this point, this should all be left to the roommates. Maybe if the OP’s daughter vacuums for all of five minutes…her roommate can do the windows which will definitely take more than five minutes.
When living in a shared space, it’s all about reasonable compromise…and it sounds like the OPs daughter is going to work on that herself.
But why complain about washing a window every other week even if it is an odd thing to do in a dorm. 1 minute max to clean the window and it will probably lead the gal to a lifetime of clean windows in her house
If I’m 18 and going away from home for the first time I am excited about getting out from under my parents rules. I’m excited about running my own life and making my own decisions. I’m excited about doing what I want when I want to. Having my own schedule and deciding what is important to me and not.
If the very first person I run into tells me I have to make my bed everyday and wash windows and vacuum my room on their designated schedule I would revolt. Immediately.
If you want my bed made please fell free to make it yourself. It is okay with me. If I have time in the morning to make it I might but don’t count on it. I will probably be rolling out of bed and running to class. My unmade bed will not hurt you.
And no, I am not washing the windows…ever .
Guaranteed this would have been my response at 18.
I’d be interested to see a similar thread under college life and responses by other college freshman not moms.
Good heavens, people are taking this very seriously with their predictions of doom and conflict. As I said above, my D is a very sweet person who always tries to make people feel comfortable. I am sure she will do her best to accommodate her roommate’s cleanliness preferences, even though she herself is perfectly happy to live with never making her bed. And maybe her roommate will decide, once classes start and she gets very busy, that cleaning the windows every single week is not as much of a priority for her as she thought. They are not doomed to bicker constantly like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger.
Yes, I thought roommate’s list of chores was nuts. But believe it or not, my D is capable of hearing that I think something is nuts, and yet still making an effort to get along with her roommate. There are some pretty idiotic predictions being made on this thread. They’re two reasonably intelligent young women; they’ll work it out.
Our son’s college provides diagrams on how every item in the room must be arranged, including the pencils in his drawer and which way his shoes point, and the room is inspected every day. Because it is impossible to make the bed each morning to the college’s standards in the time allotted before the start of the academic day, the students duct-tape the sheets down after the bed passes its first inspection. For the rest of the year, they sleep atop the “brick” with a removable sheet and blanket. Occasionally, they are informed that they will be subject to a SAMI, a Saturday morning inspection so thorough that the students in the targeted rooms will stay up half the previous night polishing the light bulbs in their desk lamps and wiping the springs of their beds.
If you think something as simple as making a bed each morning is insignificant, take a few minutes to listen to Admiral William H. Raven address the UT-Austin class of 2014, giving them the ten lessons he learned as a Navy SEAL to help them on their way to a better world:
I think you gave your D the perfect advice. If her roommate is compulsive it is not your daughter’s issue. The roommate can deep clean all she wants if it is important to her. And I would agree that your D could take two seconds to throw the comforter over her bed to make her roommate happy. If problems persist the RA should be involved. But on a good note, there are worse roommate problems (ex. drugs, boyfriends sleeping over etc.)
My D has a private bathroom this year and one of her suitemates said upfront that she plans to compulsively clean the bathroom because it is important to her…my D said “great” and offered to share the cost of cleaning supplies!!!
Even though your D may be a slob at home that doesn’t mean she’ll always be one. I certainly wouldn’t encourage your D to stick with her messy ways. A dorm room is a living space not just a sleeping room. The roommate wants to live comfortably and tidiness is part of that. Making a bed, picking up clutter and wiping out a sink shouldn’t take 5 minutes. If the roommate wants to wash a window I’d let her.
I wish I could tell the guy I sat behind him to clean his jacket and take a bath. The smell is so bad that I had to move. I’m in a meeting now, just thought about this thread.
Totally agree roommates need to work it out themselves.
In response to the question I was asked–I don’t mind neat hotel rooms, or hospitals, or public spaces. However, I do feel somewhat uncomfortable in friends houses (or dorm rooms I suppose) that are perfectly neat and clean. Yes, totally slobby is worse. I like a little bit “lived-in” feeling. This is personal for each of us, but I would not room with someone who expected me to deep clean the dorm room, ever.
I admit to being a little OCD on clutter (cleaning, eh–whatever).
Ideally, nothing would live on the counters that didn’t get used basically daily and things that are set down on flat surfaces (other than large ongoing projects or puzzles) get picked up before going to bed or leaving the house.
The compromise I came up with for our house is every person in the family has a “bin”…I can throw loose socks, books, hair ties, caps, whatever in that bin and ignore it MUCH better than I can ignore 4 or 5 loose items per person scattered around the house x 5. And they can tolerate the bin much better than having me nag them about 5 different things a day. I ask they clean out their bin every week or two or when it overflows.
"Alarm or light is different. Sloppy is not the same as dirty, like leaving food around, which could attract animals and insects. "
I don’t think being sloppy is all that different.
Take out the word “deep cleaning” and take out the window-thing - the rest seems reasonable. Of course someone in a shared space should at least make an attempt to make a bed and keep trash off the floor and not live like they are in a pigsty. And really - a sink shouldn’t be wiped down on some ongoing basis? Really?
You gave your daughter excellent advice. The last thing she should do is cave to her roommates demands. That’s a recipe for a disastrous relationship. I also agree with the recommendation to have her seek advice from the RA.
I never make the bed at home because I would never invite guests into my bedroom.
But in a college dorm, you do invite guests into your bedroom because it’s the only room you have. So having the beds made may be a reasonable expectation.
You invite guest to your bed. Freshman year, my kid slept on the bottom and her roommate slept on the top. I hope the guess don’t sit on my kid’s bed. It’s inconsiderate to invite anybody to the room because there is a general living area to socialize.
Dictate people to do things is considered inconsiderate too.
Making a bed is personal. Some people care. Some don’t. I don’t like to get in an unmade bed at night, so ours is made daily. Nobody sees it. It’s done for me/us.
“Just got a text from my daughter (college freshman) saying she’s a little stressed out because her roommate is asking her to do a lot of cleaning and chores”
The answer to this is relatively straight forward. The roommate is a roommate, she is not in any kind of supervisory position to your D. And that is what your D. has to let her know and learn to stand up to herself by doing so. She needs to explain very politely and using low tone of voice with the smile on her face, that the reasonable amount of cleaning is a must and she agree to whatever they STILL NEED TO DISCUSS, but beyond that reasonable amount, her roommate needs to bring it up with RA, if roommate continue to insist on it. There is no way under the sky that your D. should comply with all requirements by none other than simply a roommate. Frankly, roommates can live in perfect harmony without being friends at all, they may be complete stranger, very different people. The peace between them is determined by how any type of discussions are handled. And any dispute is just that - a DISCUSSION, it is NOT a unilateral compliance with the unilateral requests, nothing like that.
And frankly, somehow I have lived my life without ever making my bed, it is my personal business and nobody’s else. I would tell that to my D. if she ever ask me for advice like that. But she never did because she was in the same room with such a messy person that I have never seen any worse in my life. All my kid did was just pushing a roommate’s stuff into her half of the very small room that they shared. They lived together in perfect harmony for 2 years, even after they had to move to another dorm for a sophomore year, they decided to stay together. They simply did not want to risk being with some nasty person, worked absolutely perfectly for 2 very different people with completely different personalities.
