Roommate Trouble

[SobaAddict70]

Raise your hand if you've ever had a roommate who glommed off food from you, right from under your nose.

Raise your hand if you have trouble keeping track of that wonderful delicious morsel of Key Lime pie you bought just for a midnight snack.

Raise your hand if for some reason, your dinner of beer braised pot roast is reduced by two thirds by the time you get home.

If you are like three-fifths of all roommates in the world and you have roommate refrigerator trouble or roommate pantry trouble, this thread is for you.

So, what are your travails and horror stories?

Soba

[AzRaeL]

i live alone so i don't have such a problem.

my brother spits in his food so that no one else will touch it.

Try cooking something VERY VERY weird. Let the greedy beware.

Very very weird recipes:

Garden Slug salad.

take half a dozen garden slugs, chop them up.

Saute them.

wahahahahahahha

[Malawry]

Our current roommate keeps her food on separate shelves in the fridge and freezer, and she has her own cabinet for her dry goods. It keeps things easier. We live in a big old house and not in a New York apartment, and we have a chest freezer, so separating out space is not a huge trial.

Our last roommate shared all groceries with us, but she was very good about asking before taking something that looked special and making it her lunch. I guess I've been pretty lucky with roommates and food.

[tryska]

a sharpie is my best friend.

[bilrus]

I lived in a house in college with two other guys. The first week we lived there the third guy (he was a last minute replacement for a buddy who flunked out) let his dishes pile up so long that they became infested with maggots. We got on him pretty hard about this and he started doing his share.

About two months later he got back in the habit and he just wouldn't get around to it. So that Friday night while he was out on a date we put his dirty dishes in his bed. When he came home (with his date in tow) and they "went to bed" he was none too pleased. But he did do his dishes from then on.

Although at the end of the year he stiffed me for about $300 on the utilities - he was a real prick.

[GG Mora]

Ha! You think roommates are bad? Just wait til you have kids! Be especially wary if you take the time to develop their palates...

ME: "Hey, anybody see the rack of lamb that was left from last night?"

12 YR.-OLD: "Yeah. I took it to school for my lunch."

ME: "Oh. How about that half a lemon tart that was in here?"

12 YR.-OLD: "Yeah, I took that, too. It was really good."

ME: "You ate half a tart for lunch?"

12 YR.-OLD: "No, I only had one piece. I gave the rest of it to Nat and Jaime. And Ryan".

[Cusina]

My best story is actually about my husband. We spent a term in college living in a tiny flat in London. Great trip, but we were incredibly poor and drank most of our food budget. Late in the term I got the idea to make an apple pie. It came out very well and tasted like heaven to our poor starved for home (and mom) taste buds. My roommate, my future husband and I judiciously ate half and saved the rest for the next day. Next day comes, my roommate and I returned from class, dying to dive into the rest of the pie and we discovered that about a 2" slice down the MIDDLE of the remaining half of the pie was gone!! My husband had sneaked into our room and snacked out the best part. We were FURIOUS, much drama ensued and he ended up buying us dinner that night in compensation.

He has yet to live it down.

[Carolyn Tillie]

About two months later he got back in the habit and he just wouldn't get around to it. So that Friday night while he was out on a date we put his dirty dishes in his bed. When he came home (with his date in tow) and they "went to bed" he was none too pleased. But he did do his dishes from then on.

I had a boyfriend who did exactly the same thing to a roommate of ours! We came home at 2:00 a.m. and was so furious to find not a single clean dish that he piled the lot of them in this guy's bed.

He also got the picture (but there were some pretty heated words between the two of them!).

[Jon Tseng]

Best thing is figure out house rules at the start of the year - we generally work on the rule that anything in the fridge is fair game. Makes things a lot easier in the long run and, after all, there are times when you too are short of that last egg white for the souffle and can't be arsed to hike down the shops...

nb this can be reinforced by stocking up on random foodie stuff. like offal or lardo... very effective! ;-)

J

[beans]

How come mine are all drinks related?

I lived in a big old house with seven others during undergrad. The only thing in the main kitchen refridge was generally limes and tonic water. I lived with a bunch of gin and tonic drinkers. If food ever were found within the kitchen fridge, it was guaranteed gone without a trace -- which is why we all had our own mini fridges in our own respective bedrooms.

My Alaskan roomie always snarfed a glass of wine from my standard household bottle Ravenswood Zin. In fact he opened it and just drank it without a single word. Not what I looked forward to finding when I got home from a hairied day at work.

My last roomie, when I worked on South Bass Island, stuck two dollar bills in a box of canned lemonade and a post it note stating he couldn't resist and helped himself.

[SobaAddict70]

a sharpie is my best friend.

Hokay, tryska.

What iz dis?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Soba

PS. The fractured heel is doing well on hydrocodone, btw. No surgery needed thank god.

[Pickles]

I am really sorry no one thought of that dishes-on-the-bed thing when I lived off campus with a particularly slovenly girl who'd sit at the table eating soup, decide it was time to leave for a skiing weekend, and bolt from the table--leaving said dish of soup for the restuvus to clean up! As for room-mates pilfering food, I would suggest marking everything in ziplock containers and adding some threatening poetry:

Rose Are Red

This is Beef Stew

If you eat any of it

I will cause MAJOR HARMto you!

Something like that...

[Lyle]

OK. I was the guilty party, at least in college. My roommate once awoke to me finishing her last sandwich meat and bread at something approaching 6 in the morning. This had apparantly happened several times before (although I coulden't remember them) and she went into a tantrum. As we were both dirt poor (and still are), I offered a solution; a tip jar. $1 for component meals, $2 for prepared meals. This worked because, although I helped pay for groceries, I never did the shopping, except for alcohol. It worked; I got to keep my cheap apartment, she got rich, and I eventually managed to buy myself a wife.

[bloviatrix]

My sophomore year of college I lived in the sorrority house. My parents came up for parent's weekend at the beginning of November and brought me a bunch of stuff, including a box of bakery cookies, that I froze because it looked like I was going to have to stay up at school Thanksgiving weekend. I wrote my name over everything. And yet someone still scarfed down the cookies. All they left in the freezer was one cookie in the box. I was livid.

Later on, after college, I had a roommate who never finished her food and let it molder in the fridge. The kicker is that she denied it was hers. There was apple juice which became a science experiment. And cucumbers which turned to liquid. Plus other things, which I've purposely forgotten about.

Edited January 26, 2004 by bloviatrix (log)

[bloviatrix]

One other thing, GG Mora mentions that if you think roommates are bad, wait until there are kids around. Well, spouses are just as bad. There are many of times, when I'm headed home thinking about that leftover chicken or piece of cake. And then, I find out it's been finished.

[beans]

a sharpie is my best friend.

Hokay, tryska.

What iz dis?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Soba

PS. The fractured heel is doing well on hydrocodone, btw. No surgery needed thank god.

A permanent magic marker, I think.

[MsRamsey]

a sharpie is my best friend.

Hokay, tryska.

What iz dis?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Soba

PS. The fractured heel is doing well on hydrocodone, btw. No surgery needed thank god.

A black marker, great for labeling your food container.

I label food packages with a Sharpie so that I can remember how many WeightWatchers points are in a serving.

Glad to hear the good news about your heel.

[Rhea_S]

I think Soba just needs a new roommate. Isn't this the same one who is inadvertently breeding mice in their apartment? Labeling works only if the other person cares enough to read the labels. I highly doubt this is the case with soba's roommate. If there's a slice of key lime pie that you obviously did not buy, would you eat this if you had any respect for your roommate?

Dogs are much easier as roommates even if they don't help with the rent :D

[jsolomon]

I lived with some exceptionally thirsty international party animals for a school year in my undergrad. They decided that they were going to do the "hour of power" one time... 60 shots of beer in 1 hour. After they finished that, they were drunk enough that they emptied a BOTTLE of whiskey into a bowl, and dumped in my sourdough starter which they then proceeded to take shots from.

The carpet was adorned with many colors the following morning.

[tryska]

a sharpie is my best friend.

Hokay, tryska.

What iz dis?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Soba

PS. The fractured heel is doing well on hydrocodone, btw. No surgery needed thank god.

careful with the hydrocodone - only as directed, and remember to wean yourself off as soon as possible - glad to hear it';s coming along tho.

sharpies are tho permanent ink pens. i label all my stuff with it. especially juices, gatorade that kind of thing. roomie known not to touch the tupperware, but if she was slow like that, i would label those too.

it also wouldn't hurt to sit him down and get in his face about it.

[wnissen]

In college our dorm (~70 students) had a small shared kitchen. For two years, my official dorm position was "Dorm Mom." This meant I was in charge of haranguing people to "Do your dishes dammit." Since there were so many people this was often a pointless endeavor, although the kitchen stayed much cleaner than one might expect given the heavy use it got.

The fridge in this kitchen was another matter entirely. People would leave food in there for months. I eventually resorted to buying a rubber stamp and stamping the date on everything. If people wanted to keep something, they could rub out the date, but anything still dated two weeks later went in the garbage. This actually worked pretty well; I only had to do it a couple times a semester before the abandoned food retreated to a reasonble level. Sorry, no specific memories of disgusting food, as I have blocked them all out of my memory.

Walt

[JennyUptown]

One of my NYC-era roommates took off with my blender when she moved out, two weeks before my other roommate and I left. She was a sublettor who had only moved in two or three months prior (I doubt she left her bedroom more than ten times during that period), yet somehow she "forgot" that she did not possess a blender when she moved in.

[adoxograph]

Had a roommate a while back who had the most remarkable tendancy to find the single most expensive/most necessary item from my last shopping trip and make it into a "snack".

He sat down and ate a pound of pine nuts once. Like they were pistachios or something.

This was the same roommate who would knock on the door to my computer closet and ask me if he looked fat after consuming the bittersweet chocolate I was going to use for truffles, or eating half of my sugar cookie dough that was chilling in the refrigerator.

Luckily, the previous roommate returned to town and I was able to give this one the boot. He tried to stiff me on utilities bills, too. This was the worst of the lot of roommates - although I admit the others had food habits that were occasionally mistifying. (Stir fried ground beef with ketchup and radishes?)

[snowangel]

Around here, it's not what the kids or husband eat, it's what they put back in the fridge and cupboards. Empty containers. Empty bags. Empty boxes. Just because the cupboard looks full, doesn't mean it is. Let'e not mention just how much more work it is to open the dishwasher to put that empty glass in than it is to just set it on top of the dishwasher.

[lala]

While living in a shared house, with a seperate fridge on each floor, the guy across the hall would 'shop' in my groceries - actually take food, then leave money! Not only was my food missing, he never paid enough.