Some of my friends at university ended up sharing a house with three other people whom they didn't know. One of them brought a holdall full of damp clothes when she moved in and left it in the kitchen corner, under the counter. The clothes were never dealt with or dried out, so they simply stayed there, rotting away nicely. People started throwing rubbish on top of it instead of walking a few yards to the bin and the whole large area ended up becoming a 'bin corner' until they all vacated at the end of the year.
In the same house, a friend who was helping them move in but not living there himself bought himself a Chinese takeaway at the end of a busy day, ate most of it and then left the rest in the fridge. At the end of the year, it was still there at the back of a shelf, all lovely green and furry.
There was a corner shop about 30 yards away from the house, which sold milk in glass bottles and then accepted the empties back in to return to the dairy. One lad bought a bottle regularly and couldn't be bothered to take the bottle back every day, so he put them on the windowsill. This would have been reasonable if he'd taken them back once a week or so but, no, by the end of the year, loads of them were still there, precariously balanced on top of each other, blocking out the clear view of the shop that was no distance away at all!
In one student house that I lived in, I had a housemate who kept the 4-pint milk cartons and took them up to his room and used them for, erm, 'night-water' purposes (daytime as well, actually). As if that wasn't grim enough, he would then bring them back downstairs, walk past the bathroom where he could at least have tipped it down the toilet, and into the kitchen, where he left them next to the bin. Oh, and just in case it helps to know, he never found it necessary to keep or re-use the carton lids at all. 