Sharing a bathroom with my neighbour is slowly breaking me

[beefthief]

Thread title: Sharing a bathroom with my neighbour is slowly breaking me
OP — Posted by: WallTooThin
I need to vent and also check if I’m losing my mind.
I share a bathroom with my neighbour (old building, “temporary” setup that has now lasted 3 years 🙃). On paper it sounded fine. In reality? Absolute chaos.

They will occupy the bathroom for 45 minutes minimum. Shower, music blasting, mirror monologues, the works. Meanwhile I’m doing the pee-dance in my hallway like an idiot. Knocking does nothing. Texting does nothing. It’s like once they cross the bathroom threshold, the outside world ceases to exist.

Hair. Everywhere. Sink, floor, shower walls. I don’t even know how one person produces this much hair. The toilet seat is also constantly left up, which would be annoying but fine—except they also don’t wipe it. I shouldn’t have to mentally prepare myself every time I need to sit down.

I’ve tried being polite. I’ve tried hints. I’ve tried schedules. Nothing sticks longer than a week.

Has anyone survived a shared-bathroom situation like this? Do I confront them directly, or do I just accept that this is my villain origin story?

AI?

What's the formatting?

You let someone in from another house to use your bathroom?

Don't let them in anymore?

Did you forget to remove the top bit of the op when you copied and pasted it?

It's my neighbour, the arrangement was on the tenancy

Which country do you live in?

Sorry dude, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. Nobody would agree to that.

That was jaw-cracking yawn that your thread gave me.

Why don't you just give us the post you gave to AI to get it to write that garbled mess, maybe we can unpick things a bit better with your actual words? IDK. Maybe it will be worse. But we don't have much info right now and you routed your words through a third party for some reason, which means all nuance and any fine details have been lost.

I was trying to clarify things through a bot and made a right mess of it

Can you find somewhere else to live? This is a temporary gone permanent situation. I would look into whether you should be paying less for starters seeing as you have to share your home.

Assuming it's like two units with the bathroom in the middle, you both have a door on either side of it? I don't know if there is any solution but to move. Meanwhile, you need a bucket for when you just can't wait.

That's exactly right, but I don't know how to change things

1. Start looking for somewhere else to live
2. Buy a camping toilet for emergency use (bucket with a seat type of thing)
3. Complain to landlord?

All of this. There are powders that turn into thick gel when liquids are added; the gel also traps smells. You can then tie the bag up with the solidified gel inside and bin it. It would work out expensive if this were your only toilet option, but you'll only need it occasionally.

Is there a gym or leisure centre near you, where you could have showers?

Assuming there's a sink in your rooms, you should be able to reduce your reliance on the bathroom to almost zero. It's far from ideal but I lived in a lot of accommodations with shared bathrooms when younger, and know that bathroom slobs can't be changed.

Wow I can't imagine how hard that must be, is it a flat with communal bathroom? I couldn't stand that

Do you pay all the water bill? This must be illegal. What if you are on holiday?

Villain origin story pmsl.
Why have you posted such a garbled mess?
You could have explained the situation so much better yourself using your brain

Move out? Not sure what you want us to do about it?

What was / is the plan to bring the temporary arrangement to an end? And why hasn’t that happened?

If it's the arrangement you agreed to when you moved in I'm not sure what advice you want - there isn't anything you can do apart from move out?

Glad you realise that asking ChatGPT to write your post was a mistake.

Buy a porta potty for emergency use.

Travel Jane is the answer, they are brilliant.
Although doesn't change your dreadful arrangement at all.

If you have a schedule for showers/baths stick it on the bathroom door and bang if it's your turn. And get one of those funny signs for the bathroom that reminds people not to hog the toilet!

Seen on a to programme where people were living in their little old camper vans with no available loos. Apparently car litter works well & ‘soaks’ up smells as well as fluids. It comes in a variety of forms like wood pellets or gel & some called lightweight?
Put up large signs around bathroom: “ LEAVE THIS ROOM THE WAY YOU FIND IT” or “CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF BEFORE LEAVING THIS ROOM”.

If the neighbour is a selfish slob, no polite sign is going to change that. You might try and shame them with a detailed complaint with photos to the landlord with neighbour copied in.

Alternatively, could you suggest that you both give ten minutes notice before having a bath/shower? We do this in our house (albeit it might only be a minute, but it allows for a wee).