My daughter vs her flatmate

[edierichards19]

I was wondering if someone could be of some assistance and give me some well needed advice on what to do about my daughter's horrendous living situation with what sounds like the flatmate from hell.

My daughter is a university student who is living with a girl who is the same age as her. All originally seemed well until her flatmate (we'll call her Emily) started to become a nightmare to live with.
My daughter regularly sends me messages and pictures of the disgusting mess Emily often leaves lying around the flat. Most images include dirty pots and pans left our for days, opened meat on the kitchen counter left out, multiple bowls of rotting food, rotting food in the cupboards, hair in the sink/shower, waste not being flushed down the loo, waste on the toilet seat. I could go on...

My daughter has told her multiple times to stop these disgusting habits and to clean up her mess. In fairness, my daughter also said that leaving the odd plate on the counter and not washing it up straight after using it is ok because she understands that she may be in a rush sometimes or tired. Though it seems like Emily has taken this and assumed that she can leave her dirty things out everyday for days and days at a time.

My daughter has had numerous conversations with Emily about this and I have run out of advice to give her. My daughter has said that now every time she brings up the mess Emily leaves around, Emily cries and throws a tantrum, thus making my daughter feel uncomfortable in bringing this up again as she doesn't want to upset her.

Please could someone give me some advice on how to help my daughter. Anything would be appreciated.

Thank you!

Emily sounds like a nightmare and very immature
is it a privately rented property or uni accommodation?

@rubyslippers it is a privately rented accommodation. My daughter has contacted their landlord to explain the situation, though it seems like the landlord is only bothered about receiving rent payments rather than the condition of his property.

Standard psycho uses tears to manipulate.

Get your daughter out of that property.

There are other things can be done, including:

• if students accommodation, report the girl amd, ask to change rooms.
• tell the girl that if she doesn't clean up after herself, she needs to pay ror a cleaner
• inform the girls parents of what's going on ad she clearly needs mental health treatment
• inform the girls uni (they may be able to contact her family if her mental health is in question).

But ultimately, get your daughter out of that environment asap

Remove your daughter from the tenancy and find her somewhere else to live

Under the circumstances I expect Student Services will help

My daughter is the Emily in this situation-she has BPD. I go and clean for her once a week, and am in the process of buying a dishwasher for the student house. I’ve also been the mediator between the two girls multiple
times. My daughter doesn’t leave human waste lying around but does have a cat, and the cat has had accidents in the bathroom.

I completely understand your daughter’s point of view-living with an “Emily” is incredibly hard! Is there any way you could speak to Emily’s parents and explain what is going on? They will definitely be aware of their daughter’s shortcomings.

If she doesn’t clean up pots and pans for days tell you daughter to put them In Emily’s bedroom, same with any other mess she leaves lying around.

One of my DDs was in a similar situation (4 sharing but one a nightmare) and they put all her dirty kitchen things in a box and dumped it outside her room every day. They put their own plates etc in their rooms so she couldn't just use their things - food is more problematic but they were persistent with the dirty dishes and after a few weeks the girl got the message. One of the guys was able to turn on the waterworks himself when she started crying that she felt bullied - he cried and said she was bullying him by leaving everything so messy! It did get sorted as she eventually got the message that her mum wasn't there to clear up her mess so she'd need to do it herself.

I had a flatmate who was a bit like this in that she would leave her dirty dishes around for days (no rotten food though!). When she used a load of stuff making brownies to take on a trip and went away for the week leaving everything unwashed, we just put all the items she had used inside her bedroom and shut the door. She was very upset when she got home and found it, but we’d had enough. She was better after that.

I’d echo the advice to contact either the student welfare at the uni or the girl’s parents, because this doesn’t sound normal; but also in the short term put everything Emily leaves dirty or rotten in Emily’s room. Keep your own dishes in your room, and any food you can too (maybe get a cool box temporarily?). It would be more work for a while being on top of washing up so that nothing is left out for Emily to use, but hopefully the message will get through eventually.

You should pay for your daughter to live alone in a studio flat, rather than have her flatmates be subjected to her filth and cat shit.

One of my sons lived with an “Emily” last year, his parents joked about how messy he was going to be as they were moving in.

The pictures my DS sent me after 4 weeks were atrocious. I couldn’t believe this kids parents had knowingly inflicted such a disgusting pig on a flat share.

The mess is just what shared living is like, unfortunately. Leaving the toilet so disgusting isn't one I've regularly experienced (although not cleaning the toilet was a regular issue when I was renting). Suggest your daughter buy her own pot, pan, cup, plate etc and keep them in her room. If she can't afford to rent a 1 bedroom place and doesn't have a clean friend/aquaintence to share with, then she's just going to have to put up with shoddy living conditions. It's pretty shit, but that was normal renting when I was in my 20s. Everyone had at least one lazy/filthy/psycho flatmate.

I’m not sure she can ‘just remove her dd from the tenancy’ tbh. @edierichards19 youd need to read the contract carefully before doing anything.

Otherwise, I’d buy a big plastic box, not say anything and put anything lying around in the box for Emily to deal with.
They should have their own cupboard so what she does there shouldn’t affect your dd too much.
Id ignore the shower etc…

But tbh, from the stories my dcs and niece & nephew came back from Uni halls, some students are just pigs and they won’t do anything about it. I’ve seen the shared kitchen in Uni Halls dc2 had to use. It was rank all down to a single person. Nothing ever changed either….

After that, you and your dd needs to decide if she can move out and where she could go. (I’m assuming it’s your dd and Emily, no other flatmates)
There is the issue of the contract and cost. But also the fact she is unlikely to find a house with an empty slate bedroom.

@C152 id assume the OP’s dd already has all of her own stuff. Well I hope so.
But yes she can keep her stuff in her bedroom too.

@edierichards19 there is one thing she can do and it’s ensuring she isn’t going to be with Emily next year.

Both my dcs were looking for a house for the following year aroubd this time in the year. She if your dd wants to change, she needs to look now!!

Careful with this one. Did the same to my second year Emily and got called out for bullying!

Interesting to read the responses on this thread. Emily sounds very like 6 out of 7 people I lived with as a fresher (plus the one mentioned above). It was 20 years ago and felt like a very common problem in shared flats. Thought it was just a bit of a uni right of passage tbh. Can't imagine our parents having a Mumsnet thread about it. Our Freshers flat was horrific. I used to avoid bringing people over, or at least apologise profusely about the mess. Once there were maggots. And the boys pissed in the bin. It was genuinely absolutely awful. There were 2 of us who had high standards and 5 that didn't, so seriously outnumbered.

Some ideas which worked for us:

• call a house meeting to discuss it. Propose a chores rota split amongst all the housemates (limited success)
• hold a regular cleanathon when everyone is home. Stick a cracking playlist on, don the marigolds and get stuck in as a team regardless of who made the mess. Bribing with pizza helps. Moderate success.
• fake letter from the landlord saying there's a flat inspection on 'x date and money removed from deposits if the house isn't up to standard (highly successful, but only works once a term)
• keeping my own plates/pans etc in my room so they weren't accessible to others (very successful)
• passive aggressive but funny post it notes (not my idea or execution but randomly they worked the first few times !! Ie 'hello this is carpet, I'm currently suffocating under a thick layer of dust. Send help, or hoover!' (moderately successful)
• asking nicely multiple times a day/whenever Emily enters the kitchen until she gets the message (quite confrontational if you don't get the tone right, but worked in the end)
• wait till you're about to go away for the weekend, then just before you leave liberally spray something really rank scented in the kitchen (I went with something called Liquid Ass). Miraculously when I returned the place was spotless. Though did still stink a tiny bit, may have gone too far with the spraying (highly successful)
• hold something of theirs hostage until they've cleaned up (absolute fail. My housemate tried it and she returned home to find they had relocated her room to the courtyard. Perfectly set up her bed, mattress, chest of drawers etc but outside. They also stole all my lightbulbs.).

If it's really that bad and doesn't improve then perhaps a mini fridge and portable hob in your daughters room, then she doesn't have to enter the kitchen apart from to wash up.

Rank flatmates are a bit of rite of passage. The best thing thing your DD can do is to tell Emily - and keep telling her - that she needs to flush away her shit, and that if she doesn't clear away her rubbish then it will be going on her bed. And grit her teeth and thank her lucky stars she can live elsewhere when this tenancy is done.

Ps my Freshers flat did this to our manky flatmate. Entire washing up bowl of her dirty dishes was parked neatly on her bed. She wasn't happy, but she got the point.

I have every sympathy for your daughter but she shouldn't be living in a shared house if she can't look after it. She should be living alone.

Emily's parents should be ashamed of themselves for raising a filthy, lazy young woman.

I don't understand how people can live like pigs (barring disability that means cleaning is genuinely beyond them, in which case the lack of appropriate support is whats disgusting!).

I wonder if they grew up in filth or grew up with their parents never expecting them to lift a finger so they go out in the world thinking the cleaning fairy will sort it all out.

It's pathetic.

To be fair how people are at uni isn't always reflective of how they are at home. I was a dreadful slob at home. Mum used to nag me from dawn till dusk, call my room a health hazard etc. The moment I went to uni I was the most house proud person in the building, and everyone's mum 😂 was suddenly the one doing the nagging!

Maybe at home Emily is a model citizen, and now she's got freedom and she's living out all her disgusting, slothenly dreams. Like the friend I had who had a 'clean living' childhood, all raw, organic, vegetarian food, then came to uni and put on 4 stone in one year because she suddenly had the freedom to! (Don't get me wrong though, Emily is gross and needs to sort herself out)

Your daughter could try to find someone to take over her tenancy.

Her flatmate doesn't sound very well if she's crying and having a tantrum when asked to clean up. Also leaving waste, I assume you mean feces in and around the toilet is a sign of someone with serious problems.

I lived in multiple house shares and never encountered people incapable of flushing a toilet or who regularly left food out to rot. People were a bit lax about washing up but nothing to that extent.

Get a cardboard box and put all her stuff in it on the floor then clean and disinfect the rest of the kitchen. Keep adding her stuff to the cardboard box so it’s all in one place. DD might just need to keep her plates etc in her room as they might get used….

If your daughter is practically unable to clean up after herself she has no business having a cat that she no doubt doesn't clear up after either

Brilliant ideas from @perplexedandbemused !

Emily sounds like a lazy entitled brat. I'd advise your daughter maybe has a word with her parents(if she hasn't already done so) and maybe start looking for someone else to live with if possible