The Vine: January 15, 2008
Hiya Sars,
I’m so deeply mired in a squabble with my now-former roommate, I could really use a sane outside voice to tell me who’s right and who’s wrong. The issue is this: when Roomie and I moved into our apartment a year ago, she moved in a week before me and bought a lot of basic supplies, including all cleaning supplies, before I got there. I gave her a fat check at the time to pay for half of everything she bought, and we’ve split expenses since then as we’ve run out of things.
Because of various boy/money/religion problems (enough to fill a month’s worth of advice columns, I reckon), we’ve gone from best friends to virtual strangers in the year since then. So our one-year lease runs up, and we both wisely decide to go our separate ways. Roomie moves out a week before me. I return to the apartment to find that she has taken all of the cleaning supplies and not done anything to clean the apartment at all — didn’t vacuum her room, clean her windows, take all the nails out of her walls, nada. She claimed that she had no idea we needed to clean anything, even though it’s explicitly stated in our lease (along with the heavy fines we receive if we don’t clean). Plus it seems pretty basic to me that you have to clean any apartment before you vacate the place; isn’t that a general rule of apartment living?
So I call Roomie to tell her that she needs to bring the supplies back and help me clean the apartment, but she’s booked all weekend and we have to be out by Sunday at 5 PM. My parents and I end up buying an entirely new set of cleaning supplies, and my mom spends all weekend making the place shine while my dad and I move my crap. I write to Roomie and tell her that we went ahead and did all the cleaning without her; it was a pretty major task and I’d appreciate it if she’d give me some money for the supplies we had to buy for the occasion.
Roomie says that the supplies weren’t that expensive to begin with, I was going to have to buy them anyway for my new apartment, and she has no intention of paying me back. I believe that since we split the cost of the supplies to begin with, I should’ve been able to have used them to clean our apartment, especially since she didn’t have time to help at all. Who’s out of line: the Roomie or I?
Dirty Problem
Dear Dirty,
Well, obviously your roommate is out of line — but if she not only refused to help you clean the apartment but also took off with all the cleaning supplies, I have to wonder why you think she’d do the right thing now. It’s not that she’s in the right; it’s that you could have predicted this, that she’d balk at paying for half the supplies.
It’s a net gain that she’s out of your life; she just proved that by ditching you with the clean-up. If you want to make that point by keeping the entire security deposit, that’s up to you, but I’d advise you to drop the whole thing and thank God you’re shut of her. Right or wrong, getting her to see sense in this matter is obviously futile. It sucks that you got stuck with the work and the cost of the supplies, but she doesn’t get it, so drop it.
Tags: roommates
