Kitchen Etiquette

So living with roommates is always interesting. Nearly always there are different ideas about how to do things and who should do them. This is especially true when it comes to cleanliness in the kitchen. My roommate experience this year has been no different than in the past. Different ideas with minor conflict arising from those disagreements. I'll share some general complaints as well as my personal pet peeves.

The main conflict is dishes. People either don't do them at all or do them all the time. This works out great for the people who never do dishes but not so great for the people who are always stuck doing them. It's kind of ridiculous when people will put their dishes in the sink when the dish washer is dirty.

Another dish problem is that of leaving dirty crusty pans in the sink without even rinsing them out. I personally don't mind loading other people's dishes but I will not scrub crusty pans that i haven't used. And it's not like people are coming back to clean their pots later, they just sit and sit.

My newest pet peeve is when people leave organic waste (apple core, lettuce, bread) on their plates. I feel that there is no excuse for this, the garbage is right below the sink. I came home earlier this week to find this scene, a bunch of dishes soaking and then apple lettuce and bread sitting in the water too. I didn't appreciate it. I talked to my roommates about it and the culprit said "Well there's the garbage disposal, they go down that". Yes I am aware that organic waste can do down the disposal but if you're going to do that, do it right when you finish your meal, don't let it sit for and entire day!

The final issue that I would like to address is that of the garbage. We keep our garbage beneath the sink. It fills up pretty quickly but it doesn't get taken out nearly as much as it should. Often I open the cupboard to throw something away to find that the garbage can has become the garbage cupboard. Disgusting! I took out the trash last week and not only was there a bags worth of garbage in the can, there was also a bags worth in the cupboard.

Those are just a few of the issues that we have in my apartment. It always keeps things interesting. There is no one person to blame and I am definitely not perfect but it would be so nice to have some common ideas on what is acceptable and what is not. Oh well I guess that is life. No matter what stage I'm at I'm sure that I'll have differing ideas of how things should be done. So really I should thank my roommates, they are helping me get accustom to life :)