How to CALMLY deal with overreacting housemates.

No firebombing suggestions allowed.

Basically, I'm being asked to cough up £20 for a shower curtain. I've said I'll pay, but that's just a good faith thing. Because I don't think I should have to.

The shower curtain was a year old, before I even moved in last Sept.

The damage is that ONE of the links, of ONE of the sheets (one is waterproof, one is fabric) has broken.

The link is at the part of the shower by the wall, where it doesn't even protect anything.

Which is my fault, because I broke it.

By washing it. Because it was covered in black mould.

So £20, for wear and tear, because of ONE link, because I had the audacity to put it in the machine??

There's three of us in the house, the other two are best mates. A girl, and a camp guy. The guy is the one who owns the shower curtain. He started off by asking us for £10 each, but I didn't want to make her pay if she hadn't done anything.

Currently, I've asked if he can just find a liner.
I'm going to ask if I can just put a £5 primark one up, on the basis that I want to be able to wash the curtain when it needs it, without risking paying £20 for minor damage, but I don't want to sound pissy.

This is essentially silence money, but I'm REALLY not happy at having to pay for it.

What do you think I should do?

How old is this guy? Is he a fellow renter or does he own the house? Does he clean anything or is this moldy curtain par for the course? IOW, if he valued the curtain so much why didn't he take some care in cleaning it?

If it's just a rent house go buy a $5 curtain and install it, tell him he can put up a new high dollar curtain if it's so important to him.

Or pay the hush money, in this case that it an acceptable course of action, but I definitely understand your objection.

Poison. Poison's much quieter than firebombing.

Anyway, tell him that if he wants to get a new and expensive curtain when you don't really need one, you'll share the cost with him but he'd damn well better wash it himself once a month so that it never gets moldy. The next time it gets moldy it gets dumped in his bed, not the laundry.

First sit down and explain your issue. If they still want the money, I'd pay the money.


But then refuse to lift a finger to clean anything ever again.

I'm talking about picking their dishes up out of the sink, so you can wash yours and then putting theirs back. I'm talking about if you have to clear a table of their garbage and the trashcan is beside the table, pile their shit under the table.

A fellow renter, he's put a lot of decoration into the house; the two of them lived here before I did, I'm replacing last years housemate.

I have no objection with cleaning the bathroom or anything, but apparently he hates washing up so much that we do that, and he does the housework (although he has a heavy courseload, and for all his neuroticism, he's not actually cleaned it to the standard I would, but because of my narcolepsy, it works out better for me like this.).

I have no idea why he didn't clean it himself. Probably on the basis that it's his curtain, so not our problem, but I got sick of showering next to black mould.

It's hush money in the sense of I don't have the energy to argue, and better things to think about, rather hush money as in to hide it from the landlord.

Housemate is 20/21.

I mentioned I cleaned it because it was disgusting, and his reaction was "well, that's not an issue anymore now is it?" (um, it sort of is, if I have to pay four times more than I expected to...)

Clean the entire house. Submit an invoice for 100 quid.

Observe.

I basically lived in a house like that last year. I'm REALLY trying to not be completely cut off again.

Like I said before, he technically does all the housework

(but lookng at this, I can see why, I mean, the vacuum cleaner is his, and I apparently was handling it too rough, so cleaning would probably bankrupt me... it's a shit vacuum cleaner as well. And his pots and pans are awful aluminum ones, that are apparently "ruined" from not being used properly. No, they're aluminium, therefore they're shit and easily worn. So I just got my own teflon ones.)

so I'll just come off like I'm looking for a fight or something.

So you're doing the cleaning? Tell this twenty year old boy that he can buy a new fancy curtain when he grow up and moves into a real house and does his own cleaning. Till then, if you're cleaning, you're buying the curtain.

$5 curtain, forget the $20, he can learn to take care of his own shit next time.

( used in lieu of pounds because I'm not fucking British )

Buy the fucking curtain, then tell Mr. Foofy Interior Decorator that you're done cleaning up after his whiny ass. Take no further responsibility for cleaning or maintaining anything that is used communally, buy your own housewares wherever possible, and store them in your bedroom.

The real solution to problematic roommates is to live without any. Always a worthy sacrifice in my book.

"CALMLY" just makes me think of the dialogue in Silence of the Lambs where they were talking about how Lecter was hooked up to a heart monitor in the hospital and his heart rate never climbed above the resting level while he was chewing someone's face off.

Take a shit in Mr Neurotics cereal.

Take two if he eats Coco Pops.

Honestly, I dream for a life without housemates. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anywhere round here without them, unless I went back to halls. That's not so much "no housemates" as "having a single room in a block of 70 18yr olds that have just discovered freedom and being able to drink legally."

Not what I was looking for at all.

That's pretty much the mood I'm in.

I take it "camp guy" doesn't mean he spends a lot of time in the woods in a tent?

Ahhh, yes. The reason why living alone is every bit as good (and recommended) as flying single seat aircraft: the quality of the social experience.

Evenflow is right. I can't imagine paying $40 for a foo-foo shower curtain.

Buy a minimally-acceptable vinyl shower curtain liner, toss the old one, put up the new one, and tell the little mincing whiner to go pound sand!

(Oh...and then go have sex on his bed while he's gone.)

I'm so glad I've never had to put up with housemates/roommates.

And I'm glad I can get a decent shower curtain and a whole new set of shower curtain hooks at Wal-Mart for all of $5.

Mini, you're being screwed. Get to Matalan, or a pound shop, or something, and pick up a plastic shower curtain for less than a tenner.

Daughter had a couple of gripes when she had housemates, but thankfully nothing that petty. Gordon Bennet...

There's just the one tear in the curtain, right? So, basically, one of the corners is hanging a bit loose?

And there's a second curtain, right?



A: Duct tape, preferably combined with a healthy propaganda regimen regarding the environmental evils of waste.

B: Pay the 20 pounds for a new liner and keep the "ruined" one for yourself for future use. I'm sure I needn't spell out a suitable line of reasoning to apply in the event he complains.

C: Pay the 5 pounds for a new liner. This is discouraged because, from his POV, he's still down 15 pounds' worth of liner. And if he's gonna have a quadruply-expensive liner in the first place, and if he's gonna quibble over one hole being busted, he'll probably care about the difference. Seriously, imagine lending someone your Mirado Black Warrior pencil, only for the borrower to break it. Oh, but you get back, as restitution, a cheapo with one of those erasers that just smears instead of erasing. That works out well, right? . . . No, not the same, is it.


P.S. How is the far edge of the curtain "not protecting anything"? Isn't there grout or something nearby that you'd want to avoid encouraging [-]mold[/-] mould to live on?

P.P.S. Spray the liner down a bit at the end of each shower. Ounce of prevention and all that.

Stake and chop off heads.

Use a bin bag and then cockpunch him if he moans.

Sounds like the guy is a homo and you need a boyfriend to "explain how things work" to him

£20 ?? I just bought one at Walmart for $2.87 (£1.87)

You know, they actually make stick-on replacement rings for when a single hole on a shower-curtain tears. Should cost about $2 for a 4-pack, I don't know how much that is in your godless pounds sterling.

Right, so...

Your reaction to someone being over sensitive about their SHOWER CURTAIN being damaged is to BEAT THEM UP? Because they were asking for the cost of a SHOWER CURTAIN?

Prime-cut thinking there EP!

No, just someone to speak up for you when you are being taken advantage of. It pisses me off.

I'm proud no one has suggested locking them in the basement and raping them. Way to stay classy thread!

Buy a cheap new curtain, and then take it down after you shower. It's your curtain.

Say you'll buy a new curtain and then ask him if he would like you to re-mouldify it for him too, so it's just like it was before.