I wrote them an email. I'm giving my sister a chance to approve/edit before I send it to them.

Want to help?

You guys, this behavior has got to stop. It isn’t fair to M and it isn’t fair to me. For a while I have been cleaning up after you because I feel sorry for my sister. This morning (while you were playing a video game, might I remind you) you said you hadn’t had time to do the dishes. Four hours later you left the house. You’re Welcome. Again. I used to do the dishes once a day until I realized that it was after M left for work in the morning and by the time she got home the kitchen was usually full of dishes again so for weeks M was never able to cook in her own clean kitchen. Imagine how that must have felt, to wake up and find dirty dishes, come home and find dirty dishes, day after day. So I started doing the dishes twice a day, and then you guys moved out for a while and I forgot how bad it had been. Today was the last straw.

Please please please! If you “don’t have time” to do the dishes: consider the many possibilities that toast and paper plates have to offer.

Laga, I once had a roommate who regularly left dishes out that I would end up doing. Once he cooked a chicken and left the pan. I was *determined* to outwait him.

Heh. My current place has a double sink--so I put mine in one side and the roomie puts his in the other side. In the past, with other roommates, I have TOTALLY been the one who was being outwaited, I often procrastinate dishes for days....but now he's worse than me! It's really kind of bugging me. Though in totally gender-stereotyped stuff, he takes out the trash a lot more than I do, and I run the dishwasher (and put away the dishes) more.

This is exactly why I lived alone for so many years. I am often irritated by other's mess, while wanting MY level of mess to be accommodated.

It can be done...but not by everybody.

I can tolerate a lot of mess (ask anyone who's been to my house) but I don't think it's too much to ask to have a surface I can prepare food on.

You guys are making me feel guilty. I better go wash the dishes.

The SO & I have differing levels of kitchen cleanliness, and he's the one who breaks first. And I always feel bad about it. And it's pretty messy since he's had strep. But I got everything done but the recyclables today. So if I finish the recyclables and then today's dishes (not too much, as I used the grill) I should be in good shape. Plus I need to go work on the bedroom since he'll be back in it tomorrow night.

I put the greasy nasty skillet in my housemate's bed. With his beag-lab.

It was messy. It got the point across.

I have no tolerance for that kinda shit. That wasn't the first or the last. Now I live alone.

Oh, dude, I have a large metal bowl of dirty dishes soaking in the sink right now. I am not perfect. I am, however, living alone at the moment.

Dh is better at cleaning the kitchen. He standards are higher than mine. However, I clean it more often ...

Oh, the dishes... the dishes... I think marital bliss requires that I try not to participate too vociferally in this discussion.

My childhood training was that whoever cooked dinner was let off from dish duty. My married life hasn't quite fit that pattern.

My childhood training was that whoever cooked dinner was let off from dish duty.

Right? Isn't that how it's supposed to work? The SO has taken to cooking more often now that we're in this house with the awesome kitchen. And I'm happy to clean up after him. But part of the problem is with our personalities, because he's a clean cook and I'm a messy one. He washes each pot during cooking, so by the time you finish eating, the only dishes are the eating and serving dishes. I, on the other hand, enter the kitchen, there is a great cloud of ingredients possibly including flour on multiple surfaces, and from the cloud emerges food. And then I clean everything up. But, you know, later. This is a conflict for us. So it's not a fair distribution of labor if one cooks and one cleans.