It really does only take one little thing to completely turn your life around.
And sometimes, you really learn that. It could be petting a single dog, or seeing a flower, or reading a book.
But whatever it is, it gets under your skin and makes your entire life far better than it was.
u/cskarfors asked:
What is one small thing that changed your life for the better?
Here were some of the answers.
Narrowly Made It
GiphyGoing to the doctor early. Lump felt like barely anything, but I worked up the courage to ask the doctor if he could check it out. That led to a second opinion, surgery, and no more cancer within 3 days. Waiting longer could have led to months of chemo or worse.
Get to know you body (what normal feels like) and check yourself boys and girls.
Edit: thank you for my first internet coins, kind redditors. This happened when I was 24, in the US. A year before getting dropped off my parent's family insurance plan, which saved me about 12k. I realize that was an extremely fortunate situation compared to basically the rest of the US. Since some asked, it was about half the size of a pea, and difficult to feel through the ballsack skin. Got a physical exam, then an ultrasound. Surgery went in through my abdomen and removed the entire left testicle just to be safe. I've had follow-up imaging done of my abdomen to be sure it hasn't come back since. After surgery recovery, sex is no different than before and you only need one to be fertile. I stopped noticing anything different after a year. Getting checked was scary/embarrassing but the best decision I could have made. Peace of mind or treatment > embarrassment or death
Small Purposes
Oddly enough, something I saw on r/LifeProTips turned out to be enormously useful to me: dividing my hours of the day into 20-minute and 40-minute blocks. Set a timer for 20 minutes, spend that entire 20 minutes dedicated to cleaning, doing a chore, or otherwise being productive, and then set a timer for 40 minutes that I spend however I please. Rinse and repeat at will.
This has been helpful because I suffer from major depressive disorder, and was also raised by someone who has hoarding tendencies and doesn't clean beyond subsistence levels (i.e. will do a load of dishes, but never cleans the sink or wipes the counters. That kind of thing, x100). All that combined makes me really struggle with keeping house and doing necessary things that should be cleared out regularly, little things like shredding all those "you are pre-approved for a credit card" junk letters, washing *all* the dishes during the day before making more dirty dishes at dinner, you get the picture.
I wasn't raised to do it, and my nature is to do literally anything else. The 20-minute task blocks keep me from getting overwhelmed by otherwise overwhelming tasks, and the 40-minute "me" time blocks make me value that time all the more than when I am just loafing around indefinitely. Yesterday, two 20-minute task blocks translated to completely clearing the dirty dishes, deep-cleaning my rice cooker, organizing and sanitizing the counter beside the stove, cleaning and organizing the bathroom sink cabinet, and ditto for the toiletries/medication shelf. It was a great eye-opener to see how much I can get done in a really short amount of time, and very encouraging.
Make A Choice For You
I love playing basketball. I joined a gym with a basketball court so I could play whenever I wanted. I go in every morning and play. Go back sometimes in the evening and play with whomever is there. High school kids, old dudes, dudes that can't play. I don't care - I love basketball. I'm 44 and it's one of the first times in my life I've done something for me because I love it.
Maybe basketball isn't your thing. That's not my point. Find something you love and do it. Do it because you want to. Do it for fun. Keep it fun. Find others who do it too. It doesn't matter who they are, just enjoy what you're doing with others.
Being Honest
I have depression, and being honest about how I feel when people ask how I'm doing has genuinely helped me feel less crummy. I don't tell people I'm fine anymore because I'm usually not. I don't go into any details, because that's more than most people actully want to hear, but I'll say things like, "Man, I'm worn out! Can't wait for the day to be over!" or "I'm wishing it was break time!" or "It was really hard to leave my dog this morning." I do my best to act cheerful, especially at work, but I got sick of telling people I was "fine" or "doing well" when I wasn't. You get more of a connection with people when you're honest and when you give them a way to empathize and extend the conversation.
Defining The Relationship
Telling my wife, after a rough time between the two of us, that I really wanted to have a wild, exciting affair and I'd prefer it be with her. That was about 25 years ago. Turns out we have a lot more fun treating each other like lovers than we did as spouses.
Also? Getting a Fitbit. That's really motivated me to walk more. So there's that, too.
Adding: Thanks for the Reddit gold, kind strangers. I shall use it wisely and only a little frivolously. Or the other way around, One of those.
Gateway Nametag
I started to pay attention to peoples' name tags.
It started to matter to me that I thanked "Tom" for his great service. That I thanked "Cassandra" for her help checking out my groceries. That "Toni" was there to answer my questions or that "Gladys" showed up at 5a on a cold morning so I could have a coffee on my way to work.
Paying attention to name tags led to me paying better attention to peoples' names when they told them to me. Like they were trusting me and inviting me into their lives in some small way. That they cared that I knew who they were, and I recognized that there was responsibility in that. So, over time, this made me a better listener in general, which takes practice.
Pretty soon, it started to matter to me that I was a listener, and not a wait-to-talker. It started to matter to me that if I had something to say, that I better have good reasons to say it. And so it then mattered to me that I had good reasons and good information which informed my beliefs, which led to it REALLY mattering to me that I was literate and adept in the tools of skepticism and to always remember, perhaps assume, that I could be wrong. To question what I took for granted was true, be willing to change my mind and assess my opinions/stances with a confidence derived from why and how I believed what I believed. It became very important to know how to best determine true things from false things, to believe that which is true and discard that which is false. Forget for a moment that this has revolutionized my personal ethical and existential philosophies, on paper it has led me to pursue and achieve a master's degree in science education and empowered me - a self-described prolific procrastinator - to complete a formal master's thesis and publish articles.
So.... Thanks name tags!
A Whole Pallette Change
Comitting to eating fruits and or vegetables with every meal and drastically reducing my consumption of red meat. It was my New Years resolution, and has changed my life for the better. I have struggled with IBS since I was a teenager, and now it's almost nonexistent. Unless you're a vegetarian, you most likely don't have enough fiber in your diet. I tried to limit my response since OP's question is about "one little thing", but I also eliminated soda from my diet for the first time since I was very young, that was a BIG thing. Soda is seriously liquid crack.
Subliminal Messages
I used to always say "No problem" when people asked me to do things. Overheard a conversation about how using negative words (both "no" and "problem") despite meaning that I would do whatever they needed help with, would cause negative thoughts in other people subliminally and they would tie that to you. (Even if they don't realize it, they have negative emotions and thoughts when they think or see me.) so I changed to saying "Sure thing" when people would ask me to help them with stuff. Night and day difference people.
EDIT Rip my inbox. For those of you who are wondering how it changed my life, this the best way I can describe it.
It's helped me to have a more positive outlook on my own life and actions. It portrays the idea that If they ask me to help them with something I'll do what I can to help. It helps me hold myself accountable and stick to my word. People around me know that if I say I'll do something I'll give it my very best at getting it done with the desired parameters that they've requested. They know they can count on me and my word
-Sigh- Dumb People
Not arguing or fighting with my mother.
She isn't gonna try to change or accept any new information. She's just gonna get emotional, take it as an insult, and insult me back, which just gets me yelling out of anger.
I just treat her with kid gloves and we actually get along pretty well now. She's kind of dumb, but not an evil person. Her deficits, also, are not deficits of mine, so I don't have to fix her to fix me.
Snoopy: Tale Of A Good Boy
When I was about 10 years old my parents and I were in our backyard clearing out a ton of weeds that had gotten out of hand. I had trouble focusing because our next door neighbor had this really adorable puppy and all I wanted to do was play with him.
We found out that they were actually going to take him to an animal shelter because their son was not taking care of him like he promised. I decided to ask my parents if maybe we could get him instead. I was an only child and never really have anyone to play with unless a friend would come over and the thought of having a puppy to play with whenever I wanted to was great.
My parents agreed and our neighbors offered to sell him to us for $20. I had that saved up and immediately agreed and promised I care for him and love him forever. So, he became my puppy, my brother, and after a few days of debating I named him Snoopy.
Snoopy became my closest friend. He made me laugh, played with me, and would just hang out and watch TV with me. He was always there for me, especially through some tough times in my life where I was extremely self-destructive. He saved me from myself. He was there at my side through tough breakups where all I ever wanted to do was lay in bed. He was an amazing friend. He was there to see me graduate 8th grade, high school, and college. I hoped he would be there on the day I got married and maybe be around for when I had kids, but unfortunately as much as we wish for things, sometimes they don't happen.
This is the first picture of I have of us together and this is the last. Today is the 4-year anniversary of his death after being by my side for almost 17 years. That little ball of fur in the first picture made such a huge impact on my life bringing me years of happiness, friendship, amd love. Even though I'm sad he's gone, I'm grateful to have had him in my life.
Dat Smart Water Doe
Electrolyte supplements, which I only started taking because it's recommended for runners, almost completely eradicated my skipped heartbeats which had bothered me for over 10 years.
Electrolytes are basically electrical conductors that are fundamental for the normal function of the heart. So although my problem wasn't life-threatening, it was certainly a relief to put a stop to it.
Kitty Protection Force
My 11 yr old cat gets harassed by other cats occasionally (like once or twice a day) and he always runs to my room now because he knows I'll protect him from them. Over the past couple years he seems to have noticed that I protect him from them and shows his affection much more for me now.
He sleeps with me now, to the point where he will come from across the house if he hears me getting ready for bed, and even lays on top of the pillow across from me, sometimes even laying on my arm.
He keeps me company at night and I feel like he actually loves me, even though a lot of people seem to think cats can't love. He genuinely improves my mental health every single day.
Coming Out Of My Cage And I've Been Doin Just Fine
I stopped wasting time on my pc 24/7 and instead started meeting up with friends three days a week. I still play the occasional hour of racing games etc. but it has had a huge impact on my social skills and I got to know more people. I also noticed being a shut-in made me more prone to getting sick, so I figured spending some time outside and getting some sunlight might help with that.
A Couch A Day Keeps The Demons Away
Going to a mental health professional.
It's not just like sitting on a couch and paying someone to listen to your rambles. If you end up with an excellent therapist, s/he can really help in dealing with your hangups and mental issues using scientifically proven methods. And sometimes, it's not even your brain that's the problem - it can be the people around you that are causing you mental torment. A good therapist can help identify those people and help you deal with them.
If you think that you need to go to a mechanic when your car breaks, then you should also consider going to a mental health professional when your brain needs rewiring.
Your Passions Be Your Guide
Music. My friends and other people in high school told me that joining band and marching band in senior year would be my biggest mistake and regret. Turns out that it's the reason why I'm going to miss high school so much once I graduate this year. Now it's my biggest passion, brings me joy, and I learned to listen to practically every genre there is.
Point is, find something that you think you might like. Try it once consistently, meaning don't just try it one day and throw it away, try it for a week or something to actually determine whether you like it or not. It might end up changing everything.
I tried music and it is something that I have nothing bad to say about. So much that I'm planning to continue music in some way during college and even as an adult.
In The Now
One small thing that changed my for the better, would be the habit-forming and behavioral/cognitive implementation of mindfulness and basic meditation into your everyday life. You don't need to be led to a mountaintop by a shaman to meditate in a basic way, reap the benefits of such, and be more mindful in your everyday life. Plus it helps deal with stress in a healthy (and free) way. It just takes effort - which for many, is the toughest asking point.
There are some modern tools useful in the application of such; namely, the utility of podcasts and apps on our phones. With the help of these, we can get some assistance in learning how to be more mindful and utilize something like meditation in 2019. Personally I use one called Headspace - super simple stuff here, but it definitely has helped me.
I also like Sam Harris' podcast, so I tried out his app too (Waking Up). I haven't used it as much, but so far I definitely enjoy it as well. Would recommend, if you want to learn the basics of mindfulness and meditation without it being abstract or scary. By working these exercises into our daily routines, we can learn to be more mindful, and learn more adaptive ways to cope with life's small, but consistent, stressors.
Living with someone isn’t always easy. It can take a fair amount of patience and consideration to get along with another person. However, there are some roommates and living situations that are so difficult—so toxic and bizarre—that the best thing to do is pack your bags and get out fast. Buckle up, these nightmare roomies are the absolute worst.
1. Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
My roommate seemed like a normal, nice dude. He was a student at the local university. I had no problems with him until one day, law enforcement busted in and apprehended him while he was sleeping. The reason was utterly horrifying. I had no idea he had taken two guys and held them for ransom. One was set free weeks later, while the other wasn't so lucky.
The body was eventually found in a basement buried in the ground. I quickly moved out of there.
2. Don’t Get Your Panties In A Pile
white textile on blue plastic laundry basketPhoto by Annie Spratt on UnsplashMy roommate was a bit of a nightmare. She was the kind of person who would come home at three am on a weeknight, bringing half the pub in tow. She was perpetually late on bills and useless at keeping the kitchen clean. She also had a bad habit when she went to take a shower. She would just drop/step out of her clothes, leaving them in a fabric pile on the floor in the bathroom, and not collect them for days.
One day when I got home from work, I went to take a shower. I encountered her usual filth pile. Still, something seemed...off. I recoiled in horror when I realized that MY underpants were in her pile. The fabric was unique, and they were now beyond ruined, caked with poo and blood. I confronted her. It turned out she was not good at remembering to do her laundry, so would regularly take my clean underwear out of the drier then eventually sneak them back into my laundry basket.
I went to get a health screening after that.
3. She’s Not Neat, But She’s A Freak
assorted-color disposable cup lotPhoto by Jas Min on UnsplashI was looking for a roommate when I was starting graduate school. I'm a guy, but I enjoy living in a clean apartment. I'm not a neat freak or anything, but I like things to be presentable. Most of my college guy friends were pretty gross, so I thought, "Girls are clean! I'll live with one of my female friends!" As it so happened, one of my friends was also looking for a place.
She told me that she was a neat freak, and loved to clean. I thought, "Great! This will work out well." Nothing could have been further from the truth...She turned out to be the most disgusting human being I have ever encountered in my life, and also a pathological liar. When she ate a banana, she would peel the banana and just drop the peel on the floor. When she used eggs to cook, she would put the broken eggshells back in the fridge.
Every day I would ask her to do her dishes, and four days later the same dishes were in the sink building up a nice layer of mold. The worst part of it all is that WE HAD A DISHWASHER! She didn't even have to DO anything! Just put them in the dishwasher! She also took two to three hour-long showers every day and would run through half a roll of toilet paper every day.
She would proceed to fill up our trash can with the thirty cans of Coke Zero that she drank every day, then make me take out the trash. Every day when she got home from classes, she would take an hour-long shower, put on a bathrobe, sit on the floor, and eat junk food in front of the TV. The bottom half of her robe was all grimy, and the spot where she sat on the floor got grimy too. There was a massive, circular stain left on the carpet.
4. Even The Garbage Collector Won’t Touch It
cars parked on street near buildings during daytimePhoto by Charlie Gallant on UnsplashOur garbage wasn't getting picked up. In the first week, I figured garbage collection had just missed us. In the second week, our can was full, so we left a bunch of bags next to it. They took the bags but didn't empty the can. When the third week came around, I chased the collectors down the street to see what was going on.
The guy told me that they won't empty the cans because they are full of two-liter bottles of urine, and they won't take the risk of one breaking and squirting on them. One of my roommates had been peeing in two-liter bottles because he was too lazy to walk to the bathroom, which was right next to his room. I had to pull them all out to get the trash people to finally empty our can.
5. We Do Not Seek Your Confession, Only The Rent Money
We had a guy who was your typical bad roommate. He didn't do anything around the house, and his room smelled, quite inexplicably, of salami. He set up his PC in the living room one day, essentially taking over our social space without asking anyone. He would sit there for days on end playing video games. Then he disappeared.
We realized that he had skipped out without having paid his rent for a few weeks. He owed us a few hundred dollars. Good thing for us, he inadvertently left his Warhammer figurine collection behind. It was quite a collection, all hand-painted. A friend of ours who knew about Warhammer stuff said this collection was easily worth three or four times more than what he owed us.
We started looking into selling it to cover rent, maybe fund a weekend of partying, and move on with our lives. One day about a week later, he showed up. He was blatantly looking behind couches and things trying to look for his collection while trying to act cool and pretend he didn’t owe us any money. We had a few minutes of awkward small talk before he asked if we had seen his black Warhammer chest.
My roomie who handled the bills said, “Nah man sorry. We've had a few pretty epic parties since you moved out. Hopefully, no one took it or something. Oh and hey man some of your rent didn't go through can we grab that off you when it's convenient?” The guy turned white as a sheet and gave us a line about paying us tomorrow, then left.
About an hour later, we finally got our revenge. We sent him a text saying, “General Anatole. Your army is in our clutches. Honor your agreement and we will be lenient and grant their freedom. Should you choose not to pay the reparations owed to us, we will slaughter them to a man. You have until nightfall, three days hence to meet our ultimatum. For good or for ill."
He paid us the next day and we gave him back his stuff.
6. She Spewed On My Suitcase
brown hatPhoto by Marissa Grootes on UnsplashMy freshman college roommate. One night, during finals period, she had one of her high school friends come to visit. They went out drinking and came back at 2:00 am or so. We had just been trying out this new bunk bed idea, and I was on the top bunk. She stumbled into her bottom bunk and tossed around a little. I thought she was asleep.
I heard her get out of bed and assumed she was going to the bathroom to puke or something. Instead, I saw her stumble over to my closet and sit down inside. I realized with horror what was about to happen. I tried to jump down from my bed, but she began to projectile vomit. She puked all over my stuff: my suitcase, my shoes, and all my clothes.
Then, she promptly went back to her bed, passed out, and ignored me the rest of the night. Anyway, I was seething mad, so I got the resident assistant so that I could handle it reasonably. I took all the quarters she had for laundry and started to do my laundry at three am. By the time I finished, it was around five am, so I went to bed.
I woke up two hours later to go to my 8:30 am class. I got back after my classes at 11:00 am, and promptly went back to sleep. I left a note telling her not to wake me up under any circumstances, and that we were going to have to have a real talk about the situation later. At around 1:00 pm, she woke me up and started apologizing.
I told her that if she wanted to apologize, then she should clean out my suitcase because it was covered in her vomit. She damp-sponged it once and said she was done. It still had puke in all the crevices and stuff, so I told her to actually clean it because I don't want her puke on my suitcase, to which she replied, "Ugh, I made one mistake, stop punishing me for it.”
I suggested she buy me another suitcase if she didn't want to clean this one, and she refused to do that either. On top of everything, she also told me that I had no right to take her laundry quarters without asking her the night before. We still don't talk, and that suitcase sits, puke stained and all, in my closet.
7. Out In The Cold
My significant other and I lived with his brother and another guy—but we had no idea just how horrible our roommate truly was. I'll never forget when the three of us left the apartment for a week, only to return to a total nightmare. While we were away, the city endured an extreme cold weather warning. When we got home, the house reeked of left-out food, and it was FREEZING.
The furnace broke right after we left, and our roommate let it go for two weeks. When it got cold, he just left and went to his friend’s. Our pipes froze then burst. We walked into a lovely situation.
8. Resale Racket
File:Seal of the FBI.svg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org
I had flown home to Texas to go to a family funeral. Two days into my trip, I had FBI Special Agents call my phone, and tell me they had confiscated all the computers in my house. Apparently, my roommate ran an eBay theft and resale ring out of my apartment. The agents said it was clear I had no idea what was going on, hence, I was cleared of all wrongdoing.
Lesson learned. If your roommate is cagey with you about how they pay rent, it's probably not good.
9. That Girl Is Crazy
It started with the four of us rooming together. My one roommate developed a weird clinginess to one of my other roommates. She would shut herself in her room and spew details of her personal hygiene at random while crying for no reason. She then obsessed over the guy living below us. She referred to him as her husband and would get very defensively jealous if I or any other female talked to him. Then things got worse.
She started vacuuming maniacally at 4:00 am, but she called law enforcement on me and another roommate at 11:30 pm for being too loud. Officers showed up and she lied, accusing of taking drugs. The officers found the whole thing crazy and left after we offered to let them search our apartment. Then the knives disappeared.
Weird noises began emanating from her room. On one of the most harrowing nights, she showed up in just a towel at my door, screaming at me because she didn’t wear makeup and her chest was real. She then pledged that she was going to off one of our other roommates. I started recording our interactions and my roommates filed a report. After showing the Dean the recordings, she got moved out.
It was by far the scariest and most bizarre interaction I’ve ever had with a person.
10. A Different Type Of Clogging
white ceramic bathtub near white ceramic bathtubPhoto by Martin Jaroš on UnsplashMy roommate had a room with her own bathroom. She would constantly clog her toilet by using napkins as toilet paper since she didn't want to buy toilet paper. After she clogged it, she would resort to using everyone else's bathroom in the hallway with no intention of fixing her own. One day she clogged the toilet my other roommates and I used as well.
While she was out, my roommates and I went into her room to see what was up with her bathroom. When I opened the door, my jaw dropped.There was month-old poop still in the toilet, along with piles of clothes all over the floor. She also had two dogs that she had neglected and she always tried to take our community recycling so she could keep the money for herself.
11. Free Bleedin’
I shared a 12x12 dorm room with a girl who would free bleed when she was menstruating and leave trails of her blood from our room to the bathroom and not clean it up. She would leave crusty underwear on the floor on my side of the room, next to my bed, while at the same time she insisted we divide the room with tape, and freaked out if anything of mine crossed that border. But that was only the beginning of the nightmare.
She was 18 and had a creepy 31-year-old fiance that she had been with for six years that would stay over every weekend, and watch her sleep over Skype every weeknight, while I was in view of the camera. She smelled so bad that other students in our hall started lodging complaints about the horrible stench coming from our room.
And to top it off, she had a bunch of plants in the room that I was allergic to that were making me miserable, and she refused to get rid of them.
12. Stop Following Me!
person playing guitar in close up photographyPhoto by Gabriel Yuji on UnsplashOne of my roommates in college insulted me daily, threw stuff at me from across the room, wrote mildly insulting music regarding me, and sang it poorly. However, what was even worse was his borderline stalking behavior. If I went to the library, so did he. If I left to go somewhere, he would hunt me down. He was good at figuring out where I was going.
He eventually stopped when he landed a girlfriend. I was about a day away from going to the room advisory office and demanding one of us be moved to a different room.
13. Notification Nightmare
Back during my dorm days, I had an apartment-style setup, so we all had our own rooms. One of my roommates had large speakers that he liked to use every morning at 3:00 am. However, he didn't use them for music. Instead, he used them for the notification sound Facebook gives you when you get a message, so there was a constant popping sound.
He also didn't like to do dishes or clean his room, so he didn't. We all had our own rooms, so it didn't seem like a huge deal, and it wasn't at first. However, his room soon started to smell really bad, as if something had expired in there.
14. An All-Around Dirtbag
apples and bananas in brown cardboard boxPhoto by Maria Lin Kim on UnsplashI had a roommate that ate all of my groceries ($60 worth) the day I got them while I was gone. He made a very nice meal for his girlfriend, and her friend as well, and claimed he didn’t have the cash and didn’t want to go to the store. He also drank all my beer, didn’t clean or do the dishes, and slept with my girlfriend when I was out of town.
15. The Imaginary Friend
There was one guy who had a rather interesting routine. He would begin by closing the door to his room and address some imaginary woman who had snuck inside when he wasn't looking. He would say, "Well, what are you doing here? Uh-huh. Oh, really? Well, I guess I'd better take my pants off, then." A few seconds would pass, after which he would speak again. "So, how about you get undressed too? I'll just lay here and wait for you to be ready.”
“Oh, you're ready now? Well, go ahead and climb on top of me, then." Several minutes would pass before anything else would become audible again, and then the next part of his messed-up routine would begin. He would open, then slam his bedroom door, then sprint down the hallway to the bathroom and slam that door. He'd be in there for a few minutes, flush the toilet, slam the door again, run down the hall, then lock himself in his bedroom.
He would do this every night!
16. Living In Oblivion
yellow fruitPhoto by Alex Lvrs on UnsplashI was living with someone when I came home from vacation and found thousands of dead fruit flies throughout our refrigerator and kitchen. There were roach carcasses in the bathroom, and my roommate's cat had either vomited or marked its territory in a number of other ways in every room of the house. She said she hadn’t noticed any problems.
17. Paranoia Will Destroya
One of my roommates and his girlfriend wouldn't leave the bedroom for weeks because they thought my other roommate and I had it out for them. As a result, they would go to the bathroom in empty paint cans, which they left in the closet. They were served an eviction notice due to non-payment of rent and nailed their bedroom door shut to keep us out because they were paranoid after the eviction notice.
They left two weeks later in the middle of the night. When they left, they locked the front door, then broke it down because they forgot something. I had to replace everything in the bedroom including the carpet and door, the walls needed to be repainted, and in some places re-drywalled, and a new front door had to be installed. I was out $2500 for rent plus another $3000 for repairs.
18. The Day The Xbox Died
white xbox one game controllerPhoto by Kamil S on UnsplashI had a friend of mine move in with me. He was a cool guy, I even introduced him to my friends. He was working for his uncle, until he got hit by a car, broke his arm, and ended up moving back home, about seven hours away. After a few months at home, he came back to visit. He was spending more and more time at my place and wanted to move back.
His uncle wouldn't hire him back, so he needed a job. About two months before he moved back, he came to visit and spent a week handing out resumes so he would have a job when he moved in. He told me he had six interviews lined up for the week after he got back. I was working 50+ hours a week at the time, so I didn't know what he was doing with his time, which was nothing. Letting him move in with me was a huge mistake.
I would get home from my shift at 4:00 am and he would be awake playing games on my Xbox. He played non-stop for most of the time he lived with me. I noticed he hadn't played my Xbox for about a week, which was unusual for him. I went to play it, and sure enough, it didn’t work. When I confronted him about it, he got angry and defensive, saying he didn't know what had happened.
He would routinely light up in the apartment when I wasn't home thinking I wouldn't find out. All the furniture was mine and I was not okay with this. Even though he was home all day, he never did dishes or cleaned, and denied making any mess, even if it was made when I was at work or asleep. Towards the end, he even stopped bathing and all my furniture smelled like garbage and smoke.
When he didn't pay rent and started treating my friends poorly, I convinced him to move back with his mom.
19. A Holiday Surprise
My roommate lost his job due to his drinking. I gave him the rent and bills before I left the state for Christmas. Looking back, I should've seen it coming...I came home to find I had no electricity, no gas, and notices of late rent. He spent all of the money on booze and had no money left to pay anything. I had to pay to get everything turned back on. But that was just the beginning.
He would regularly come home wasted and proceed to relieve himself in the kitchen, laundry, on the couch, and/or the bathroom floor. Finally, when I came to get my belongings to move out I found that he had pawned all my kitchen appliances.
20. Party Poopers
man in black crew neck t-shirt holding white ceramic mugPhoto by Jacob Bentzinger on UnsplashI used to work the afternoon shift, which meant that I'd usually get home around 1:00 am. My new roommate had just moved in a few days prior. One night I got home and walked in the door to find 50-odd people in our tiny apartment—and it was pure chaos. There were people punching holes in the walls, my TV was smashed on the ground, and a few people getting wasted on my couch.
The place was completely trashed. Not really knowing how to handle the situation, I went into my room to try to think. When I opened the door, I got hit with a stink that would outlast anything. My new roommate was getting busy with another guy in some rather messy way on my bed. There was poop all over my bed. So I went outside, called law enforcement, and watched the show unfold.
21. Something’s Not Right
We found him on Craigslist to fill a room. He moved in and seemed a little weird for the first couple of days as he was getting settled. Soon, a smell started developing, and we slowly realized it was him. We never once saw him go to a laundromat. Occasionally, he would camp out in the bathroom for over an hour, and we'd hear these wet slapping sounds from inside.
We figured he's probably washing his clothes in the bathtub. We thought he was a little different, but we were all pretty laid back and thought we could make it work. Then it got worse. First, he tried making us dinner. He placed frozen chicken on a cookie sheet to bake. When we got back, not only had he eaten all of it, but the bones were in the trash, red like cherries because he'd basically eaten it all raw.
Next, he told us that every Monday he MUST watch RAW wrestling. We couldn’t help but make some snide comments, to which he exploded, screamed in a rage, and demanded that we take back everything we said about pro wrestling being scripted. He absolutely, 100% believed pro wrestling was candid and real. We found it sad, but we lost any pity for him quickly thereafter.
He would stay up chatting online all night until sunrise. We asked him to stop, but he didn’t. It turned out, he was voice chatting with high school girls from his hometown. We were all in our 20s. Soon thereafter, he started getting packages from these girls, which were full of food and money, because they were his girlfriends. Our annoyance quickly turned to full-blown repulsion.
One day he told us that his 16-year-old girlfriend was going to move into his room. We put our foot down. That was it for us. He was STILL voice chatting all night, so we started to remove the splitter that allowed him to have an internet connection in his room whenever we went to sleep. It only took two nights before he started screaming at one of our female roommates.
This dude was over six feet, the roomie he was yelling at was only five feet. Inappropriate to the extreme. Then my girlfriend got into the mix. I intervened and reminded him that he was merely subletting, and had signed a document saying he has no right to any notice. We called him a cab and told him to get out. He was gone within the hour.
22. Keeping Track
person using MacBook ProPhoto by Campaign Creators on UnsplashMy college roommate freshman year secretly kept an Excel spreadsheet monitoring my study habits. She would count the number of hours she saw my nose in a book. Later in the semester, after I had returned from a party, she attempted an intervention. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and was thoroughly creeped out.
She said, “I'm concerned about your study habits," and brought out a spreadsheet from the entire semester, comparing my total number of hours studying to the number of hours that were "recommended by my advisor” for the number of credits I was taking.
23. There Are No Flowers In This Attic
I lived in a house with the girl who owned the house, my boyfriend, our six-month-old, and another friend. The owner didn't have a job and asked us all to move in to help pay the bills, so her parents, who bought her the house, wouldn't default on their loan. We had been there about a month when we noticed that the owner rarely left her bedroom in the attic.
The only time she left was to sneak down to eat my food. She never got a job, or contributed in any way, except to ask when we were paying her. She also owned three cats that she couldn't afford. I had to buy them food or they would have starved. She never even cleaned their litter box. It reeked of ammonia. I finally got sick of cleaning up her mess and told her that when I got back from work, that she had better clean the litter box.
I had a baby living there and didn’t like for her to be out of our room because it smelled. I went to work and my boyfriend took our baby in the stroller to the store a block away. He forgot to take his keys and that crazy woman locked them out and refused to let them in. The baby was screaming for a bottle so he broke a window to try to crawl in to get her formula, which she refused to give us.
He called me at work, told me what happened and that officers could only make her give us our baby things back. She swore we had NOTHING else there and that we were trying to steal from her. I managed to get some of my things back after paying her rent for all the time our stuff sat there while she was holding it hostage. However, she kept all my cool stuff.
24. Divided Lines
white wooden cabinet near bedPhoto by Shashi Chaturvedula on UnsplashShe was a nightmare. Her side of the room looked like a catastrophe, while my side was clearly divisible by this line of cleanliness beginning halfway between the beds. I was trying to get some alone time when she decided to watch a movie with four of her friends on her bed. Two of whom were proudly emitting the most noxious gas, and she had the volume on her bass-heavy speakers so loud that a neighbor came round to complain.
She also drank constantly and claimed a guy friend violated her when he hadn’t. She put the house through interviews and law enforcement went through my bedroom to collect evidence, only to break down and admit that it didn't happen. She vanished for four days, then moved out without a word. Good riddance.
25. Who Invited These People?
Our one roommate would throw parties in our dorm without telling any of us. The people who would come weren’t even college students. I remember once, I saw a woman who looked like she was 35. She'd brought her baby to one of the parties. These weren't low-key parties either. There was music blaring until 7:00 am on a weekday.
All night long, random people were getting busy on our couch in front of everyone, and the place would be trashed when we got up. He even had the nerve to refuse to clean up, telling us that the mess wasn't his fault, it was his "friends" and why should he have to clean up their mess? When he broke up with his boyfriend, his boyfriend spent the entire night crying and screaming outside this guy's door in our dorm room.
During the night our roommate slammed the door on his ex’s hand, cutting it, and his ex then went around our dorm smearing his blood all over everything.
26. Cable Watching Cousin
silhouette of 3 people watching show on TVPhoto by Aneta Pawlik on UnsplashI shared a house with two other guys, and we all shared the bills three ways. One day, one of the guys asked if his cousin who was backpacking around Europe could crash with us for a couple of weeks. My other roommate and I agreed, as we had met his cousin before and he seemed pretty cool. Oh, how wrong we were. After the two weeks were up, the cousin went on his adventures and a week later the dreaded cable bill arrived.
The cousin had sat on the couch and watched racy pay-per-view movies all day, every day. According to the bill, he would watch between 10 to 45 minutes of a movie before getting bored and starting a new one. The code for the PPV was the default 0000 as we all had agreed that we would never use it unless the three of us were there.
The cable bill was an extra $300 as a result of the cousin’s PPV habit. Our roommate refused to chip in extra to cover it. His argument was that we always split the bill three ways and we had all agreed that his cousin could stay. The bill was invoiced to me and I wasn't going to get a bad credit report as a result of movies I didn't watch.
After shouting and fussing, we paid the bill—but it ruined everything.After a few months, we all went our separate ways. Things were never quite the same after.
27. Too Many Bad Habits To Break
My old roommate didn’t present as dirty, but she had a couple of habits that disgusted me. She never cleaned the bathroom, not even so much as taking out the trash. She would clip her nails while in the shower and when I’d clean, they would all be stuck between the tub and the shower curtain. But the worst part of all?
She would have her boyfriend come over on the weekends. They would get it on but she wouldn’t throw out the used condoms until DAYS after he had left. It was gross.
28. The Epiphany
flamesPhoto by Benjamin DeYoung on UnsplashI lived with a guy who was a childhood friend for about six months. He suddenly told me in the middle of the night after I got off work that he had a religious epiphany. He was going to (the former) Yugoslavia to see the Virgin Mary and said he'd be gone for about a week. The next morning, he left, but all his stuff was still in the house.
He left an envelope with a gold and ivory rosary and $150 for rent and utilities. Two days later, a dude from Ecuador was on the porch. The guy barely spoke English. After about an hour it all fell into place. My roommate left, joined a religious order or something, and was now sub-letting his room to this kid. Well, this kid ended up being a huge problem...
I came home one night after about three weeks and this kid had set all my stuff on fire.
29. The Bearded Man
My roommate had very thick facial hair. The dude would actually shave it dry and would leave the shavings all over the bathroom counter. He would do this for weeks at a time. I would mention that it bothered me, and he would always apologize, but do nothing about it. I would constantly have to clean up his mess when it got too extreme.
30. Breakup Breakdown
man in gray crew neck long sleeve shirt standing beside woman in black crew neck shirtPhoto by Afif Ramdhasuma on UnsplashI made the mistake of signing a lease with two good friends that were dating at the time. I had gotten to know them my first year of college and they were both pretty good people. They ended up breaking up before we even moved in. I had to live through nine months of fighting, doors being broken, and holes being punched in the walls.
The neighbors filed noise complaints often, and law enforcement was called three times. To top it off, they didn’t pay their share of the last electric bill, and I ended up losing my security deposit of $250. But guess what? The joke's on me...They’re married now.
31. Roomie, Can You Spare A Dime?
The guy I lived with would play his music on full blast in the restroom, which was right next to my room. He refused to park in the street when the driveway was full, blocking the rest of us in. Even though he had a bedroom, he lived and slept in the living room and left his TV on all night. He would go around and ask each roommate to help pay his portion of the rent, and tell them to not tell the others. He still owes me $200.
32. Hey, Those Are My Clothes!
brown wooden 2-door cabinetPhoto by Rumman Amin on UnsplashShe started pilfering my clothes and went walking around in them to school. She seemed to be convinced they belonged to her until the day she left to move back home. She sent me the most infuriating text: "I found some stuff in my wardrobe that I think you might want. Bye." Sure enough, in her wardrobe, were my clothes, my socks, and even my bath towels.
I took one towel out and a vibrator fell out of it and onto my bare foot.
33. Craigslist Cash Cow
My roomie had given out the landline phone number, which was mine, for callbacks regarding stuff he was selling on Craigslist. I was taking a message for him and asked what it was about when the caller described wanting to buy "the bedazzled sidekick." I started looking through my things and figured it out. He had thieved my old phone and some other electronics to sell for rent money.
34. Ditched
man in gray button up shirtPhoto by Ludovic Migneault on UnsplashMy roommate and I had a nice apartment but had to move to a worse apartment in a sketchy part of town because he couldn't afford it after he lost his job. I agreed to pay the rent until he got on his feet. A month later, he moved in with his girlfriend, leaving me stuck with the lease in the cruddy apartment I only got because of him.
35. Gone Without A Trace
I've had some bad roommates, but I think the worst one was bad due to extenuating circumstances that were not entirely his fault. He would have manic episodes where he would freak out, yell at everything and everyone, including himself. He would pace the apartment at frantic speeds breathing super hard until I would finally get him some water and have him sit down long enough to breathe. One day, he freaked us out big time...He just disappeared.
This guy would disappear for days at a time, so for the first three or four days, my other two roommates and I did not do anything about it. At the time he was a sophomore in college and none of us knew what his class schedule was like, or if he possibly had a girlfriend. He was in a fraternity, and I was friends with one of his fraternity brothers.
After I told my roommates about the manic episodes they had me call his fraternity brother and it turned out that no one in the fraternity had seen or heard from him. After some discussion, we filed a missing persons report. He had been missing for about five or six days at that point. Officers showed up and we went through the normal motions.
About three hours later one of the officers came back and said, "We can't tell you where he is, but we can say he is okay."
36. Three’s Company
man and woman hugging each otherPhoto by Candice Picard on UnsplashI had a place that was just mine. I knew someone who was new to the city and needed a place to crash while he looked for his own place. Four months later, he was still there. He paid his share and was easy to get along with, but then his girlfriend moved in too. I did not want to share my place with two other people, let alone a romantically involved couple.
I started charging them two-thirds of the rent and utilities. They left in a hurry.
37. Grieving Nightmare
My boyfriend and I had shared an apartment with this girl. About four months into our lease, my boyfriend passed suddenly from a tragic accident and the roommate decided to sue our landlords. She threatened to mentally hurt my boyfriend's family through hate letters and the like, for letting my boyfriend, who was now deceased, out of our lease, while she was not allowed out of the lease.
After she was denied the ability to get out of the lease, she decided to make my life a nightmare in hopes of getting kicked out of the apartment. She would covet my, and my deceased boyfriend's things, eat my food, and break my and my deceased boyfriend's belongings. It made grieving for my boyfriend a lot more difficult.
38. Dude, Did You Forget Something?
russian blue cat lying on brown wooden tablePhoto by Milada Vigerova on UnsplashA guy I lived with would use chewing tobacco all over the house. He'd leave his water bottles full of brown spit all over the place—on the dining room table, the kitchen, the bathroom. The coup de grace was when he moved out and left his cat. It was this black and grey fat cat named Jordy. The first time I met her she was sitting on the stairs and I leaned out to pet her and she clawed me with her paw.
I kept the cat for four years until I got stationed overseas and had to give her to my wife's mom.
39. I’m Punching Out
I lived with an old friend who had become an alcoholic. The last straw was when he punched me in the face because it took more than a minute to answer the door in the middle of the night when he came home inebriated. I called law enforcement and he was taken in by the authorities. It seems he had already had a run-in with them in town after making a disturbance.
40. What A Stinker
woman in black crew neck shirtPhoto by OSPAN ALI on UnsplashI lived with someone who passed gas everywhere. He would sit in the kitchen watching Netflix on his laptop all day without headphones, wouldn't flush the toilet, wouldn't take out the garbage, and would let his food rot in the fridge. He would then put it in the garbage to stink up the apartment, and refused to keep the AC on because he was cold at 72F.
He would be obnoxious on purpose, used our stuff without permission, and slept on the couch all the darn time.
41. Lazy Loungers
I had three roommates that were the laziest people alive. I was the only one that did dishes ever. I saw one eating a bowl of cereal with a fork once because we had no clean spoons. One lived in the basement, and I went down there for the first time in a few months and all the lights were off. The light bulbs had burned out and he was too lazy to change them.
It was more convenient for him to simply sit in the dark. However, the biggest awakening for me was when I went out of town for a weekend. I used the bathroom Friday morning before heading to the airport and saw that we were out of toilet paper. I had to resort to using paper towels. I came back late Sunday night and walked into the bathroom to the same roll of paper towels.
All three of them were off the whole weekend and decided that wiping with Bounty was a better option than driving two minutes to the store to buy more toilet paper.
42. You’re Not My Mom
smiling woman in shallow focus photographyPhoto by Edward Cisneros on UnsplashThe worst roommate I ever had was a 56-year-old lady who let me stay in a room for free. She was somewhat of a family friend. I was a 20-year-old female who kept things clean, wasn’t too loud, and tried to be considerate. This woman told me that my boyfriend at the time had to leave before midnight. I agreed and abided by the rule. She then told me I was not allowed to keep my bedroom door closed anymore, for any reason.
Again, I abided and tried to hang out elsewhere. I came back one night a week later and found she had placed all my stuff on the curb and said I was acting inappropriately and irresponsibly. She lectured me about how my boyfriend was no good and a failure. Needless to say, I grabbed my things and never spoke to her again until she asked for custody of my siblings, should my parents pass away.
43. A Brush With Weirdness
Well, I had a roommate from another country who would brush his teeth as fast as anyone I have ever seen and would shake his head at the same time while shaking the toothbrush. He would brush with his mouth open so spit got EVERYWHERE. On top of this, he would make noises while doing this that sounded like a mix between gagging and a cat throwing up a hairball.
44. Do Unto Others...
shallow focus photography of orange Volkswagen BeetlePhoto by Dan Gold on UnsplashI had a female roommate who used my car for three years. She would put $5 in gas in it SOMETIMES. I didn't mind too much because the campus was close, and I wasn't the best at doing my chores. However, my car was stolen with only a few months left to go until graduation. I asked her ONCE to use her car, the one that she had gotten a few weeks before, and she told me her "insurance wouldn't let her." I'm still mad at her for it.
45. The Mysterious Case Of The Rising Utility Costs
My last roommate moved me in with him and his girlfriend. His dog peeled all the pleather off my couch one night in a panic attack. Over the next two months following, my share of the bills mysteriously went up dramatically. When he moved across the state, he nabbed some of my stuff, and I found that the oven was not working.
I stayed there for another three months after he left, and the bills went down by over half. To this day, I have no idea how he hiked the bills up so high.
46. Combative Creature
men's white topPhoto by Dmitry Vechorko on UnsplashMy current roommate is the worst. He has yelled or screamed at me multiple times over banal things, and overall has been nasty to all my friends. He once told my friend that he had to clean up after my friend had cooked us a big meal. The polite thing was for us to clean up since he had cooked our meal. He also keeps full bags of trash in his room just hanging out there.
Our bathroom is constantly full of his whiskers from his shavings, and his girlfriend is just as combative as he is! There's TWO of them.
47. Rabbit Ritual
When I was in college, my roommate dropped out of school and moved out without informing me a week before bills were due. I had to get a new roommate fast, so I did—but this one was even worse. She slaughtered my rabbit and used his bones to form some sort of makeshift Satanic summoning ritual on her bed. I didn't even confront her.
The next night when I knew she was working late, I got a friend with a truck and got all of my stuff out of there. It was the most stressful time of my college years.
48. What A Pill
a person's hand is holding a green cup with water coming out of itPhoto by Andres Siimon on UnsplashThere was a guy in the house I was living in that would get high all the time. One night he took something he described as a "yellow pill." He didn't even know what it was. I returned after having been away to find the kitchen floor covered in glass, poop, and toilet paper. He got so wasted that he crapped himself in our kitchen and smashed a bunch of glass into it.
He then tried to clean it up using toilet paper, which he left on the floor and in the kitchen bin. None of us could go into the kitchen to cook or even get food out of the fridge until he finally cleaned it up two days later. But it didn't end there. He also managed to forget about a tap long enough to flood the entire kitchen and leave the water running long enough for it to make a pool in the corridor outside.
It completely soaked the carpet in another housemate's room. The guy whose room it was was away for five days and he had locked his door, so the room stank like a swamp.
49. Strange Bedfellows
I lived in a studio apartment with three other people. One of my roommates would bring guys home from the bar, start getting intimate with them, then, midway through, freak out and start screaming, cussing, and beating them up. The poor guys would usually end up in the hallway still trying to pull their underpants on and frequently didn't get all their clothes.
50. The Blogger
man smiling and using MacBookPhoto by Jud Mackrill on UnsplashI found out I had the worst roommate ever after he had already moved out. A couple of weeks after he left, a friend of mine alerted me to an online blog my ex-roommate had. In this blog, he had logged every activity of mine, including going to the bathroom, sleeping, watching a movie, leaving the apartment, etc. He also explained in detail different ways he would "off" my cat if given the opportunity.
He even went as far as to lie about certain activities I was doing, like saying I was sleeping with someone when I wasn't, blasted me with horrible names, and described how he wanted to hurt me physically.