You're familiar with at least one of these scenarios – the loud music at late hours of the night, the frequent parties where guests spill out over onto your lawn or driveway, or the upstairs neighbor who refuses to lay down carpet on their hardwood floors and subject you to their stomping around the apartment.
Don't you want to take action but one without legal consequences?
Curious to hear of stealth tactics, Redditor JazzmanRob asked:
"What is the best LEGAL way to annoy your neighbors you can think of?"
The following tactics proved there is an art to annoyance.
Offensive Odors
"My previous neighbour was the biggest jacka** I've ever lived next to. I got passive revenge one day by deciding to fertilize my yard with that stinky fishy liquid formula when I noticed he was having all his mates over for a barbecue."
Planting The Seeds
"If their driveway is close to your property line and your driveway is on the exact opposite side, plant a whole bunch of trees off of these lists:"
"Plant these near their driveway and their cars will be covered in birdsh!t no matter what they do unless they go into the garage."
"Now, for posterity, why do you want to annoy your neighbor?"
– VeeAndro
Changing The Landscape
"Purposefully plant clover. Lower maintenance than a grass lawn but still green and beautiful. Flowers are also gorgeous and great for pollinators. Spreads like crazy though so all the lawn obsessed will hate it."
Creating Boundaries
"If you share a property line with grass, wait till they mow their lawn and then mow yours and leave the tiniest strip of uncut grass between your yards."
Fake Domestic Disputes
"Scream at each other all hours of the day, apparently."
"When the cops are called, act lovey dovey like everyone in the world is exaggerating you threatening to murder each other."
"Sure people can call the cops but there's not actually anything they're gonna do in that situation."
"if your throat gets sore from all the yelling, apparently crack is a great cure for that."
"Source : my neighbors"
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
The Hoop Stays
"I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, so my options were limited in terms of what I could get away with - but I was going to get my revenge."
"They told me that I had to take in my basketball hoop nightly, even though several neighbors had been keeping them outside for over a decade. New board members decided they were going to be more strict on enforcement."
"It turns out, an HOA can't legally stop you from having a clothesline outside to dry your clothes. I decided to replace my basketball hoop with one clothesline, then another, and kept adding them until I had enough clotheslines to cover my entire 1/2 acre lot, some were 2 levels high, some were 3 levels high. I just kept adding, and adding, and they kept sending violation notice, after violation notice."
"I hung all my old t-shirts that I use as rags, old towels, moving blankets, you name it. And yes, I started in the front yard."
"When they finally contacted their attorney, he gave them the bad news. They couldn't legally force me to remove the clotheslines, and they couldn't fine me for it either."
"I had them revoke all my previous fines, and amend the rules to allow my basketball hoop to stay up."
"The HOA president lives directly across the street. She's not a fan."
Lots Of Keys
"I wish I could take credit for this one, but I found it elsewhere on the internet."
"Have a neighbor you just hate and want to get them while remaining completely anonymous? Buy a lot of old keys ($10-20). Then buy a bunch of cheap key tags. Write on the tag things like 'House Key' with their phone number on the tags. Leave these tagged keys all over the place. At stores. On hiking trails. Sidewalk. Whatever you can think of, just vary all the places."
"Now they will get calls from random strangers saying they found their keys all the time. Your strategic placement could mean they get 5 calls tomorrow or 1 call a year from now. Your level of commitment is their level of insanity getting contacted about lost keys."
"It will cost ya a little bit of money, but is legal and petty level 9000."
That's Gotta Sting
"Bee hives. Perfectly legal where I live, have had them for over 10 years. They are no bother to anyone and most of my neighbours love them (good for their gardens and free honey). Neighbour who moved in 5 years ago has a problem with them apparently. She has called the council and police too many times to count, and they say they same thing, it's legal, they're not annoying anyone and the bees where there first. She tried to take matters into her own hands whilst drunk/high jumped the fence in the middle of the night with a can of flyspray. Was very dark so she accidently jumped into my neighbours yard instead.
They're very large guard dogs bailed her up, she pretty much destroyed their gardens, boat, shed and smashed windows in their car trying to get away from them. When the police arrived she drunkenly admitted that she had tried to poison my bees but got the wrong yard. She tried to sue me, "if I wasn't trying to poison her bees none of this would have happened". Cops and lawyer laughed at her. Cops threw the book at her and my neighbours are suing her for all the damage (plus restraining order). She is now beyond broke. The bees are still there. When I hand out free honey around the neighbourhood every few months I always make sure she is around watching me and then intentionally don't Give her any. Other neighbours tell me they regularly mention my bees around her just to see her loose her sh*t."
Good Golly, Miss Molly
"My neighbor had a super annoying son and his friends were constantly running over into our yard and breaking stuff. We got a dog named Molly. Everytime she had to poop I'd put her on a leash and walk over to the property line so she could drop off some landmines for the kid. They were always on my property so the neighbors couldn't complain about my dog pooping in their yard."
"Finally, the bratty kid had his bratty friends over for a bratty birthday party and his parents sent them all outside to play and of course they were running over into our yard. Got 3 or 4 of the little kids. After that they never came into our yard again. Molly got belly rubs and a hamburger that night."
– rhett342
Start A Picnic
"Freeze lemonade into ice cubes, then throw them onto your neighbors porch, let them melt. The lemonade will get sticky and caked onto the porch, lemonade is sweet and sticky, what do sweet and sticky things attract? ANTS, and lots of them, the ice cubes will not be noticeable when the melt, so it will be hard to prove that someone is deliberately doing it, as long as you don't get caught throwing the cubes, you are all good, and if u want to add insult to injury you can buy ants and let them go in their yard."
"You're Welcome OP."
Seeing The Light
"Security lights. The brighter the better. If you're not blinding your neighbors with the force of 1000 suns, you're doing it wrong."
Loudness, no matter if it's music or sounds of slamming doors and loud footsteps, are classic offenders.
Upstairs, Downstairs Conflict
"Our upstairs neighbors when I was in middle school made a ton of noise every night around 9pm-- moving furniture, arguing at top volume, slamming doors, etc. So my mom always had me practice my tuba under noisy neighbor's bedroom before school in the morning."
"Our downstairs neighbors made a ton of tuba noise every morning before school-- scales, happy birthday, breath exercises, etc. So I always moved furniture, argued at top volume, slammed doors every night around 9pm."
Throw A Concert
"Pick up a new musical hobby! Tuba, recorder, bagpipes, accordion, etc. Just make sure to leave all the windows open so they can also track your progress!"
Sounds Annoying
"Our neighbour has a drum set in a 1 bedroom apartment. I very much support people who don't let their circumstances stand in the way of their dreams. I just wish he had a better, less loud dream."
"Set up a microphone that will collect those drumbeats and then transmit them back with a 1/2 second delay."
Loud Pet
"If you can handle the responsibility and the noise, get a cockatiel. They're really fun companions, but they whistle so loud you can hear it from 3 blocks away."
The next time you're cranking up the volume watching a Marvel movie or any other blockbuster that has a symphony of explosions, just remember you and your household may not be the sole audience members.
It's good to be mindful of your neighbors if you're planning to stick around in the area.
And in case you get a barrage of phone calls indicating someone found your lost "HOUSE KEYS" you never misplaced, you'll know why.
Because courtesy is the key to peaceful living.