Woman Discovers Roommate’s “Gross” Habit, Gets Accused Of Disrespecting Her Culture

It’s no secret that sharing a home with loved ones can get frustrating sometimes, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that living with a stranger might, too.

For this redditor, living with a roommate didn’t seem to be that bad, though. That was until they moved from the dorm into their own apartment. A couple of weeks in, the OP noticed a foul smell coming from the bathroom, which, she later found out, was the result of her roommate not flushing used toilet paper. When asked about it, she said it was part of her culture, which left the OP wondering if she was a jerk for asking her roommate to flush it down the toilet.

Image source: toadbush123

There can be many reasons for disagreements between roommates or flatmates—or family members living together, for that matter—but the state of the bathroom and the kitchen often become the main pain points. That’s because living with someone who has completely different views regarding cleanliness, for instance, can really become a problem in places that are shared and used multiple times a day.

According to a survey, carried out by Apartment Guide, keeping shared spaces clean is the main reason for tension among roommates; it is considered a problem by more than 40% of the survey respondents. (Next on the list were troubles regarding rent, communication, violations of personal space and time, and roommate having too many or too frequent guests respectively.)

Though when it comes to living with relationships/family/">family, cleanliness of shared spaces isn’t reportedly that big of a problem; unlike paying rent. In general, the results of the survey seconded the idea that sharing a space with a family member or a friend is easier than doing it with someone you didn’t know beforehand. According to the percentage of people's satisfaction with their arrangement, living with friends and family as the best option was followed by living with co-workers (who make surprisingly good roomies), classmates, strangers, and acquaintances respectively.

Delving deeper into the annoying things roommates do, Save The Student noted that, according to the National Student Accommodation Survey, leaving dirty dishes out is the mother of all disgusting habits. Next on the list are not helping with cleaning, leaving lights or appliances on, being too loud, leaving food to rot, and not removing hair from plug holes respectively.

Looking at the things that frustrate people with roommates the most, it’s clear that cleanliness is a problem for many, be it in the kitchen, the bathroom, or elsewhere. For the OP, it was the bathroom, too, that became a troublesome area because of her roommate’s habits of not flushing toilet paper. While for many, the thought alone is enough to induce gagging, for others it’s a habit they don’t think twice about.

If you’re from Australia, Northern Europe, or North America, you probably belong to the former category, but quite a few countries in South America, including the OP’s aforementioned Mexico, and elsewhere in the world aren’t used to flushing toilet paper. An avid traveler and the soul of the Mind of a Hitchhiker blog, Iris, even made a map showcasing where you should and shouldn’t flush toilet paper.

Clearly, there are many places where using a bin instead of flushing the toilet paper is customary. However, it is usually also customary for the bins to be covered with a lid and emptied out regularly, which wasn’t seemingly the case in the OP’s household. The stinky situation eventually led to the roommates getting into a fight and the redditor wondering if she was a jerk to her roomie, which fellow netizens had varying opinions on.