Kitchen culture

It’s that time of the year when students start the mad scramble to find housing for next year. Actually, I’m not positive when the best time is for students to find housing; I just know mid-February isn’t ideal.

I know because I always find myself starting around that time, and what’s available is less than appealing. But, what I’ve learned from living in below-average housing is that having good roommates is far more crucial to maintaining sanity through the semester.

Living with other college students is fun, but there is always a special place in the house where the warfare is waged in the most passive-aggressive way possible: the kitchen.

Dishes are the ultimate first world problem, and it’s horrible that my favorite room in the house always becomes such a huge cause of roommate animosity. Usually you can tell how good a roommate someone is by how they handle dishes. It’s true, and everyone knows it.

Living with slobs is some seriously annoying stuff. It’s as if they’re stuck in that “I’m not living with my parents so I love being messy” phase.  

C’mon people. If we keep piling dishes at this rate, I think we are candidates to be on the television show “Hoarders” in a month. Sure, it sounds funny, but not when every person you meet asks you, “Aren’t you that guy from ‘Hoarders?’”

Setting rules for the kitchen at the beginning of the year is a good idea, but it never lasts. In my experience, things can be great, and then everything goes to hell the closer we get to finals. It’s not only school, though.

Students are stressed because this is the point of the year when all their fall semester flings are wrapping up. It makes sense that the most stressful time of the year coincides with the time of the year I stop believing some roommates are capable of rational behavior.

There is always the honeymoon phase where everyone likes each other early on, but after a few months, it gets uglier than the male version of Justin Bieber. And no, that’s not a typo.

I’m not a freak about dishes; I just don’t think they’re that difficult to do. It’s just so easy.

I can’t understand any argument why people wouldn’t do them. Acting like you’re too busy to wash some dishes isn’t an excuse when we both know you’re going to fall into the Internet abyss that is Tumblr or Facebook.

If you have a dishwasher, well, you probably don’t understand my article at all, because you have no idea who your roommates are until you live with them without having a dishwasher and a garbage disposal.

In which case, you don’t know how lucky you are.

­— agreiner@indiana.edu