I have come to the conclusion that there are pros and cons to choosing who you live with at the University. Pro: You get to live with your friends. Con: You get to live with your friends and clash over the deadliest room in the house: the kitchen.
In the fall of first year I signed a lease to a house with six other girls -- they are sweet, hilarious, everyone is best friends. We moved in at the end of August. Rooms are painted pink and yellow and green. We sat in our living room together and sighed happily, relishing in independence and domesticity, planning the first meal to cook on our very own stove. But, if only we'd known. If only someone had warned us about the impending kitchen wars.
I am a messy person. Right now half of the contents of my closet are strewn all over the floor, intermingled with textbooks, shoes and old articles printed out from Toolkit that I never read. I hate clutter, but I prefer checking away messages for an hour rather than picking up a few shirts.
My friend who lives on the same floor shares my same level of general disarray, which is good because we aren't disgusted by each other, but bad because our bathroom looks like ... well, let's just say I've seen cleaner bathrooms at fraternities. But we live on the second floor of the house, which is a neutral zone. The kitchen is downstairs.
The sink, the dishwasher, the trashcan and the fridge are all part of the axis of evil. If the dishwasher is full and I use a plate, I have to physically wash the plate because, of course, I don't want to be the one to unload the dishwasher. It takes forever and sometimes the knives poke me. But I can't leave the plate in the sink unwashed. That violates the cardinal rule of kitchendom. And if I make macaroni and use a pot, I have to wash that. I try my best to fight my slob-girl urges and do it, I swear, but the sink fills up nonetheless. Don't ask me how it happens. I blame an evil kitchen ghost.
So this is where the accusations begin. Yet from months of battling I have become savvy. I've learned to only eat off brightly colored plates so it's easier to remember which plate I used. This tactic is harder with forks and spoons though -- I am looking into DNA testing our utensils.
Inevitably, after everyone makes excuses to each other like, "That is sooo not my bowl -- I'm allergic to ice cream," or "I haven't eaten since last Friday," one roommate steps up as the kitchen war martyr. She storms over to the sink and starts scrubbing like a maniac, glaring over her shoulder at us as the dish soap eats away at the week-old grease.
The trash can does not escape the kitchen war. It's fairly wide, yet it fills up at least once every day. Every time I walk by and see it overflowing, I'm reminded of an old Simpsons episode where Bart and Homer start stapling pieces of trash to the can so they don't have to take the bag out. I think eventually their yard turns into a landfill. We could try this, but it would make life easier for the raccoons that rip open our garbage bags and leave moldy pieces of bread all over our porch. And I don't want to do them any favors.
The war has spread into the living room, too. One well-meaning roommate made a chore list at the beginning of the year that involved checking off completed chores like vacuuming and dusting. There was suspicion of some erroneous check-marking and the list was declared corrupt. In the end, it was dramatically ripped from the refrigerator and torn in half -- a symbol of the failed kitchen war treaty.
I don't know why we're so touchy about cleaning. Maybe we resent our friends bossing us around and calling us out on our faults because they're supposed to be the people we go out with or confide in and not the kitchen police. But I'm glad they keep me in line. The house would be a lot nastier otherwise. Next year I'm moving to an apartment with two girls who share my talent for creating household disorder. It will be a smaller space with the same amount of stuff. I can't wait to see who steps up as the clean one.
Mary's column runs bi-weekly on Wednesdays. She can be reached at mbaroch@cavalierdaily.com.
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