It’s always interesting to see what happens to human relationships under conditions of extreme stress. Sometimes people will pull together in the face of adversity but, unfortunately, they just as often seem to turn on each other. At some point, we’ve all turned away from a reality TV show saying, “That team was working so well together! How did they get so darned vicious?”
This phenomenon, however, is an easy one to replicate among your own friends. Just try to distribute the household chores.
First-years may have some inkling of what this disaster-waiting-to-happen is like, but it’s not until second year and beyond, when the friendly housekeeping staff is no longer available, that things really get ugly.
Things get left places. Trash piles up. Dishes develop permanent beards of spaghetti sauce. Fingers get pointed. And no matter how close you are to the friends you’re living with, this outcome seems almost inevitable. (Rumor has it that The Beatles broke up over who was going to have to Swiffer the studio. John said it ought to be Paul; Paul said they ought to just let it be.)
Yep, we college students are a funny bunch. If there’s a paper due Friday, we have no qualms about writing the whole thing in one long, excruciating Thursday night. We see nothing particularly unusual about a day spent entirely in class, in meetings and doing homework, with brief respites for meals. We burn through hundreds of pages of reading a week. But just try asking us to mop something, and you’re liable to walk away short a couple of fingers.
The kitchen is the focal point of many of the worst chore-related disagreements. There are always spills to worry about, trash to take out and fights over “refrigerator turf” so vicious that, if you added a couple of colored bandanas, you’d have a gang war.
And of course, the dishes are simply a nightmare. It’s hard to say why people hate doing dishes so much; it may be the germophobe in each of us asserting himself or it may be an instinctual aversion to lemon scent, but I’ve yet to meet someone who had even a reasonably positive attitude about dish duty. This frequently leads to massive dish pile-ups, which get deconstructed like a crime scene on a cop show:
“Well, Jenny, on Wednesday I know you had macaroni and cheese for dinner ... and this must be it here!”
If the kitchen is bad, the bathroom is even worse. The job of cleaning the bathroom is a particularly undesirable one because practically whenever you do it, five minutes later it will be dirty again. I’ve considered cleaning the bathroom at 4 a.m. just so I can bask in my accomplishment for a few hours. Bathroom duty frequently goes to the person who first complains about the conditions, which often means that roommates will simply hunker down, hold their noses and wait for one of their comrades to give in first. It’s a bit like a siege, though somewhat more dramatic.
Of course, not everybody experiences these difficulties equally. Females tend to approach the problem like adults, constructing charts or chore wheels that make everybody’s responsibilities clear and create a system of communal accountability. We young men, sadly, have yet to evolve to quite the same level — the best we can usually muster is a sheet of loose-leaf paper taped in some prominent place, bearing the words, “Clean up your mess or [string of expletives].” Though it’s sometimes effective, this technique never manages to instill the same esprit de corps as a well-done chore wheel.
How ever you choose to distribute the chores, it’s important to be open and communicative about them. It’s never a good thing to see your roommate brooding and resentful and then to find out that the reason is that she scrubbed out your Hamburger Helper pan last month. (There’s no grudge like a cleaning grudge.) Other than that, the best way to deal with chores is a positive attitude. We all insist so strongly on being treated like adults; what could be possibly be more adult than taking out the trash? And if that logic doesn’t convince you, do your chores because you don’t want your roommate waving magnets around your laptop or torching your shower caddy. Real life is rougher than reality TV.
Matt’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. He can be reached at m.waring@cavalierdaily.com
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