AITA for moving my roommates dirty dishes outside her room and embarrassing her in front of her friends?
I (22F) live with my university roommate (21F). We’ve been living together for about 7 months. We aren’t super close, but things were fine when we first started living together.
The ongoing issue has been cleanliness in our shared spaces. I’m not a clean freak, but I like the kitchen and bathroom to be usable. My roommate regularly leaves dishes in the sink for days, sometimes close to a week and they begin to smell. Food gets left on the counter overnight, the trash overflows, and I’ve had to clean hair out of the shower drain multiple times because it just doesn’t get done unless I do it.
I’ve brought it up several times and have even suggested a cleaning schedule. I asked if she could at least rinse dishes and take out the trash when it’s full to help me out since we’re both studying and working part time. She apologises every time and says she’ll try harder, but it goes back to the same old pattern within a few days.
Last week there were dishes in the sink again for almost a week. They smelled, and I’d already cleaned up after her more than once that week because I couldn’t stand it. I was frustrated and didn’t want to wash them again, but I also didn’t want them sitting in the kitchen.
So instead of cleaning them, I stacked all of her dirty dishes and placed them on the small wooden stand outside her bedroom door. I didn’t go into her room or touch anything of hers, I just moved them out of the shared space.
Now comes the part I feel bad about. I didn’t know she was planning to have friends over that evening, so when they arrived, the dishes were still there outside her room. She was visibly embarrassed and ended up cleaning them immediately, telling her friends she would just quickly clean up before hanging out.
Later that evening she told me I humiliated her on purpose and that it was passive aggressive and invasive. She’s now telling mutual friends that I’m a nightmare roommate and says she’s considering moving out because she doesn’t feel comfortable living with someone who would do that.
I’ll admit it was petty. I was frustrated and wanted to stop cleaning up after her. But I also feel like I’ve tried communicating multiple times and nothing changed. I felt that nothing I was saying was getting through to her, and that I was only repeating myself without seeing any change. Of course I didn’t expect it to impact how her friends saw her, it was unfortunate timing, and probably bad on my part.
AITA for moving the dishes instead of just continuing to deal with the mess?
