Adventures in House-training

Sadly I am not talking about house-training my parent's pup Harry.

He & his big bro Sunny are much more trained than a certain problem of mine: my roommate.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not unreasonable. There's only a year age difference between us, & I'm not exactly a neat-freak. But Good Gods. I'm talking a mountain of dirty dishes, piles of crap on the living room table, shards of glass on the kitchen floor. The latter, by the way, which got imbedded in my foot & still has me limping a month later. She does none of the cleaning for our apartment; the only thing she'll do is take out the trash & on very rare occasion wash & put away her dishes. Let me clarify, I wash a plate, she washes a plate, & she'll only put away 1 plate. That's right, just hers. 

Sufficed to say, she drives me a bit bonkers.

So last week I decided I needed a new plan of action before I explode. Thus far I've done all the cleaning & all the chores because as much as I'm not a neat-freak, I will not live with raw meat guts soaking on my kitchen counter or mystery dirty dishes stinking up the entire apartment. (Sadly I'm not even exaggerating.)

The plan—house-train my roommate.

I'm taking a Pavlovian approach. Last Tuesday I ran the dishwasher (which she always loads with her unrinsed dishes but cannot be bothered to actually run—she'd rather actually run out of dishes) as usual. Instead of emptying it as usual though, I stuck a post-it note to it.

That's right, a post-it. 

Hear me out, the written word is my forte & I can be very persuasive. I left her a note, telling her very nicely but very firmly that she need to put away all the clean dishes—from the dishwasher & from the sink. & then I left for work.

Well I'll be damned, but it actually worked.

I came back from work, tired & ready for a fight, & all the dishes were actually put away & in their proper spots no less. I was stunned. I was pleased. Most of all I was empowered. 

Today, I ran the dishwasher again, washed some dishes by hand (hers &

mine) & left another post-it. I figure if it becomes a pattern, every Tuesday the same thing, maybe eventually she won't need the notes. Maybe she'll just learn to do this 1 little thing for the good of the apartment & my sanity. Maybe she can be house-trained.

Or maybe not. I guess we'll see tonight. Until then, here's hoping.

~AC