Be they a friend you’ve known for ages or a complete stranger you’ve met through advertisements, living with a roommate will always present some challenges.
Even if you can retreat to your own room at the end of the day, the rest of your living space is shared.
Sometimes preventing you from taking a shower, because your roommate beat you to the bathroom, or needing to wait to watch your favorite show because your roommate decided to have a movie night with friends.
Most of the time, these all tend to be minor annoyances, but many little things have a way of adding up to one big thing.
Redditor shanesen had a hobby that resulted in her more or less taking over one of their shared spaces.
A problem that increasingly grew for the original poster (OP), as she found herself having less and less access to this room.
Having finally had enough, the OP made the decision to confront her roommate about this issue.
After being accused of being “unsupportive” and “selfish” by her roommate, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**Hole” (AITA), where she asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for telling my roommate to stop cooking all the time?”
The OP explained why her roommate made accessing their kitchen more of a challenge than it should have been:
“So I (22 F[emale]) live with my roommate Katie (24 F), and we’ve been roommates for like a year.”
“Things were fine at firs,t but now I’m losing my mind bc she’s OBSESSED with cooking.”
“At first, it was kinda cool bc she would make these fancy meals and sometimes offer me some, but now she’s like doing it ALL THE TIME, and it’s driving me nuts.”
“She cooks literally every day, sometimes twice a day, and it’s never simple stuff.”
“It’s always these big fancy recipes that use like every pot and pan we own.”
“The kitchen is always a disaster, and she doesn’t even clean up after herself right away.”
“Like sometimes I’ll go to bed, and the next morning, there’s still dirty dishes and random food everywhere.”
“Also, she’s started making weird stuff like fish stock and some kind of fermented stuff, and it makes the WHOLE apartment stink.”
“The fridge is also a huge issue.”
“She’s completely taken over all the space with her leftovers and jars of sauces and random ingredients.”
“I can barely fit my milk and eggs in there.”
“Last week, I came home starving after work, and she was making this huge meal, and she told me I had to wait like TWO HOURS to use the stove bc she needed it for ‘her process’ or whatever.”
“I ended up eating cereal.”
“So I told her she needs to chill and stop hogging the kitchen all the time and at least clean up after herself.”
“She got super mad and said I’m ‘unsupportive of her passion’ and I’m being selfish.”
“She was like ‘I don’t complain when you watch TV all the time, so why are you complaining about this?'”
“Which makes no sense bc her cooking affects me directly.”
“Now she’s being all passive-aggressive, like saying, ‘Oh, I’ll just eat frozen meals from now on since I’m such a problem’.”
“And idk, now I feel kinda bad but also like… I pay rent too and should be able to use my own kitchen.”
“AITA for saying something? Or should I just let her do her thing bc it’s ‘her hobby’?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
The Reddit community stood firmly behind the OP, agreeing that she was not the a**Hole for confronting Katie.
Everyone agreed that it was necessary for the OP to call out Katie for hogging the kitchen, as Katie had no right to commandeer it the way she was, with many urging the OP to initiate a roommate agreement between them, so this issue could be avoided going forward:
“Like, you need to have a sit-down discussion with her when you are both rested, not drinking and not cooking.”
“You each deserve 50% off everything in the apartment and are each 100% responsible for cleaning up after yourself within a reasonable timeframe – decide what that is.”
“My opinion would be within 2 hours.”
“Offer to share the kitchen every other day.”
“In other words, no cooking missions on your day.”
“Simple meals that require heating up or leftovers.”
“On her day, she can have at it as long as she cleans up after herself.”
“And it’s not your job to support her ‘passions.'”
“It’s her parent’s or spouse’s.”
“And sometimes in life, there are periods where you don’t get immediate gratification or ataboys.”
“She needs to learn to deal with that.”
“So, NTA.”- Sharontoo
“NTA.”
“The problem isn’t her cooking, the problem is she’s treating the kitchen like she lives alone.”
“You both share a kitchen so she needs to make sure to leave enough space for you to be able to make your meals and for your own stuff in the fridge.”
“She also needs to clean up after because, again, she doesn’t live alone.”
“You may need those pots or utensils.”
“If she’s going to continue hogging up all the space, then she needs to make food for you as well and make sure it’s available for you to eat before she takes two hours on the stove.”
“She also really needs to make things that don’t stink up the whole house.”
“She can experiment with stuff like that later when she lives alone or with a partner who doesn’t mind.”
“It’s not life or death where she absolutely has to make this stuff right now.”- beautifulmonster98
“Definitely NTA.”
“It’s your apartment, too & you have a right to use the appliances.”
“She also gets to watch the TV too.”
“Maybe you need a roommate agreement where you set out ground rules for cohabitation.”
“Stand your ground.”
“If it’s truly her passion, maybe she needs an external outlet for it, like culinary school.”- CraZKatLayD
“NTA.”
“You deserve equal use of the kitchen and fridge.”
“‘Now she’s being all passive aggressive like saying “Oh I’ll just eat frozen meals from now on since I’m such a problem”.’”
“You can either ignore this, agree ‘okay’, and then don’t engage further and enable her pity party, or address it.”
“‘You realize I’ve had to have less than a frozen meal but literal cereal for dinner because you refuse to let me cook in the kitchen I also pay rent for for hours?'”
“‘You can’t make me feel guilty that you have to actually share the shared kitchen so I can have meals too’.”
“‘That’s what normal roommates do, and complaining about it just makes you come off as weirdly selfish rather than sympathetic’.”
“‘Imagine if I complained you wanted a turn to use the bathroom sometimes?'”
“‘That’s how you sound’.”
“That said, I agree with the person who said you need to have a sit-down conversation with your roommate.”
“Tell them that you deserve equal use of all shared items and spaces.”
“You understand that this is change, but that’s because you’ve had difficulty standing up for yourself and have now reached your breaking point and just can’t live like this anymore.”
“No longer share pots, pans, and cooking utensils with your roommate.”
“Separate what belongs to each of you and buy what you need to do some basic cooking if it’s all theirs.”
“Tell your roommate that you will be using your separate items so that neither of you has to wait on the other to do the dishes to cook.”
“Tell her you pay half the rent and will take half the fridge.”
“Say you are willing to compromise on splitting the fridge, but you get half.”
“For example, if there are two fridge door shelves, you each get one.”
“Two crisper drawers. You each get one.”
“Three shelve,s you each get 1.5, or whatever.”
“If there is one crisper drawer and she wants it, okay, but then you get an extra shelf to compensate.”
“Use masking tape and label every shelf/area with who it belongs to.”
“Take all her stuff out of your half.”
“Let her know you will be doing this every time.”
“If she complains she does not have room for her stuff in half the fridge, tell her, ‘How do you think I feel with less than half the fridge then?’.”
“Or if she says but you have less stuff, say, ‘I’ve never had a chance to build up stuff in the fridge because you never left me any space.”
“T’hat’s just another way I’ve been impacted by this’.”
“Tell her you also have a right to cook meals, and she needs to work with you on a plan to share the kitchen space fairly.”
“Say you are open to her ideas but can suggest some too.”
“One idea is that you could each take turns with whose evening it is to use the kitchen and eat leftovers the second night.”
“Another idea is two out of four burners are always open to the other roommate if they want to cook.”
“You can use them, but if the other person needs them, you move.”
“Another idea is a ‘1 hour rule’.”
“Which is if you want to take full turns in the kitchen, then you only get one hour before the next person gets a 1 hour turn (if they want it).”
“If someone wants to cook something that will take more than an hour, they should tell their roommate and ask if it’s a good time.”
“The person who wants to cook for an hour or less has the chance to go first before the longer project so long as they are done in an hour or less.”
“Etc.”
“Come up with a plan that is actually fair.”
“You’re probably going to have to accept if she cooks fish and fermented things.”
“You can’t really ban other renters from making cultural foods you don’t like or things that you don’t enjoy the smell of.”
“Tell her if she wants to use the TV more or the sound is bothering her, to let you know and work out a fair plan for that.”
“Maybe even lead with this?”
“For example, if she hates having the sound of the TV on all the time in the main room, can you move the TV to your room (assuming it’s your TV)?”
“Or get wireless headphones for the TV?”
“Or take turns between TV and quiet?”
“Or does she want turns watching?”
“You can use this to demonstrate actually fair compromise.”- TheHatOnTheCat
“NTA.”
“I pay rent too and should be able to use my kitchen.”
“This is the whole story.”
“She has to clean up after herself and keep free the fridge shelves you agreed upon.”-
yesnomaybe123
If cooking is Katie’s passion, no one has the right to stop her from enjoying it.
Having a passion doesn’t mean she has the right to keep the OP from using the kitchen, which they are both entitled to use.
Hopefully, they can reach an understanding that pleases them after a civil conversation.
Perhaps Katie might also consider sharing some of her cooking with the OP…