How to tell a roommate they reek?
 Photo by justinleif licensed with Creative Commons. |
Is there a proper protocol for telling a roommate that they stink? I know it sounds rude, but I’m really not sure what to do any more. We all know or will run into people who have a pungent body odor, but what we (the other clean[er] roommates) are having to deal with goes way beyond that. We’re not merely talking about a small aura of smell that follows the roommate around, no. We’re talking about a swinging vortex of putrid filth that is emanating from his room and taking over the house.
It’s usually pretty bad inside his room, but we’re also usually able to avoid it by simply not entering his room. Apparently the filth atoms formed together to create compound filth molecules or something, because stench is no longer contained to his room. When I woke up this morning, it was pouring down rain outside so I walked into the kitchen to grab a trash bag to protect my computer monitor as I carried it to my car. As soon as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, I was hit by a wave of stench. So bad that I stopped dead in my tracks and uttered a few obscenities to myself. I drove to work in a complete daze wondering how he manages to live with smelling like that. I thought about it for a while and realized that he doesn’t shower every day. I’m honestly not even sure how often he showers, or if he showers at all for that matter.
Which brings us to the title and ultimate point of this post. How can I sit him down, without offending him, and tell him he needs to fix whatever it is that is causing this smell. If it was just affecting him, I’d just let him be. The problem is that it’s effecting the house. I’ve had four different friend comment on the smell of the house and that was before the level it reached this morning. I seriously want to get all the roommates together and sit this guy down for an intervention. It is absolutely disgusting. It’s made even worse by the fact that it spills into the kitchen. I simply cannot handle having to smell that funk when I’m trying to cook dinner.
Someone please help me out. If you have any suggestions at all for how to handle this situation with tact, it would be greatly appreciated. I’m honestly at my whit’s end here.
posted by Christopher Schnese
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Well Christopher, aside from actually TELLING him (and I’m guessing that this is not an option – yet) you have to be devious, yet subtle. (Love the illustration that goes with this btw).
So what you possibly need to do is to turn it around, make him think he’s the one doing YOU a favour by working out where the smell is coming from.
Say that SOMEONE – not you, obviously, has found this wonderful airfreshener/scented candle/spray – whatever – and that you’d appreciate his opinion, because you don’t want to stink the place out. Say you prefer a natural scent but that this comes highly recommended, but since you have a cold or something affecting your sense of smell (you wish), you can’t tell how good it really is (in fact, if you have had garlic with your meal the day before, this might be an ideal opportunity to test this out).
Or buy some wonderful, expensive shower gels and ask his opinion on them because you think you might be wasting your money – does he think they are worth the extra you spent? Please try them for me and report back (if that seems too obvious, ask ALL the flatmates – at least you’ll have some wonderful smells eminating around the place, if not from him…)
Failing that, you might have to get some plug-in fresheners and just use them – he’ll take the hint perhaps – or at least he might ask why you have put them there – just say you can smell SOMETHING – just not sure what and was trying them out … and if all else fails, gather your friends and tell him outright that he stinks.
It’s a problem but it sounds like it has reached the point of no return .. and the longer you leave it, the worse it will be.
Maybe you could leave your computer open on this blog…where he can read it??
OI YOU! You stink!!
Moo has some great ideas, but to be honest, I believe most people appreciate honesty. Unless your roommate has seriously lost his sense of smell, he has GOT to know how bad he smells. So if you approach him directly it’s not like it will be a huge surprise to said roommate.
Maybe how you approach him (if you go with my option) will depend on how well you know him. Are you guys really close? If so, that might make it easier. When I was overseas, I was submerged in a culture that only bathed one or twice a week (the majority – not all). Plus it was in tropical heat, too. I understand where you’re coming from.
I once worked with someone that didn’t bathe very often and eventually the boss got tired of hearing our complaints (I have no idea what she did with those complaints, btw) and simply sat down with this person and laid it all out on the table. Nice, but direct. Guess what? He huffed and puffed briefly, but he showed up the next day squeaky clean and we never had a problem after that. Just be straight with him. He knows he stinks. Maybe since no one has said anything to him, he doesn’t think it’s that bad yet. See where I’m heading with this?
You’ll have to let your readers know what you decide to do. (I have the sudden urge to go clean something now.)
@ moo : Subtleness is ineffective on this guy. His VERY dense and trying to explain to him that I’m just trying this stuff out would have almost no effect. For instance, one day one of my other roommates and I were making food and having a conversation in the kitchen. The smelly one was in his room watching Scarface at an excessively loud volume. He somehow heard us out there so he opened his door as if we wanted to watch with him. We couldn’t take it and suddenly my good roommate turned to the skunk and said “If you wanna hang with us then you should shut off your movie and come hang with us, otherwise you should shut your door”. Rather than understanding it and getting the very blunt hint, he came back with “well, it depends on what your doing. What are you guys doing?”.
@ Jane Bond : I don’t actually know him all too well. I’ve only been in the house for three or four months. All I know is that he’s in his own little world all the time. I think he’s really a lost cause. If there is a chance at all for getting him to be clean, it’s to go the honesty rout. Only I can’t be the one to do it alone, it will be far too confrontational that way. I need to have the backing of the whole house and we need to just show him that if he’s going to be living here, he has to make sure he’s keeping up a minimum amount of cleanliness so that we can actually accommodate visitors. He just doesn’t get it.
Just leave a can of Lysol by his door. I think he might get the message. Then maybe he will open up to you guys and ask for input???
[...] back to the continuing saga of the smelly roommate] So yesterday I came home from work and the house smelled a little bit better. I wasn’t quite [...]
I think I’d go with the line: “I’m your friend that’s why I’m gonna help with a problem you’re having.”
I know exactly what you all are talking about. My room mate sticks so bad I gag. He has a very pungent body ordor that makes me sick to my stomach. I have told him several times that I cannot handle his smell as I have asthma and I have noticed that lately my attacks are getting more frequent. He works in a metal fab factory and he brings home the smell of raw steel on himself. He has comtaminated the whole apartment with his odor. Oh, did I forget to mention that he will shower only if I yell at him to do so. I cannot take it any longer, It is effecting my health now and I need advice as to how to tactfully deal with this. I cannot afford to live alone yet, so do I have to put up with this smell until I am out of school? I seriously feel that this man is just to damned lazy to do anything about it. He would rather sit around and drink beer.
The post sounds EXACTLY like the problem I am having with my roommate. I moved in 8 months ago and the entire time his smell has just radiated through the house. He doesn't shower everyday and i have tried dropping the hints. I got him shower gels and deoderants saying that they came as a "His and Hers" package but I can't even tell if he is using them.
It has got the point where I won't bring people into my apartment. My boyfriend went home the other day and called me when he got home saying that he could smell it on his clothes! And on some of mine sometimes.
The house is in the perfect spot and is just perfect for me, but like you, he is dense, can't take a hint and smells like something from another planet.
I feel your pain…
Yeah, that sucks. I'm almost happy someone else has to deal with it too, but mostly just sorry.
When people live in their own filth/stench, that's fine. So long as it's completely self contained. When they don't even notice it and it's directly effecting other people, that's beyond tolerable.
Lucky for me, my roommate has gotten a lot better recently. And I now have the master bedroom with my own bathroom, so I don't have to worry about sharing with him anymore.
I wish you luck and hope your situation improves.
This story is identical to mine, except my stories worse. I live in a quad (with three people) so it's pretty spacious, but just one room. Both of my roommates were like this, and I've talked with both of them. One of them is always in the room and the other one I rarely see. When I talked to the roommate who's always in the room, he understood and has since started showering more frequently, but just enough where the odor of the other roommate to cover it up. When I talked to the roommate who's never in the room, he seemed to take the hint and showered the next day, but that's been the only time I've seen him actually go take a shower! He's only in the room from around 11pm to 10am and he just destroys the room. He leaves his dirty socks on the floor, and doesn't change his clothes. He never showers, and I don't think he owns deodorant. Nothing can cover up this smell and I'm pretty sure it sticks to my clothing and such. I hate it. He's so lazy and doesn't care about personal hygiene. I never bring friends up to the room, which sucks because I often have weekends to myself so I can't even throw a party or invite friends from home without being embarrassed. And to add to his disgusting stench and lack of being clean, he doesn't clean up his trash, ever! I've had to throw away his shit because he just leaves it everywhere. I've asked him to at least take out his trash and he says 'oh yeah, I'll do it' and doesn't. I'd move out, but frankly, this floor is allowing me to survive engineering because we all take similar classes and can help each other out with homework and all of us respect quietness for studying and such. FML
Yeah, that is rough. Luckily for me, I wasn't forced to remain in the same room as him the entire time. Thankfully I had a room over at the complete opposite room of the house that I could retreat to and quickly shove guests into before they were exposed to the rest of the house.
And I definitely feel you on the “necessary evil” of that location. I was already graduated when I moved into this house, but the rent is so cheap that I would never even dream of moving (you know, except for “next step of life” type stuff). I just had to deal with this roommates crap continually repeating to myself how cheap it was to live here.
I wish my two years of experience with theses situations could afford me some advice, but theses situations are tough. It always seems like you have two choices with the same outcome:
1) Be nice about it and nothing ever happens
2) Be a dick about it and not only does nothing happen, but then you're a dick.
I do have one piece of advice though. I've noticed that once you find something that bugs you about a person, the more things they do you start to lump into that category. I've had to try really hard to evaluate each interaction with some of my roommates and judge them each individually. I've noticed that because I now expect them to do something that's annoying, I've begun to interpret more of their actions as annoying (even if I previously did not think them to be).
Well, thanks of for the comment! I wish you luck with your situation.
for his birthday or just a random gift, get him like 4 bottles of febreeze…or shampoo…
After about 3 weeks of searching, i found out what my roommate reeks of…filthy socks, ball sweat, b.o. and some musty flavor….its terrible…and he's got a medical condition, so i don't know if that causes it or if he just stinks…he showers daily..idk if he actually cleans himself while he's in there…also not sure if he cleans his towels, bedsheets or clothes often…FML!!! and i don't want to kick him out, cuz i don't want to have to find another roommate…
That is always the catch in any roommate situation. Do I put up with the person or do I get rid of them and hope desperately that I can find a new one.
And then, there's always the chance that the new roommate will be worse! Or at least just as bad…
Thankfully I don't have to worry about it anymore because he no longer lives with us.
my friend doesn't bathe very often, wears his smelly shirts over and over again without washing them and he does not wear deodorant. His smell has rubbed off on my love seat and the smell remains and does not go away. Lucky I have a slip cover which I take off and wash, but I have to spray febreeze on the frabric underneath the loveseat because it is seeping through. Whenever he goes to hug me goodbye I want to throw up! Whenever I talk to him on the phone, see a picture of him or think of him I can smell him! The nasty smell is embedded in my memory and I cant get rid of it! I have purchased a pet throw cover for my loveseat and I am hoping that it will keep his smell off of my couch and then I can just put the throw in the washing machine instead of the whole slip cover. Everytime he comes over and sits on my couch I cringe when he stretches out his arms and wraps his smelly armpits around the arms of the couch and lays his stinky head on the cushions. He does the same thing to the seat in my car too. Everytime I see him I tell myself he isnt going to smell this time, but it happens eveytime and it has been going on for two years. I cant take it anymore, why should I have to go through so much trouble and spend my money and suffer because he is so lazy! I am afraid to say anything to him because I am afraid it will be the end of our friendship. He already thinks that I am mean and hard on him. I am afraid he is just going to get defensive and turn it around by saying I am just critical. He is abnormally lazy and that is why he doesnt bathe often or wash his clothes often enough. He has admitted that he only showers every three days, but I believe that often it is even longer than that. One time in a phone message he mentioned something in his message about needing to bathe more often, this was the perfect opportunity but I didnt say anything because I couldnt get up the courage. One time though when he said he bathes every three days, I remarked and said, “is it really fair that your roommates should have to smell you” and he got defensive and said that he didnt have body odor. I just left it at that. I havent returned his calls recently because I have decided that I have to say something to him, but I dont want to face it yet. I am very depressed over this but I dont want to suffer anymore. I am a very clean person and his smell lingering on my furniture is the last straw! One time when I went to pick him up to go somewhere he said, “I hope I dont smell, I havent showered in awhile, so I just splashed cold water on my face before I left the house so I could at least feel like a human being” This was another opportunity for me, but instead I didnt say anything for fear of how he would react.
my friend doesn’t bathe very often, wears his smelly shirts over and over again without washing them and he does not wear deodorant. His smell has rubbed off on my love seat and the smell remains and does not go away. Lucky I have a slip cover which I take off and wash, but I have to spray febreeze on the frabric underneath the loveseat because it is seeping through. Whenever he goes to hug me goodbye I want to throw up! Whenever I talk to him on the phone, see a picture of him or think of him I can smell him! The nasty smell is embedded in my memory and I cant get rid of it! I have purchased a pet throw cover for my loveseat and I am hoping that it will keep his smell off of my couch and then I can just put the throw in the washing machine instead of the whole slip cover. Everytime he comes over and sits on my couch I cringe when he stretches out his arms and wraps his smelly armpits around the arms of the couch and lays his stinky head on the cushions. He does the same thing to the seat in my car too. Everytime I see him I tell myself he isnt going to smell this time, but it happens eveytime and it has been going on for two years. I cant take it anymore, why should I have to go through so much trouble and spend my money and suffer because he is so lazy! I am afraid to say anything to him because I am afraid it will be the end of our friendship. He already thinks that I am mean and hard on him. I am afraid he is just going to get defensive and turn it around by saying I am just critical. He is abnormally lazy and that is why he doesnt bathe often or wash his clothes often enough. He has admitted that he only showers every three days, but I believe that often it is even longer than that. One time in a phone message he mentioned something in his message about needing to bathe more often, this was the perfect opportunity but I didnt say anything because I couldnt get up the courage. One time though when he said he bathes every three days, I remarked and said, “is it really fair that your roommates should have to smell you” and he got defensive and said that he didnt have body odor. I just left it at that. I havent returned his calls recently because I have decided that I have to say something to him, but I dont want to face it yet. I am very depressed over this but I dont want to suffer anymore. I am a very clean person and his smell lingering on my furniture is the last straw! One time when I went to pick him up to go somewhere he said, “I hope I dont smell, I havent showered in awhile, so I just splashed cold water on my face before I left the house so I could at least feel like a human being” This was another opportunity for me, but instead I didnt say anything for fear of how he would react.