Above: Laura prepping her boyfriend for a video we made for Hello Giggles, which you can watch here, but keep in mind it’s a satire about girls and their PERIODS.
This post is brought to you by Laura Kadner. Enjoy:
Once upon a time, I lived with my boyfriend. We moved to the worst city in the world and got a tiny studio apartment. Sometimes it was awesome and sometimes it sucked. Here are some things I learned about living with a man:
1.) Try to get an apartment with at least two rooms. In my cohabitational experience, we lived in a studio apartment. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to go in one’s own space. In a studio apartment when you get in a fight or someone’s trying to work, you’re basically trapped.
2.) If you hate cleaning the bathroom – announce this immediately. I hate cleaning the bathroom. In college I paid my suitemates 5 bucks whenever it was my turn to clean the bathroom because I hated it so much. Hopefully, your cohabitational partner will understand the bathroom is a disgusting place that ladies need not clean and will simply take over many of the heinous cleaning duties.
3.) When there’s a big gross bug or a slug or something nasty, it’s excellent to have a guy around to deal with it. Think of ‘Annie Hall’ when she calls Woody Allen over to deal with the spider in her tub. Woody Allen barely counts as a man, but it was still nice that Annie was able to call him. Once I stepped on a slug BAREFOOT in my house. I didn’t cry but just barely. Had I needed to remove the smooshed slug body it might be a different story.
4.) If you’re gonna be home super late or he is, communicate this. There’s nothing more obnoxious than not being able to sleep due to the fact that you’re alone and are afraid a murderer’s going to kill you because you’re all alone. On the other hand, it’s also annoying to be snugged up in bed like a darling sleep bug and have your significant other bust in and turn on lights and make noise when you have to work in the morning. When living with a man who has an erratic work schedule, it gets very annoying when you don’t know if they’ll be home to eat or even by the time you have to go to bed. Avoid conflicts and upset by simply communicating.
5.) Closet space may be an issue. It may seem like your guy wears like three different shirts and two different sets of pants, but apparently that’s not the case. They may get angry when you give them a sliver of closet and one shelf. They may be insulted that you seem to be making no room for them. This is not the case on your part. It is ignorance. Verbalize how you have many clothes and shoes and they appear to have very few. You will not understand why they demand more space, but you have to give it to them.
6.) Pets. If you move in with a dude who has a pet, and you love that pet, still make it clear that pet is still his responsibility. You are not there to feed the dog and walk the dog and perform all caring duties for that dog because your guy has a busy schedule. You may love the dog, but it’s still nice to feel appreciated for taking care of an animal that isn’t truly your dog. So if you have a dog but your boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever takes care of it a lot, make sure you let them know how much you appreciate it. And also, just take care of your own pet.
7.) It’s really fun to go to IKEA. You get to shop for things with a boy and find out they actually have opinions about dishes or the color of curtains. Ultimately, though, they probably don’t reeeeeeally care about something that much if you really want something specific. It’s amazing. Also, there are meatballs.
8.) It’s really fun to go to parties because you get to leave faster by saying things like, “Oh, we have to go. Roger has to work super early tomorrow! LAME!” But it’s so not lame because you want to leave! Because sometimes parties suck.
9.) You’re never lonely! When you’re hanging out at home, your best chum is already there! You don’t have to deal with driving to someone’s house or deciding whose house you should sleep at or anything because everything’s done already. Awesome!
10.) Guys actually aren’t that much grosser than girls. I might just be a pretty gross girl, but movies and TV taught me living with a guy is like living with an uncouth ape in a torn-up tuxedo. It’s not that gross. They clean themselves and clean the space they live in about as much as we do. Sometimes more so. I’ve lived with girls a lot more disgusting than my boyfriend. And they were never brave enough to kill scary bugs. So. Yeah.
Read more of Laura’s delightful work at her blog Gumdrop Lane or at Hello Giggles.
Every girlfriend I’ve ever lived with has been super clean, which has made me super clean.
Every girl I’ve ever had as a roommate has been been a disgusting filth beast.
I’ve also just dated girls who were filth beasts (“Trashcan? What’s that?”).
My point is, girls are mostly gross.
Girls are surprisingly gross. I learned this from college dorms. They don’t clean their hair out of the shower drain, they leave their toothpaste squeezing out all over the place and don’t clean it out of the sink and there’s toothpaste spit marks on the mirror and they don’t wash dishes (I’m guilty of that but whatever) and some of them are just ghastly about hygiene during their Mr. Tophat visit, if you know what I mean.
Girls are super gross and it might be because they somehow think because “We’re all girls, here!” it won’t be gross for other girls to deal with their bathroom nastiness with hair and such everywhere. But it IS!
But as far as maintaining a higher cleanliness level, if it’s just 2 people living together the messier person should raise their standards to match their housemate. If not I think it should be okay to gather up all the gross person’s trash/dirty dishes/mess/stuff that’s been sitting in the common space for months and dump it in all in their room.
thanks Almie and Laura! 🙂
No, thank YOU.
I’m not sure if I liked that period video or not…
That’s the reaction we were aiming for!
The things you’re not sure about are the best things.
I made that up. I think it might be a lie.
I’m gross. My ex-boyfriend was grosser. But I’m pretty sure he was an exception. Not cleaning cat barf off the carpet? Excuse me while *I* barf.
In all fairness, cleaning up cat barf sucks.
I make my bed every day, and my place is so clean it doesn’t look lived in.
That is both depressing and awesome.
SOOO true!
i live with my boyfriend and can basically agree with everything 😀
at least two rooms are sooooo important! we don’t fight but he’s so sweet he sometimes just gives me a toothache so it’s best when he’s in one room being cute and everything while i’m in the other being normal and/or grumpy…
and lets face it: 24/7 cuteness and sympathy for ALL your problems and moods would annoy the crap out of pretty much everyone (RIGHT????)
Agreed!!