Male Living Space
Hey everyone, welcome back to my once-a-month weekly blogpost. This time I have a very good excuse for the lack of posting, however - I've been moving! Now that I've finished my degree and my dorm contract's running to an end, I had to look for a new spot to call my own.
My initial plan was to move somewhere outside of the center of the country. Not necessarily super rural (I still had to find a job and all) but not the Tel-Aviv sphere. The prices are low, the people are decent, and there's space to fuckin' breathe; one of the thing that most bothers me about the urban center is how close up everything is to one another, makes me claustrophobic. I told this plan to people I knew, and while some were supportive, a lot more had... a different suggestion in mind.
Hey, why don't you move to Tel-Aviv? It's where all the young people go!
Tel-Aviv's great, man. It's a different living experience. You gotta go there.
Even I wasn't all that sold on Tel-Aviv, but then I moved there, and... oh man, never going back.
I could not tell you what everyone loves about this city, I think it's something in the water. While I could stand this onslaught of recommendations for a month or so, after nonstop suggestion I folded - "Sure, why not, let's go to Tel-Aviv. Worst case scenario I just move out, right? It's a rental, not an apartment I am buying. It'll be fine!" My friends instantly started betting whether I'd quit before three months were up.
I scoured the properties on rent for a while, and came to the thrilling conclusion that the options within my budget were either getting roommates, or living in a single room with no furniture for twice the rent. I chose the roommates.
Oh god what had I done.
This is an apartment for four people (with one of the four just... not around for about a year, no one's sure why) that seemed relatively decent - spacious kitchen, a mini-fridge and shower for each room, affordable rent, relatively good location. When I came to visit it was a little messy, but nothing a little bit of elbow grease couldn't fix, right? I was planning to live here up to a year, better somewhere that cleans up well than somewhere that is clean but awful out the gate. Only once I moved in I realized how messy everything was, because while the individual rooms were up to a basic cleanliness standard, the shared spaces were... not.
I opened my mini-fridge the day I moved in to discover the prior tenant did not bother to dispose of his food. This meant I had to throw out some expired cheese, a mysterious yellow liquid that formed on the fridge's bottom, and pastrame with so much mold you'd think it was restarting evolution. The mini-fridge also had a freezer, which would be a nice touch if it contained anything but a singular, gigantic block of ice covering the entire thing. Actually, it did contain something else: within the confines of The Cube was a singular bag of opened sausages! Thrilling.
Next on my list was the Kitchen (I love to cook) and my god how did these people not catch a disease yet. The main fridge had ice to kingdom come and food that expired late 2022 (as you'd expect), but the kitchen itself was a whole other thing. The kitchen had a stove that was marinated in hard oil. They had 3 different drying stations for the dishes, all of which were filled, and none of which were actually clean: I found multiple dishes who were left there for so long they had black, once-wet dust stuck to their insides, and among other things - a USB charger, for some fucking reason. They had 3 different cans of Protein, 2 cans of creatine, and not a single clean fork to be seen. Actually, speaking of the forks - the place where the forks should ostensibly be was just stuffed with spoons. I did eventually find the forks, they were just hidden under a mountain of not-clean-anymore dishes and misplaced USB chargers.
I was cleaning the kitchen barefoot, under the misplaced expectation that they would atleast keep the floor somewhat clean. One of the roommates came to make some coffee while I was cleaning and I got to meet him (nice guys, to be clear), upon which he remarked "oh, by the way, I wouldn't... be barefoot here. Just so you know."
This is your house, how do you live like this???
Not only that: I don't think these people get the concept of redundancy. Each person in the apartment (4 people, may I remind you) has a different area of the kitchen to keep spices and sauces in. This means that every person has a different can of salt, sugar, pepper, oil, and anything else you'd imagine is regularly kept in someone's pantry.
Why.
Just.. fuckin'... have one space for all the spices! Buy some more if you run out! I know you all don't use the sugar all that much, because TWO of you have black shit inside of the sugar canister! SO WHY NOT JUST SAVE UP ON SPACE???
...God.
Don't worry, reader, I will eventually tell them this idea, it's just that after 4 days of cleaning I need some rest from being the maid of three 27~ish old men. I have no idea how these guys have made it this far without figuring out that you need to clean the floor you walk on.