Hi Brooke, I live with two roommates and neither of them are particularly interested in even the basic levels of cleanliness (and that’s putting it nicely). In the past, I’ve accepted that if I prefer things to be neat, I’ll neaten them myself. But it’s come to a level where even though I can take care of the messes myself, I have so much resentment towards my two friends because of it. For example, there has been an overripe pineapple in our kitchen for over a week and we have a literal cloud of fruitflies and then even more fruit flies all over our apartment. I’ve offered to cut up the pineapple and put it in the fridge, or to make a trap for the flies if she buys some apple cider vinegar. She has declined and I feel powerless to take action. I suppose I could make a special trip to the store to get materials to make a trap but this seems so exclusively her responsibility that it feels insulting for me to have to do that.

C: fruit flies
T: Roommate is so inconsiderate and lazy and nasty not to clean up/allow me to clean up after her
F: resentful, infuriated
A: complain about her to fiance (and you now! ha!), avoid her, avoid the kitchen so I don’t have to see the mess
R: I’m still irritated with her? Not sure what the result is. We still have fruit flies?

Intentional model…
C: fruit flies
T: I’m trying to come up with anything that’s even a step nicer than what I have right now but I can’t muster up anything else. I tried to feel sympathy for her not having good cleanliness, but that felt condescending and I didn’t even really feel it. I tried to feel compassion for her, but I don’t think there’s any situation that she’s in that merits this kind of behavior. Help??

Clearly I’m very worked up about this–it’s not just this one incident, it’s been an almost daily issue for almost two years and it’s finally getting to me. Help me stop freaking out about the damn pineapple!