[embracinglife]

I just moved in with a new roommate a little over a month ago. I really like her as a person, and she has many qualities that I admire about her. Lately I've been getting annoyed with her about little things. I've been kind of annoyed at our lack of a cleaning/organizational system....so today at work I put together what I thought was a nice spreadsheet so we could track what had been cleaned. I thought it would be a good way to know what the needs were of the apartment as far as that went, and to make sure that things were pretty fair. When I got home she had written a not and also told me that she was uncomfortable with this system. She had previously told me that it stressed her out to have deadlines about cleaning chores, so I thought it was the deadlines that stressed her out, but apparently she had had systems like this used against her in the past to tell her she wasn't doing enough or something.

I told her that I would probably just keep track of it on my own then because I would like to know when things had been cleaned, just so I know....I also told her that she should tell me what she thought we should do and she said, no I would rather come up with a system that both of us like. I agree, but how are we going to come up with a system if she doesn't give me any ideas?

I decided to not respond, because I wasn't really understanding fully where she was coming from and I didn't want to hurt her in any way. I think that was a good response for the time, because if we aren't thinking clearly we're not going to come up with a good solution....but what am I supposed to do from here on out? Any ideas on other roommate cleaning systems that have worked in the past---especially with people that don't want to keep track in writing. Yeah, you can just see when something is dirty and then clean it, but what if you leave the bathroom dirty for three months and no one ever cleans it?

[Direction]

I guess I would start with exploring what common ground the two of you have. Ask basic questions...What does cleaning the bathroom mean? How often should this be done? How often should the place be vacuumed/mopped? How are the common areas treated versus personal areas, etc...Figure out what items overlap and start from there...