Mooching roommate accuses 31-year-old man of “killing the vibe” of the house for demanding that the food the roommate has taken be replaced, man starts hiding his food in his room: ‘[My roommate] keeps “accidentally” using my stuff’ – FAIL Blog

I’ve always maintained that labeling your things, including food, in a flat sharing/roommate arrangement is strange. While it is easy to see how people reach this conclusion, being that it’s the easiest way to remember whose things are whose, the act of getting a Sharpie or a label maker out to label everything you own is actually quite bizarre and petty and really is an insane act to take if you stop to think about it. Some people don’t even give the arrangement a chance before doing this, either, and are marking or labeling everything in the place the moment you step in the door, before you’ve even had a chance to touch their stuff.

But it remains a fact that you need to respect other people’s things and accept that just because this may be a home you’re living in, it doesn’t automatically entitle you to everything in it. Really, in a flat-sharing/roommate arrangement, the space is shared, and reasonable things like couches and appliances are common use out of necessity, but everything else isn’t necessarily up for grabs.

That’s part of the whole “sharing” part of the arrangement. People often mistake sharing for meaning “This person has to share this with me,” when in reality, the lesson of sharing is more about knowing the ins and outs of setting appropriate boundaries: that is knowing when something is or isn’t yours or when you should be letting other people use your things. 

If your memory really is just that bad and you can’t remember what is yours or where you put your food in the fridge, then maybe having a way to easily identify everything does make sense. But, by the time you’re passively aggressive, keeping all your food and dishes in your room to keep other people from using them, then it’s time to move out.

Really, the issue here is that we weren’t meant to be living with other adults who weren’t our partner in our 30s, but that’s a whole can of worms of a social issue that will have to be saved for another day.