When I’m single, especially when not dating much, I often adapt my daily routine towards personal preferences that I can understand seem odd. For example, lately I’ve been keeping all my oral hygiene stuff in the kitchen rather than the bathroom, so as to keep my toothbrush, flosser etc. relatively e-.coli-free. Makes sense to me, doesn’t gross me out at all, but if I had a girlfriend I could see where this might seem kind of disgusting to her. Also, I walk all around my apartment brushing my teeth while I shut off lights, close cabinets, and other tasks I can perform with my free hand. My ex-girlfriend used to give me funny looks when I did this, so I restricted my toothbrushing to the bathroom while we were dating.
I’m also very lax about completing tasks. I piled my laundry out of the dryer onto my couch, to sort it out while watching TV, got absorbed in the show I was watching and basically it stayed there for most of the week. Sharing a couch with a pile of socks and underwear would drive me crazy if it was someone else’s laundry, but I was just fine with my decision (and my living room decor) this week, and could have tolerated my own mess for quite a while. If I had a guest, of course, I’d have put it in the proper drawer tout suite.
So what do you do when you’re by yourself that you wouldn’t do when sharing space with someone else?
I’ve been living alone so long I suspect I’m truly incapable of living with another human being on a regular basis.
My most obnoxious habit is probably that I leave my shoes wherever I take them off. There tend to be a couple of tribes of them in regular places – by the TV (which is between the front door and the stairs), by the shelf where I leave my purse and keys, and in the bedroom – but there are often random shoes in the bathroom, by the computer desk, or in the kitchen.
It can hold things up in the morning, when I’m looking for a particular pair and they’re not in any of the usual spots…
Like you, when I’m alone things wind up where they’re most convenient for me, not in their traditional place.
I always do secondary tasks while brushing my teeth, and people find this strange. But brushing my teeth does not completely engage my prodigious intellect – if I don’t do other stuff, I get bored. I’m a multi-tasker. Why waste that time staring at yourself in the mirror?
Never having lived alone I can’t really make much of a comment on this one, but I can tell you one thing I wish a roommate would keep until he was living alone. He wakes up in the morning and goes to take his morning pee and usually I’m on the first floor in the main room with a cup of Hot Cocoa and watching Sports Center and the dude totally takes his piss with the bathroom door open. Drives me up the wall.
I intentionally burn my popcorn when I cook it on the stove. I love a few burnt kernels, but I would never subject another person to the smell.
I lock my bedroom door before I go to sleep. I do this because if I don’t, I’ll keep thinking I hear someone in my living room as I’m trying to drift off. If my door is locked, I know for damn sure I’ll hear someone coming for me and I can disregard the little noises.
I’m about to commence living with a roommate after over four years of living alone. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it, but we’ve both agreed that there is nothing wrong with dancing around the living room in one’s underwear, and have already instituted a “call before you bring somebody in the house” rule to avoid embarrassing incidents.
Like twicks, there is absolutely no telling where my shoes may end up, and I also have a tendency to just leave something wherever I happen to put it down when I’m finished, rather than put it away. As a result, there is almost always a pile of books, papers, knitting, and various other projects in several different places. There is often a laundry basket in the middle of the living room, and I do the dishes when I damn well feel like it. (Although in the new place, there will be both laundry facilities in my house and a dishwasher, so that will probably become a nonissue.)
Oh yes, and I talk to my cats more than I talk to anybody else on this Earth.
Heh. I wander around doing stuff while brushing my teeth and I whistle all. The. Damn. Time. To the point that I annoy myself sometimes. So I try not to do it when there’s other people around. You know how some people have a whiteboard on their fridge? I use the fridge as a whiteboard (What’s wrong with that? Look, it comes right off!). My parents have raised objections to this so I only do it these days when taking phone numbers, say, and I wipe it off before they get back
I imagine I’d talk and sing (me too) to the cats even if somebody else was in the house.
I don’t think I’d have the ironing board in the living room with a stack of shirts on it for about a month now left out. Or the huge stack of dirty dishes on the counter.
Other than turning down the stereo when I’m in my workshop I don’t think I’d change much.
Most of the differences between when I lived by myself and now (two roommates) are pretty mundane. Except that now I have to wear clothing all the time. :mad:
Oh, and I used to talk to myself a lot. I didn’t have pets.
Doncha watch Mythbusters? They tested the old “bacteria on the toothbrush” thingy. The control toothbruth that they left in an office, covered up, had as much fecal coliform bacteria as the ones left exposed in the bathroom.
The most suprising thing in this thread so far: twickster is apparently female…hunh.
I live alone and do all those things. Except replace pet rats with pet fish. I also have been known to engage in tag with the cat…she seems to understand the game really well. And use furniture unconventially. If I wanna lay on the arm of the sofa with my feet above me on the wall I’m gonna! Its my sofa, my feet and my wall! And I eat and drink out of cartons and have breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast.
Yep! (usually by the door, I don’t often wear shoes at home)
And without pets I talk to myself a lot. I think the thing that an evesdropper would find very weird is when I reprimand myself for doing something stupid.
