I have very little experience living with people around my age.
When living with parents, we argue about chores and my appearance.
I would say that most roommates and couples argue about the same thing. But most people I know who had roommates had the same level of cleaniness. Obviously there are other factors that I feel that I would be too nosy to ask about, in person.
Treatment of shared space, chores, who ran up that phone bill calling psychics, being loud, being nosy, using stuff without permission, destroying stuff and not replacing it, violating the lease agreement (ie, lets say you agreed no smoking in the apartment and then caught your roommate smoking), not paying rent on time, having too many people over or letting people stay for extended periods of time (ie a girl/boyfriend who is over every night).
The thing to remember is that in an argument with your parents, there is a clear hierarchy of authority. At they end of the day, what they say, goes; if you don’t like it, leave. Roommates have equal authority and an equal right to use the apartment as they see fit. If your roommate says they’ll do the dishes, and they don’t, its not like you can ground them. You are free to air your displeasure, and they are free to ignore you.
Mostly my boyfriend and I have the “You didn’t clean the litterboxes!” “Yeah, well you still haven’t replaced the porch lightbulbs and it’s been a year! A year!” thing.
Arguing about tasks not done seems to be the bigie, in my experience.
I never argued with my roommate. We took adequate care of our shared spaces and were equally diligent with our shared responsibilities.
My ex live-in boyfriend and I had recurring issues with money and division of labor. They never escalated into arguments, just chronic acknowledgements of unfulfilled responsibilies and bad habits. I eventually broke up with him because of them.
Groceries. Who bought what, who ate what without replacing. I’ve seen people designate “this is my shelf,” and “that is her shelf” or even write their names on food in the fridge. Not that it resolved anything.
Cleanliness standards. Some people like a neat, clean place. Others have a high clutter tolerance, but keep things sanitary. Others don’t care if they live in squalor.
Money. Which bills are in whose name and who owes who money for what.
Annoying habitual behaviors. Inviting rude guests. Getting a pet without discussing it. Leaving the toothbrush in the shower stall. Never taking dirty dishes out of your room and putting them in the dishwasher. Playing loud music late at night. Throwing parties without the consent of all the other roommates.
Generally, under age 25, most roommate squabbles are due to lack of forethought. Younger people don’t think to set ground rules first because they simply don’t have the experience to know what kind of fuckeduppedness can come with having roommates. It boils down to lack of communication, sometimes also a lack of respect and/or trust.
My husband and I dont argue too much about household type shit. Its mostly just random bitching… mostly me bitching at him for leaving his clothes in the living room (he comes in the house and has to immediately remove his pants and tshirt onto the couch) and he bitches at me for forgetting to put the towells in the dryer.
We have only been married just over a year tho… so I imagine we are just getting started! 
Now I used to have 4 other roommates. It was the standard bitching as well… so and so leaves a certain area a mess. So and so is having too many over night guests. So and so has stinky ass food. So and so is in change of a utlilty bill and they pay it late.
My father always said that of the top 10 things married couples fight about, the first four are money. Now that my twin sons have moved out and are living together as roommates, I see that my father was right.
The other six fall into the “you said you’d do this and you haven’t done it yet” category.
We don’t fight about money so much as when things are really tight it makes us both super tense so we snap more, and we get our feelings hurt more. Then come the stupid piddling fights over why there are no tortillas for dinner or how my cat horked all over his chair.
I once lived with a bunch of people I didn’t know very well. There were never any verbal arguments, but there was some tension about things like dirty dishes and leaving hair in the shower drain.
I’ve also lived with a friend for a year after grad school. Near the end we had a huge argument about financial issues (she was a bit of a nutcase) but apart from that we got along pretty well. She was a lot messier than I was but I didn’t mind cleaning up after her. Well, I did mind a little bit. But I much preferred to do the cleaning myself rather than make it an issue.
My current boyfriend and I don’t really fight much. The last “fight” we had (it wasn’t really a fight; it was me being furious and him apologizing) had nothing to do with our cohabitation. Once we had a short spat because the cat peed on the sofa. But we’ve never once had a fight about money or chores.
With my first few sets of roommates, fights were always about cleanliness (needless to say, most people live like slobs compared to me - and I just vaccuum/dust/scrub bathroom/change sheets once/week). Oh, and one brought her boyfriend to stay over 4 nights a week in our shared bedroom. Why I’m not up for sainthood, I don’t know.
But I found two roommates in the summer of 2008 and they were fabulous; two guys who were quiet and very tidy. Then, Roommate #1 gets engaged to a girl he meets online in Canada. No biggie, except for the fact you’re on a student visa ya dummy, and you might not get a job, and have to go back to India, where she won’t wanna join you ‘cause she was frickin’ born in Toronto. He doesn’t get a job (surprise!) and the days tick down to when he has to leave and he starts drinking heavily in the middle of the day while sitting on the couch. He becomes angry and passive aggressive with my SO, accusing him of being around all the time (uh, dude, you’re the unemployed one, you’re the definition of “around”) among other things.
Roommate #2 was never around much, but was always talking to - what we thought - were girls on the phone, so we used to joke he was a real ladies’ man. He starts to ignore me and act weird, which is very strange.
Fast forward a few weeks and close friend asks me, very seriously, if roommate #2 was angry with him. I said I didn’t think so, I’d have no idea why he would be, that he hadn’t mentioned anything to me. Friend confesses he met Roommate #2 in a gay bar and was all “Hey! How are you doing?” since the two had shared beers before and were friendly. Roommate #2 ignores the hello and turns the other way without saying a word. So basically, Roommate #2 was/is in the closet and was upset that I knew. Which was ridiculous, because had he not acted so strangely, the situation would have never come up (nor did I care, but I guess logical thinking doesn’t come easily to the closeted).
Money and chores…it’s just like marriage but no sex.
Maybe, for some people, it is just like marriage.
who ate the last pop tart
See above. I was gonna say “breakfast cereal”.
Thanks for being a nice guy and cleaning up after yourself and respecting my privacy and not being the world’s loudest drunk at three o’clock in the morning . . . why couldn’t your non-rent-paying girlfriend be more like you?
thermostat settings, fans on/off, windows open/closed, that sort of thing
chores
money
disciplinary actions RE children (you let yours get away with this while complaining about mine doing the same thing, that sort of thing)
furniture arrangement
We don’t usually fight so much as heatedly disagree. I think in 6 1/2 years together we’ve had 3 major fights, but quite a few disagreements that dissolved into laughter by the time they were settled. We’re generally on the same page about most things.
I haven’t noticed that marriage changed the disagreements or the subject of the disagreements any from when we were just living together.
My peeves with the roomie are usually late rent and cleanliness of common areas.
Usually, after she cooks, she throws all the cooking dishes in the sink to wash later. Then she throws her eating dishes there. Then usually she takes a nap. This means if I want to cook after her, I have to clean out all the dishes from the sink. I’m not doing her dishes. So I try to make sure I cook my dinner before she cooks hers. And she leaves dishes all around the house. Glasses on the computer table, coffee cups everywhere and what not.
I don’t pick up after her, but I don’t bitch more than once about each incident. Usually. I’ll say something like, “Can you put your dishes in the dishwasher? I want to cook some dinner.” She usually fixes the problem within 15 minutes.
I’m not the king of clean, but if I make a slob mess I try to keep it limited to my own bedroom.
I’ve never had a fight with a roommate. The closest was when the bf of mine was living in our apartment for all practical purposes: I complained that I was paying for half the space and wanted to have half the fridge, she said “the contract is in my name, if you don’t like it leave”; that same afternoon, I informed her that I’d already found a place and would be leaving next day; she pouted that I’d have to pay what I owed her, I pointed out (with proof) that it was her who owed me money. She accepted the debt but, as expected, never paid it. That girl owed money to half of Miami Dade (slight exaggeration).
If I find some part of the common areas dirty, I’ll clean it. Kitchen “ownership” needs to be arranged: I’ve only lived in one place where each person had his/her own salt and oil, everywhere else we’d decide which items were shared and which were individual, with anything all people would be using going to the shared list (cutlery, linens, salt, oil; often milk, eggs, pasta, rice, fruit juices). Household duties have always been clearly established; I’ve never had an argument about those. If I’m doing laundry, my basket isn’t very full, and the roomie’s is also halfaway, I’ll offer to do both - this leads to them reciprocating (when they didn’t do it first).
I’ve never had arguments about chores, because we always split them in a way all parties agreed to, based on skills and hates and without trying to go “exact 50:50”; if I got there and the bathroom was dirty, I’m happy to take up bathroom duty, they get the dusting. And the one time someone complained about my AC/windows habits, I proposed to do it my way for one billing cycle and see how it went. Having survived the experience of getting home and having to switch the AC on rather than leaving it on 24/7, and seeing the difference in the bill, my roommate suddenly decided that she could survive five minutes of heat 16 days a month (previously she’d go away for the weekend leaving the AC on, sometimes the window open as well - and, like me, she’d grown up in a very hot country and without AC).
I’ve also never expected to be my roomies’ friend; sometimes it’s happened, but it wasn’t an expectation going in. And I’ve never lived with my boyfriend.
You’re in my space.
You ate my food.
You’re a filthy disgusting slob and your dog has fleas.
I didn’t like how you flirted with our waitress.
We never ________ anymore.
I don’t like your attitude.
For anybody who remembers the dorm-mates I had last year, I’m not counting them because I didn’t choose them, the university’s information on living arrangements was misleading, and if I’d had the real information I wouldn’t have been living on campus. Plus some of the problems were with people from other wings of the building, the Nigerian dude who burned kitchen pots and did his laundry in the bathtub (kitchenmate) wasn’t the same as the Nigerian dude who performed Little Mermaid reenactments in that same tub at 3am (hallmate), and some of them even, slowly and with me refraining from throttling them like I really, really, really wanted to, eventually learned to do such things as clean after themselves. I did decide that, while Nigerians are probably very nice people when they’re not trying to scam anybody or explaining to me how they love that English is now the dominant language because they can lord it over their French-speaking neighbors, I don’t want to live with a Nigerian or set foot in Nigeria ever. That’s not racism, it’s countryism.