Bored at work I was perusing the SA forums and found their "What's the most bachelor thing you have ever done?" Some of the responses are hilarious, some unnervingly disgusting, and some just downright tragic. So have at it. Me? Well earlier this year I changed the tires and brakes on my motorcycle. In my living room. I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. The echo from riding through the kitchen shook the foundation. I'm probably pulling the engine this winter, but I'll be in a new place with new roommates... Also a huge fan of not wearing pants. I come home from work and by the time I hit my bedroom 3 floors up, I'm down to boxers. Usually go with gym shorts though. My 2nd year of school I lived with 2 friends in a house. We collected our cans of Keystone Light (breakfast of champions right there) in the huge contractor bags. Halfway through the year we got tired of taking them back for deposit money, so just let them collect in the garage. At move out, we had 8 contractor bags full. Plus all the 30 rack boxes piled up, as sort of a crash pad for parking. Just drift into the pile and when the car stops moving, get out, you're home. Aah, good times. Focus: Bachelor living.
- My room in my second to last year of college was so cluttered with dirty laundry and random shit that you literally couldn't walk in it. I had to make strategic jumps to get to my bed. - Not really me, but the guys who lived in the current place before me wouldn't clean the fridge, anytime anything was spilled or there were stains they would just throw a paper towel on it and put new food on the paper towel. It took me almost 3 hours to clean the fucker out. - My last year of college I lived in a dorm style apartment that had sinks in each bedroom, my roommate (we didn't really share a bedroom, but always left the door between our rooms open) and I were too lazy to walk down the hall to the bathroom and would piss in our sinks, the sinks we brushed our teeth at. The bathroom was two doors down. I still get grossed out remembering that one.
I slept on a fold out couch in my living room for almost a year after my roommate moved out and the bedroom was empty, missed out on getting laid "because I didn't have a bed" one time, I quickly got a bed. My new roommate now has a mattress on the floor in the living room and I have the bedroom. Haven't had sheets on my bed or pillow covers in over 6 months, just a sleeping bag for winter and an old comforter for summer. I have a couple empty captain morgan 1.75 jugs holding up a shelf. I open wine bottles with a long wood screw and a claw hammer. My toilet leaks water so I have the lid removed and a clothes hanger rigged up to keep the arm from falling. If you wanna flush you unhook the hanger and let it fill up then flush, been like this for 2 years, I cannot find a new seal at any store. My old TV stand was a piece of plywood sitting across my very expensive but currently non working floor standing speakers, this is now my roommates tv stand. Almost all my clothes I never wear are in my dresser, the ones I wear stay in my basket until I need them, when they're dirty they go into a pile. The only vacuum I have is an old shop vac. The kitchen table is an old square fold out with the soft vinyl top that's ripped and no chairs. All my drinking glasses are just pint glass I've stole from bars, most of my utensils I took from restaurants. Most of my cereal bowls are just old containers that contained something else when it was new. I do have a few decent plates though. My place used to be nicer, but 3 years of shitty jobs or not even having a job after working at a nice job is taking its toll. Now being in school I'm at least making progress but none if this is going to change until I'm done and make decent money again.
I've kept it simple, this being just the 7th day in my life living ALONE as a bachlor. That said, I've spent at least 50% of the time parading around my house naked. There's certainly a feeling of freedom to it. I'm enjoying it while I can until the new roommates move in early August. Yes, I keep the blinds drawn.
When I ran out of milk, I have used whatever I had in the fridge on my cereal in the morning. This includes Mountain Dew with Coco Puffs (which was pretty awful), though I will say orange juice and Cheerios actually works. During my college years Banquet TV dinners and Totino's Party Pizzas cost $1. The entire freezer in my apartment would be filled with these items, and my roommates and I would eat them twice a day for weeks at a time, only breaking things up with McDonald's Dollar Menu items or Taco Bell after bar close. On the truly disgusting end, while in college in my apartment with 3 roommates, we had a bird get stuck in the vent fan above our stove that died before we knew it was there. Well, we did not discover the bird for some time, after it had begun to decay. This came to our attention when one of my roommates was making dinner and turned on the vent fan and had bird shit, feathers, pieces of dead bird, and maggots begin raining down on the stove top. Rather than cleaning the mess up right away, we just sprayed it with Lysol spray like 8 times a day for at least 4 days, possibly a week, and we all just ate fast food during that time. It came down to none of us wanting to clean the mess, so we just hoped someone else would. Eventually we were all fed up with it, so we each took a 5 minute turn until the mess was entirely cleaned up. Surprisingly, after 2 years of living in that apartment, we actually got our entire deposit back.
I was out of food and didn't feel like going to the store, so for lunch today I ate five-day-old black beans mixed with two tablespoons of really questionable salsa, all while wearing my bathing suit because every pair of shorts I own were (are) dirty. I call it Hobo Frijoles over Board Shorts So, yeah. Living the dream.
- I don't have dishes, so I use tupperware as bowls. I use the tupperware tops as plates. I've been doing this for 8 months. - Also, I slept on a futon directly on the floor for about 6 months, I recently "upgraded" to an air mattress. For a few months I slept directly on my hardwood floor, using my comforter as padding. - And, I eat at my desk, since I don't own a dinner table. - I didn't own any furniture until I found a couch in front of my building about a month ago. When I brought my last date over, she sat in my desk chair and I sat on the ground. We used my nightstand as a table and ate out of the tupperware. She was not impressed. (Her exact words from a few days later were "I decided the minute I saw your apartment that I wasn't sleeping with you that night.") - I won't even go into the food I eat. Suffice to say, I've "made" marinara sauce by mixing ketchup and sour cream together. - A few months ago my sink started leaking. I "fixed" it myself: Spoiler To clarify, I used a tupperware container to redirect the flow of the water onto the dish rack, then used a window blind to direct the water to my bathtub. Yes, I stepped over it every time I used the toilet or got in/out of the shower. (I called a plumber a week later when I realized my apartment building offered free plumbing services.)
My bed has two sides of it. Clean clothes and dirty clothes. Speaking of my bed, it doesnt have a frame. I have a really expensive memory foam thing that I sits on top of my old mattress, on top of a box spring. It only gets a sheet on it if I know any lady friends are coming over. But who in the fuck cares about my bed? The reason it is so cluttered is because I usually sleep on the couch. This recently had to come to an end because my roommate just returned from Iraq. When he was gone, I never wore pants in the house. I usually had underpants on (I'm not that gross). Now that he is back I have got some deep depression issues. I'm often told by women my apartment looks a 13 year old decorated it. The decorations in question? Signed Bengals, Reds, and Blue Jackets jerseys. I also have panoramic photos of my favorite stadiums. No real art. When I moved out of my first apartment my parents came up to help me clean. My mom told me the apartment was so disgusting that if I had kids she would have to take them away (she works for children services). On the plus side, I don't play video games. So I will never be as low as you lazy fucks.
I just purchased a nice kitchen table with 4 chairs. I haven't had one for 4 years. The fiance said that the reclining portion of my sofa is not a suitable eating surface for guests. Fuck her, we have TV trays! She also nixed the dedicated beer trash can, which was in the living room. With a mini basketball hoop above it. But she cleans so I guess it's a fair trade.
I'm stealing that idea for my house. I just am getting started on living as a bachelor this summer, leasing a house about 10 minutes walking distance from the University I attend. I have two pretty damn responsible people as housemates, and I haven't had any problems with any of them. I am the dirtiest, but I keep that to my room, and I dedicate one day a week to clean everything up from myside. One thing I have learned from living with guys is while I pride myself on my ability to cook (thanks Mom!) healthy and nutritious meals, they do not. I am completely disgusted with the number of meals that consist of instant Mac and Cheese and microwaved Nachos drowned in microwaved cheese sauce. I gag sometimes thinking about those. Although, the other day "M" put together a meal I was jealous of, a frozen cheese pizza that he had covered in all sorts of deli meats and cheeses. He couldn't finish it and gave me and a slice and that shit was heavenly. I am planning on making it sometime this week, except possibly with some fresher crust and stuff (Food network has forever corrupted me when it comes to making bad food.) Other things - Like some of you have stated, I just sleep on a mattress and boxspring set. I didn't think anything of it until my friends girlfriend commented on it. - We don't use a dining room table to eat on, rather we have a sofa with a hexagonal coffee table that was left by the previous tenants that everyone eats all their meals off of. If two other people made their food before you and are eating, you have to eat on your lap or on the floor. - We collect all our cardboard beer cases and stash them in the corner. We keep saying that we are going to cut them up and line a wall, but I think its just going to end up a beer case corner with nothing else to show. Already have 20+ cases after 2 months between the three of us. - I grill out twice a week and tend to not clean the grilling tongs at all, so I flip my meat with the unclean tongs. I just always forget to bring them in to wash, and try to tell myself that "rain" has washed them enough. - We don't have ice cube trays so when we make mixed drinks and want some ice, we have an ice shot glass maker in the freezer and we pop those out and use them as ice cubes. 1 per drink. - My pube scissors double as the food opening device, cutting open packages of meat and different sealed products. Housemates know it and still use them because "fuck it, can't make me sick". - I leave my laundry in the dryer and each day I wake up and walk into the kitchen in my boxers and put on clothes in the kitchen (where the laundry machines are located). If wrinkly I will just throw a little water in the machine and run it for like 20 minutes. Additional plus: warm clothes are fucking sweet. Thats all I can think of right now.
But wouldn't the trash can be in preference to simply leaving your beer cans/bottles around the house like I do? My wife doesn't like that too much, but she's yet to provide me with a suitable counter-argument to "I think they're decorative" and "you do one thing in this house and that is clean; until you learn to cook as well, beer bottles = aesthetic." In relation to the focus, the damn toilet seat. I know it's cliche, but there's no way in fuck I'm gonna put the seat back down after I piss; I hadn't for 20 years, I sure wasn't gonna start when the then-fiance moved in. I won this battle, and for all the current bachelors still fortunate enough to be out there, this was the method of attrition I used: - When she complained about my not putting the toilet seat down, I started pissing in the sink. - When she complained about my pissing in the sink, I started pissing mainly in the shower. - When she complained about my pissing in the shower, I started pissing in the shower on her. - When she complained about my pissing in the shower on her, I left the toilet seat down and pissed on it. - When she complained about my pissing on the toilet seat, I waited until she left for work, removed all the toilet seats in the house, and hid them. - When she returned home from work that day, she sprinted to the bathroom and fell into the toilet. - I now piss in the toilet and leave the lid up when I finish.
This is why the man who marries a woman who permits the installation of a wall urinal wins the Wife Game.
Some things I can remember from college: Kitchen Jenga- if you can't stack the trash or dishes without them tumbling, you get to take it out/clean them. Garage was used for a second, dirtier, living room, with beer pong table, couches, fridges, and the corner for airing out sweaty hockey and snowboard gear. No car parked in the garage, even if it snowed 3 feet. Mini fridges everywhere. Either side of the living room couch (couch stolen from dorm lobby, got so used to passing out on it I had to steal it), one in the bathroom, one next to my desk. All of which used only for beer. My roommate's bed was a mattress we found as we were on a space cruise, on the curb on trash day. Complete with what appeared to be an oil spill and the corners chewed up by some sort of rodent. He threw it on the floor used it for 2 years and never used a sheet. Buying a $5 Little Caesars pizza before class and leaving it in the car. Between classes going on a space cruise and having munchies readily available. Go to the next class. Repeat. As Frebis mentioned, no real art on the walls. Unless you consider art to be jerseys, beer posters, and one wall dedicated to whatever you wanted to draw. You'd think there'd just be a bunch of dicks drawn on it, but some people actually got creative. Don't get me wrong, plenty of penises were drawn, too. Nowadays I have a maid, and my apartment came furnished, but I still manage to keep it bachelor: Pants are off within 45 seconds of entering my apartment. Fridge is full of condiments and beer and nothing else. Bong has a permanent place under the TV. I'm working on a mural for one of the walls in my bedroom, but I smoke a lot of pot and end up redoing the same part over and over again. There are paint cans and a tarp permanently set at the floor at the foot of my bed. I'll more likely than not end up moving before I finish it. I have a different book at my bed, my coffee table, the shitter, the kitchen, and at my desk, so wherever I am I can just pick up the book closest to me. That's not really bachelor, but I get more questions about that than the bong or the empty fridge or the mural.
I am the best at garbage Jenga. My roommates and I once had a pile of trash touch the ceiling without anything falling off. I wish I took pictures. Focus: In college, we kept all our liquor bottles and displayed them in our window. Half-way through Fall semester, we ran out of room on the window sill, so we build a removable shelf (campus housing) and put the bottles on there. I'm still a little amazed housing didn't make us remove it.