Let me start by saying that I’m on mobile so sorry for any formatting issues.

In my apartment it is me (19, second year of college in a city seven hours from my hometown so I’m still not super familiar, calling me Me), my boyfriend (20, in his third year of school but transferred so he’s only lived in this city about four months total, calling him R), a grad student who I met a month ago and love (23, amazing, moved from another state, calling her A), and a girl who has been living in this complex for years (25, F, calling her T).

The apartment is near the school and advertises to students but is not student exclusive. T has been living here since she was in school several years ago before she dropped out and has just continued to live here. That’s not a problem, everybody has their own life happening. Also, our apartment is four bedroom, four bathroom, so we all have our own space with the living room and kitchen areas obviously shared. All of our doors to our rooms open directly into the living room.

But, I need help. Badly. I have two major complaints about T.

First, she never buys groceries but she eats all of the meals that we make. R, A, and I like to cook and hang out together. The three of us also go grocery shopping and plan meals and things. We have tried inviting T but she always says no and goes back to playing Sims. The three of us are college kids trying to get by, we all eat at home and occasionally get fast food. We spend a couple hundred dollars a month on groceries and so far all I have seen T buy in the month we’ve lived here is a case of water and a pack of chicken, and these two things were only because she was directly asked and texted to be reminded. It’s incredibly frustrating to cook a meal and have somebody eat every single day when they do nothing to either buy the ingredients or prepare the food.

It has gotten to the point where several times this past week she has been sitting in the living room, waiting for everybody to get home to see if we were going to make food and we were all doing our own thing for dinner so she went and heated up some of her things from her mini fridge in her room and then shut herself in her room. If that’s unclear, just think about a child waiting for their parents to make dinner. I’ve never given birth or adopted so I’m not sure why I’m responsible for feeding this human.

Moving on. My second issue is that she smells awful. Like, this isn’t a minor issue, she reeks. About ten minutes ago I walked into the living room to ask my boyfriend something who was sitting on the couch (he’s stuffy so he can’t smell, thank god) and gagged a bit. T’s door is right next to the couch and her door is closed and she hasn’t been out in the living room in over an hour. The smell is so bad that I still had to leave the whole common area because I felt like I was going to puke. I’ve had a stomach flu thing for a couple of weeks and my stomach has been very sensitive. I feel like I can’t be in the main part of my apartment that I pay rent for every month.

None of us have ever seen T do laundry and the three of us are convinced that she hasn’t showered the whole time we’ve known her. She always keeps her door closed but in the times that each of us have glimpsed in, it’s a disaster zone and the smell is getting increasingly bad. I don’t mind the mess, it’s her room and we all have separate leases on our rooms so I’m not going to get any damage charges, but the smell is starting to anger me.

There’s a chair in the living room that T sits in all the time to play video games on her laptop which is right between her door and A’s door. The main three of us never close our doors because A has a cat that has become best friends with my cat. They’re both two years old and love to run around the apartment, amazing. A was hanging out with her door closed all day today because she was gagging at the smell that had built up so bad that it had spread to the kitchen on the other side of the apartment. I was trying to make food in the kitchen earlier and couldn’t because I literally couldn’t breathe in there without gagging.

I need help, I can’t keep doing this and I feel like things are just going to get worse. She’s been talked to about the grocery thing a couple of times but has made no effort to change, it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to make meals. None of us really know how to address the smell without sounding like dicks.