Three (Different) Apartment Hazards

By Lev Novak

Sometimes, living in an apartment can be dangerous. This article isn’t going to cover the real hazards, like faulty wiring, but will instead focus on the more metaphorical hazards of shared college living. There’s more stuff to be aware of, but this is a start.

1. Someone Else’s Clothes

This is an often overlooked danger, but having someone else’s clothes in your apartment can easily lead to a bad time for everyone involved.

Watch this: you meet an attractive stranger in January. You start dating someone new in March. In June, they find an earring and a sweatshirt that’s way too small.

Now, you can explain this. You haven’t been messing around on them: you just slept with some strangers before them, and also, you are terrible at cleaning out your apartment. While that’s not bad, it’s a bad position to be in to have to argue, desperately, that you aren’t cheating on them: you are just a terrible cleaner, and if it was actually the clothes of an ex girlfriend, get ready for that to be a whole thing.

That’s not their fault, either. This is on you. Clean out your apartment of suspicious mementos now, because there’s nothing worse than a new girlfriend stepping on the earring of an old one.

2. Almost Finished Beers

Don’t let them lay around. Like a scented candle, but for beer, these candles are going to smell up your apartment like stale beer, which sounds a lot better than it actually is.

See, smelling like beer is fine. But smelling like stale beer isn’t what you want. You want fresh beer and the stale lingering scent is going to trap itself in your walls if you aren’t careful. Wash those suckers out and recycle them. Good for the environment and good for you.

Also, open beers attract flies, and guess what? Now these flies are drunk. Good luck with that.

3. Anything Illegal

This includes alcohol if you’re under twenty-one, and I’m not here to lecture you. I am, however, here to help.

If you leave your stuff out in open sight, this could be a problem. Especially if you live in dorms, where Residential Assistants can waltz in and out, you’re just asking for trouble.

Sure, you feel invincible now, but things can happen. A friend of mine had a smoke alarm go off in her house, and she had to evacuate while the firemen were called. It turned out to be a water boiler issue, but her room-mate realized with a panic that he’d left some illegal items laying around his room in pure confidence.

If you put things in a drawer, police need a warrant. But if the police have to come to your apartment for any other reason, like a noise violation, then anything illegal you have out in the open is basically like a bonus round for the cops.

Stay aware, yo.

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