“Won’t you be my neighbor?” was the theme song and signature question Mr. Rogers asked his viewers every morning. Although he had some colorful characters on his show, they are nothing compared the neighbors who live below me.

Here is some of the background information:

We share a stairway outside. This means in order to get downstairs, walking past their door is unavoidable.

The couple apparently has some rules about who takes out (or doesn’t take out) the garbage, because there is continuously a bag of trash outside their door. This is annoying, but is usually there only three days out of the week. Nothing to cause a turf war over.

The real troubles started a month ago and let’s just say it was not “a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” The neighbors got a head start on their spring cleaning.

I am all for the concept of out with the old, in with the new- especially when living in a small space. But they took this a little too far. There was a huge stack of trash bags, a broken stroller, and some open bags with hangers sticking out of them – all outside their door! The worst part is that I had been walking past it for about a week.

Because I live with four other girls, it is a rare occasion that we have time to talk about what is going on. This definitely brought us together. In fact, when seeing one another, one of the first things we said to each other was, “What is going on with our neighbors?”

We decided not to personally do anything but call the apartment office and let them know about the mess. A day later, a piece of paper was taped on their door telling them to clean up or they would be fined. The mess was gone shortly after.

Overall, I feel we handled the situation maturely, but that thought of “I wonder if they know it was us who called?” is still surfacing. Hopefully they won’t decide to call the police at the next party we have.

Living with neighbors is about give and take. What advice do you have on dealing with messy neighbors? Have you ever been the messy neighbor?

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Things Neighbors Do That Annoy You
2. 5 Ways to Lower Your Noise Volumes
3. Assessing Neighbors: Mr. Rogers Vs. Oscar the Grouch
4. A Guide to Horrible Neighbors
5. An Awkward Predicament: Noisy…Intimate…Neighbors

Tags: Cleanliness, Community, courtesy, garbage, Landlord, messy neighbors, Neighbors, Neighbourhood, Spring Cleaning, trash, Turf war