Flatmates.
I've lived with my fair share of unhygienic flatmates throughout my years of sharehousing. They've ranged from being just a little unclean to the worst smelling person I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

On the mild end of the scale was Chas. He was a bit of a clean freak - his bedroom was always the neatest in the house, he kept shared areas very clean - except for when it came to his toilet habits. He managed to cover the floor and walls of the toilet with piss, radiating out over a foot from the bowl. Not only would he do this consistently, but he saw nothing wrong with it (not the smell, nor the sticky, wet feel of urine underfoot) and therefore refused to clean it up. We were fortunate to have a house with two toilets, one of them being out the back of the house, so for the entire year that Chas lived there, he was the only person to set foot inside his own personal toilet and he was banned from using the other one. So it wasn't too bad a situation, until he moved out and we discovered that he hadn't cleaned the toilet before he left. Let's just say that opening the door of a very small room and being greeted with the stench of a years worth of stale urine isn't the most pleasant thing in the world. There was a not inconsiderable amount of dry retching when we ventured in to clean it.

Jade was a puzzling case. She had a habit of eating in her room and letting the dirty dishes pile up in there for weeks at a time. Not really a problem, given that we had a helluva lot of dishes and that neither she nor her room ever smelt. The puzzling part came when it was discovered that not only were the dishes piled on the floor and her desk, but also in her bed. Both under the covers and on top of them. She couldn't understand why we thought it odd that she'd share a bed for days or weeks on end with dirty dishes, still smeared with food in varying stages of decay.

The very worst was Katie and her boyfriend Dan. Katie was my flatmate, but Dan was over visiting quite often, and it was he who remains the most repugnant person I've met.
Katie's hygiene habits were a little off when she was by herself. Whilst she spent an hour or so a day cleaning her face and putting on makeup and doing her hair, she didn't shower all that frequently - generally every two to three days. She did appear to be aware that this made her smell though, as on her non-shower days she'd drench herself in one of those horrid teen-girl spray deodorants. And the longer she'd been without a shower, the more deodorant she'd spray on.
Her room, always kept airtight with the door and windows firmly shut, also took on her unwashed smell. Possibly made worse by her not owning any bedsheets, and sleeping on a bare mattress. Having to talk to her whilst she was in her room was awful, as she'd open her door when you knocked and you'd be hit with a wall of smell.
But things were far, far worse when Dan was over. He was a very obese man (never understood the relationship - Katie was quite pretty and slim, and I'm sure that if she had been cleaner, she could have done a whole lot better than Dan) whose stench reached levels never smelt before nor since. He appeared to only own the one set of clothes, as he would wear the same shirt and pants when visiting for days straight, and would wear the exact same things every single time he was over. He also never showered whilst at our house. And whenever he was over, Katie wouldn't shower either. But whilst she was attempting to mask the smell with deodorant, he didn't use any at all. She would never mention if he was going to be at the house, but despite her bedroom being right at the back of the house, and her door always being shut, you could always tell if Dan was there as soon as you approached the front door. And although we initially didn't think it possible, the smell would almost double as soon as he'd take off his shoes. It would linger for days after he'd left, it was as though it seeped into the very fabric of the house. We tried opening windows, having fans on all the time, even placing saucers of vanilla essence (it works to get the smell of rancid food out of fridges) in the room in order to draw out the smell, but nothing would work. Nothing was more powerful than the smell of Dan.
I stand convinced that if the power of smell could be harnessed to create electricity, he could light up half the globe.
(teff, Fri 23 Mar 2007, 14:58, Reply)