Flatmate problem

JB64

I am sharing a flat with another guy from college. Things generally are great except for he has smelly feet and tends to leave his runners and shoes all around the place. We did have a discussion about it a few weeks back and he agreed to leave them in his room but he never shuts his door so the smell still circulates. He never wears shoes in the flat anyway and his socks always pong. I bought him some cotton ones for his birthday a while back but he still prefers his old nylon type ones. He doesn't change them everyday either. I can even get the smell off the sofa where his feet do be when he watches tv. Got totally peed off at the w/end when I brought a girl home and she thought I had a dog cause she said she could smell one. I don't want to have a row but I don't know what to do next. Am I being a bit OTT on this, after all everyones feet smell a bit. Any suggestions, thanks
John

Gilgamesh

cut his feet off, hehe. Just kidding.

I would really have a talk to him about this matter though, there are ways to counteract smelly feet.
tell him to go see a doc or something about them, it can be remedied.
If it would be me, I would have either given him a lecture about it and his hygene, or would have set an ultimatum

Fudger

ahhh the old smelly college days............... tell him to get odour eaters and chuck out his socks and also get a bottle of that feebreeze (spellcheck) stuff. Instead of a christmas tree get a life sized pine car tree freshner and kill two birds with one stone. Or else give him a good hiding over it, beating up your flatmates in college is all part of the fun....

TinCool

Yeah the old smelly feet can be a serious problem. I was sharing a house with a couple of mates a couple of years back and one of them, well lets just say his hygeine left a lot to be desired, and like your mate had serious feet odur issues. Now it's more hygiene than anything else. Although we just lived with it but there were times during the summer that I couldn't stay in the same room it was that bad. Tell you mate to get his act together, wash regularly, and change his socks every day and if he can't do that at least every other day, it's just not on in this day and age.

Sleipnir

Tell him he'll never have a girlfriend with a stink like that and he needs to change his socks (cotton only) once a day.
If he still doesn't listen, start throwing one of each pair of socks in the bin. He may start buying cotton socks then and you'll also drive him to insanity with only odd socks.

luckat

If they're runners you can always sneak them into the washing machine. But I'd just ask him to leave, and tell him it's because he doesn't take care of his foot hygiene.

Dr. Loon

Simple... just buy a dog!

daymobrew

My wife commented about my feet smelling, especially when I wear a certain pair of runners. A pair of odor-eaters (with charcoal I think) did a great job.
As you've already spoken to him about it, next time you can mention the girl's comments, to prove it's not only your nose that is noticing.

woosaysdan

say it to him that it is just not acceptable and that the smell is driving you mad and that you are going to take serious action against him if he doesnt change his ways!!!

Blub2k4

Get him one of the deodorant stones off of this site, he will get away with probably two applications of it a week. It works by laying down a layer of crystal on the skin which kills bacteria, it is the nuts.

http://www.deodorantstones.com/

One stone will last up to three years. I have used them (underarm) for the last ten years and would NEVER go back to normal deodorant, they are also very environmentally friendly.

j0e9o

tell him outright that u are sick of tasting the twang of his feet at the back of ure throat as soon as u enter the house, and get some respect and wash

seamus

Bless his cotton socks - Some holy water, sprinkle it on there, take that smell right out.

Seriously thought, you're going to have to say it to him. You have two choices: Bring it up again, tell him to throw out all his old socks, buy some new ones, and some odour eaters. It may also be a dietary thing. If he's in college, he gets a free doctor. Tell him to make an appointment.

Or...you could pester him. When you're sitting there watching telly, just say "Jaaayyysus, the whiff off your feet you smelly bastard! No wonder you didn't score your wan last week." And open all the windows around midday, get a breeze running through the place. When he complains that it's cold, you say "Yeah I know, but the ****ing place stinks from your feet, need a bit of airing in here.".

I'd go for option 1, but the second way is fun.

yossarin

he's a guy right?
put it simply: your feet smell and are preventing me from scoring.

ven0m

JB64 wrote:

I am sharing a flat with another guy from college. Things generally are great except for he has smelly feet and tends to leave his runners and shoes all around the place. We did have a discussion about it a few weeks back and he agreed to leave them in his room but he never shuts his door so the smell still circulates. He never wears shoes in the flat anyway and his socks always pong. I bought him some cotton ones for his birthday a while back but he still prefers his old nylon type ones. He doesn't change them everyday either. I can even get the smell off the sofa where his feet do be when he watches tv. Got totally peed off at the w/end when I brought a girl home and she thought I had a dog cause she said she could smell one. I don't want to have a row but I don't know what to do next. Am I being a bit OTT on this, after all everyones feet smell a bit. Any suggestions, thanks
John

Take ALL his nylon socks, bin them & replace them with M&S Fresh Feet socks.... & then for christmas buy him a footspa in Boots for like 70 yos..... problem solved.....

Failing that - tell him you'll go Islamic on him & start cutting off toes ending up with him losing legs if he doesn't sort it out!!!!

::: ven0mous :::

Shewhomustbe...

Maybe you could try some of these

Top Ten Ways to Freak Out Your Roommate

10) Collect potatoes. Paint faces on them and give them names. Name one after your roommate. Separate your roommate's potato from the others. Wait a few days, and then bake your roommate's potato and eat it. Explain to your roommate, ''He just didn't belong.''

9) Move everything to one side of the room. Ask your roommate if he knows how much an elephant weighs, and look at the floor on the empty side of the room with concern.

8) Draw a tiny black line on your nose. Make it bigger every day. Look at it and say, ''The hair, it's growing. Growing!''

7) Buy some knives. Sharpen them every night. While you're doing so, look at your roommate and mutter, ''Soon, soon....''

6) Collect hundreds of pens and pile them on one side of the room. Keep one pencil on the other side of the room. Laugh at the pencil.

5) Tell your roommate, ''I've got an important message for you.'' Then pretend to faint. When you recover, say you can't remember what the message was. Later on, say, ''Oh, yeah, I remember!'' Pretend to faint again. Keep this up for several weeks.

4) While your roommate is out, glue your shoes to the ceiling. When your roommate walks in, sit on the floor, hold your head, and moan.

3) Make a sandwich. Don't eat it, leave it on the floor. Ignore the sandwich. Wait until your roommate gets rid of it, and then say, ''Hey, where the heck is my sandwich!?'' Complain loudly that you are hungry.

2) Every time your roommate walks in yell, ''Hooray! You're back!'' as loud as you can and dance around the room for five minutes. Afterwards, keep looking at your watch and saying, ''Shouldn't you be going somewhere?''

1) Talk back to your Rice Krispies. All of a sudden, act offended, throw the bowl on the floor and kick it. Refuse to clean it up, explaining, ''No, I want
to watch them suffer.'''

Tusky

Set his face on fire ! That'l show him.

tck

'pedamed' from a pharmacy, you can get powder to douse your shoes and cream to wipe on the feet.

Karl Hungus

Make a very stern, blunt statement, and demand he does something about it. Threaten to set his face on fire if need be, but for your own sake, don't pester him about it, as that'll likely just be annoying, and he might go out of his way to annoy you even more.

If the stern, blunt demand doesn't work, I like the notion that next time he walks around the house barefoot, sprinkle some lye on his bare skin and give him a nice chemical burn, then proclaim "Yay! That got rid of the smell!"

Sherifu

omg i think i know your flatmate, is this him.
http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~jfloyer/VeeBee/Images/Vern6/03_Bad_Feet.jpg

JB64

Well we had a chat about it again last night. He's now agreed to change his socks every day (just like the rest of us!) although he still thinks I'm making a fuss over nothing and that no one else ever complaines. He says he takes his runners off on the bus going home and in the library in college all the time no probs. Probably hasn't noticed he gets a whole row of desks to himself either. He was also telling me he sometimes forgets to bring any back up after the weekend so he spends the whole week in Dublin in the same pair of socks. Yikes. We'll have to see what happens. If there are any poor sods in DIT ASt library I'm sure you'll understand fully what I'm on about.
Cheers

seamus

JB64 wrote:

Well we had a chat about it again last night. He's now agreed to change his socks every day (just like the rest of us!) although he still thinks I'm making a fuss over nothing and that no one else ever complaines. He says he takes his runners off on the bus going home and in the library in college all the time no probs.

I hate people like that. Everyone around him holding their nose.

He was also telling me he sometimes forgets to bring any back up after the weekend so he spends the whole week in Dublin in the same pair of socks.

....

He's from the country. It all makes sense now. My housemate is from Sligo and wears socks two days in a row, and leaves them lying around. *shudder*
If for whatever reason I ran out of socks, I'd rather walk around with no socks while I washed my other ones.

Sleepy

If he keeps it up buy one of those completely noxious air freshners and blast the whole apartment with it to the point where it makes tears stream down your face. He should then understand how the rest of ye feel.

Praetorian

My childish suggestions to the problem are:

Stick his own smelly socks underneath his pillow.

Throw his socks in the bin.

Address him as "smelly" in the flat and when your in the pub etc

Spray him with deodorant any time you see him

JB64

Praetorian wrote:

My childish suggestions to the problem are:

Stick his own smelly socks underneath his pillow.

Throw his socks in the bin.

Address him as "smelly" in the flat and when your in the pub etc

Spray him with deodorant any time you see him

Already have been putting them under his pillow when I can bear to touch them that is. Sometimes they can be rock hard and don't even bend when I pick them up. Can't do that with the ones he's wearing though. When I do call him smelly he sticks them under my nose or takes them off and throws them at me. Don't get me wrong he's not a moron or a pig, just the opposite in fact, a really easy going nice and very friendly guy who just doesn't see the big deal about socks and the smell which he thinks is normal and that everyones socks smell. He's great as a flatmate in all other respects.

Praetorian

A very easy solution would be for him to use his underarm deodorant / anti perspirant on his feet every morning.

...it works.

Tell him he's famous and give him a link to this thread

Third_Echelon

simple... fart in his face... see how he likes it...

that will solve the issue