My Neighbor Has Declared Himself the “Waste Manager” of Our Building. Things Are Getting Weird.

Dear Prudence I’m starting to feel traumatized about the trash. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? July 18, 20268:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, I recently moved into a new apartment building and am loving it so far—with the exception of one annoying thing I need help handling. It’s a small complex with mostly long-term tenants who know each other well, one of whom tends a community garden next to the building that he started—which is great! However, this neighbor is fixated on waste management in the building to a level that I would consider obsessive, and his behavior has gotten downright creepy. He goes through the trash and recycling nearly every day, separating anything that is in the wrong bin or could be composted, and will take pictures of things he finds in the wrong bin and send them to our apartment group text. Usually there will just be a “friendly reminder” about separating things properly, but sometimes it seems a little more hostile. On several occasions he has called out specific tenants by name when he can identify something someone put in the wrong place—for example, a box for something he knows they purchased. I feel uncomfortable knowing that he is regularly going through the garbage when I’m throwing out personal items such as prescription bottles or worn-out lingerie (something that’s been on my to-do list, but I have yet to do for this very reason!). Recently, he knocked on my door when I was cooking dinner and let me know that he could smell onions cooking and asked to collect the peels and any other food waste “just to make sure” they wind up in the compost. He lives in the unit immediately next to mine, and it creeps me out that he’s that attuned to what I’m doing and finds this level of intrusion appropriate! I don’t think he has ill intentions with any of this behavior and is otherwise very kind, but it’s annoying and intrusive and I’m not sure how to shut it down without alienating him or other people in the building (who seem to be OK with this?). Is there any way to kindly let him know how uncomfortable I am? I doubt flat out asking him to stop would matter—he has lived here for nearly 10 years and is clearly set in his ways. —RIP Garbage Behavior Dear Garbage Behavior, Congratulations, I guess, on having the kind of built-in community with your neighbors that so many people these days are working so hard to build. I’m sorry that it involves someone policing your onion disposal! I know firsthand that life in a small apartment complex can really be something. I grew up in a four-unit building where many meals were shared and batches of brownies exchanged, which was nice. But I also had to learn how to put the car in neutral and roll quietly into our parking spot on days when I didn’t want to announce my arrival and have to deal with anyone’s antics. Upstairs was Tom, who before he developed some unfortunate political opinions (and before my mom started aggressively spraying clouds of Lysol behind him in the hallway because he wouldn’t get a Covid vaccine), would come down and help out with any tech-related issues we had and stay way too long, smelling of cigarettes and chatting away, displaying a slightly unsettling encyclopedic knowledge of the lives of the teen pop stars of the moment. Across the hall lived Dahlia and her daughters. We didn’t not want to go over to their place for winter and summer solstice dinners, aromatherapy multi-level marketing presentations, and energy readings, but it also would have been really hard to make an excuse when our front doors were five feet away from each other. So part of being neighbors was being in the front row for all things woo-woow. And above her lived Bertha, a retired schoolteacher with Ms. Piggy-themed living room decor who was extremely generous (I don’t think we ever bought toilet tissue or paper towels because she would just drop them off at our door every time she went to Costco, and she used to let me choose pajamas from catalogs like Vermont Country Store and order them for me) and also a certified busybody. She could hear every conversation we had on our deck and would simply pipe up and contribute when she had something to add. Once, she reported to my mom that I was smoking when I was burning incense. Anyway, it was nice in some ways, but I get that it can feel very oppressive to be unable to escape the various characters who pay rent to the same landlord. I also very much understand being hesitant to set the kind of firm boundary that you know is reasonable but might also make your experience checking the mail or moving through common areas each day feel strained. You’re probably going to have to make peace with what happens to your trash after you throw it out. While your neighbor’s behavior is indeed weird, it’s hard to make a case that you are entitled to privacy around things you’ve already put in a shared trash can. Navigating around his nosiness will just take a little extra work: Peeling labels off prescription bottles (allow me to plug my recent piece on an adhesive remover!) and maybe keep a bag of trash in your apartment to occasionally toss in the dumpster outside your local grocery store, or, if you are not comfortable with the slight sketchiness of that plan, dispose of it at an understanding friend’s house. Or run out in your bathrobe to give it directly to the garbage collectors at 6:30 am. His knocking on your door to monitor your cooking waste is a different story, but it may make things clearer if you think of it as being about your privacy and your right to make dinner in peace, not his composting plan. So you won’t need to say anything like “You’re obsessed with garbage, and I’m tired of you being in my business about it!” Instead, let’s go for a peek through the peephole while saying “Hey Carl, it’s not a good time right now, sorry!” Or simply don’t respond to the knock and if he calls you out later say something like “Yeah, I did hear something but I was making dinner and I would never walk away from a pot on the stove. You’re welcome for not bringing the whole building down!” or “Evenings are precious to me and I don’t really respond to anyone. If you need something you can always text me, and I’ll get back to you when I’m up to it.” Just like he’s known for digging through trash, you can become known as the person who doesn’t answer the door. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, Whenever my mother-in-law “Rhoda” comes to visit, it’s a damn nightmare. She will rearrange everything in my kitchen cupboards because according to her, it’s “not organized.” She will rearrange all of the furniture in our family room because the way we have things set up “impedes movement.” All of the towels in the linen closet are rolled instead of folded because “it economizes space.” When I complained about Rhoda’s encroachment to my husband, he told me to humor her since she’s only here a few times out of the year. She (mercifully) left yesterday, and when I was in the midst of putting things back in order, my 4-year-old daughter told me it was “wrong.” I’ve had it. If my husband isn’t going to stand up to his controlling mother, do I have permission to tell Rhoda where she can shove it the next time she decides my house is hers to reorganize? —Not Your House: Don’t Touch Dear Don’t Touch, I have great news. There is a middle ground between letting Rhonda stomp all over your boundaries with her behavior and telling her to shove her rolled towels where the sun doesn’t shine. How about, “Hey Rhonda, so happy you’re here. I know you’re a great organizer but I’m actually going to ask you not to move things around this time. I’d really like to keep everything where it is. We all have our preferences for our own homes. Thank you!” Dear Prudence, My lovely niece “Helen” and her girlfriend “Susan” are coming to visit me and my husband as a college grad gift. Helen has asked me not to tell her mother about the visit, as she does not know about Susan. I understand why, given my sister is a right-wing, Trump-loving, homophobic, racist nut job. I keep contact to an absolute minimum. My other two normal siblings and I have been supportive of Helen in the background for years, including intervening to prevent her mother from sending teenage Helen to conversion therapy camp. I have told no one she is coming, not even my two normal sisters. My sister probably has some sort of mental illness, as she is controlling in the extreme. She is married, but Helen’s father seems to have no say about anything and is virtually never mentioned and never comes to family events which are not that often—once every 3 or 4 years. I have not seen him for 20 years. It’s weird The problem is I hate keeping secrets/lying, and I know, being in my 60s, that this will come out eventually. I feel guilty keeping this from my other two sisters, but the need to protect Helen is higher. We have a huge family event this fall and my nutty sister (but not Helen) is coming, so there is a chance it will come out then, thus my decision to say nothing to anyone. Should I tell my two normal sisters after the event because I know they would want to know how she is doing? Helen is self-supporting, which helps a lot, so she does not need financial support from my sister. She has her three aunts in her corner. Also, I’d like to talk to Helen about seeing a therapist, as it’s hard to imagine the rejecting and judgmental treatment by her mother has not impacted her—it hurts my heart because Helen is amazing. I could do so by relating my own experience and how it helped me as a young person if the right moment comes along. So: Tell my other sibs about the visit? And how to approach Helen about possible therapy to deal with my nutjob sister? —Caring Auntie Dear Caring Auntie, If you really don’t think you can keep this secret from your normal sisters, you need to be honest with Helen about that and let her decide whether she wants to come visit you. Of course, in this conversation you should make clear that you totally support her, think her mom has major issues, and worry about how the homophobia and her father’s failure to protect her have affected her. Explain that you know that you aren’t great at lying and hate the idea of letting something slip unintentionally and betraying her, so you want to avoid that. If she’s understanding or allows you to tell her other aunts, you can bring up therapy during her visit. But if she’s just out of college, rest assured that she’s probably well aware of and open to this option—and probably would be even if she didn’t have a “nut job” mother. Catch up on this week’s Prudie. More Advice From Slate I’ve recently been trying to reconnect more with my half sister, who is in her mid-40s and about 20 years my senior. We became really close several years ago, but then we both moved, the pandemic happened, she voiced borderline anti-vax views, and the closeness I used to feel with her dissipated, to my great sadness. I’d already been trying to figure out how to broach some of these issues when she related to me a story about her 6-year-old stepson, “Johnny.” Apparently, Johnny was very curious about an antique tea set my sister inherited from her mom. She caught him playing with it once and warned him he’d be severely punished if she caught him at it again. Well, sure enough, he played with it again and broke two of the teacups. He denied doing it, but she spanked him. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Dear Prudence