I recently started the same ritual before a trip, I’ll clean everything and have all my laundry done but having roommates makes it trickier. I can only guarantee my own room and nothing puts me in a sour mood faster than the rest of the house being a disaster after a solid 12 hours of travelling.
I have roommates for five months of the year. One of them has been in Croatia for a couple months. The other has showered twice in that time. He has, however, played Smash Brothers until 3am every night. I once went to Seattle for the weekend and the dude had not visibly moved when I came home 48 hours later.
After visiting some University friends I realized how lucky I've been with flatmates the past few years. I've lived with my best mate since about 2014, we would change houses when we can and slowly upgrade from student freezers to actual homes. Since around 2016 we've culled the flatmates down to our respective partners and there's never been an argument, no cleaning roster needed, no drama at all. Shit the conversations around using another person's stuff amounts to just Always Sunny references: "Hey I'm out of eggs can I snag two of yours?" "I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds" Gonna miss him next year, but I certainly don't miss the previous setup with 5 randoms in a house.
I can honestly say that I hadn't seen failure until I saw Los Angeles failure. I again suspect it's due to the fundamental impedance of the place; thenewgreen was in town a couple days ago and I missed him because it would have been 90 minutes and $40 in a Lyft (and I had had 3 hours of sleep and needed to be up at 5am). Public transportation? It would have been four hours. Biking? Two hours across turf where I have never been closer to dying. The dude spends two hours each way in traffic for a job that pays $18 an hour. And he's 150 lbs overweight which makes everything impossible. I realized last year that he basically goes through life like me... If I had to carry my wife on my back everywhere I went. At which point you're gonna do what with your free time, exactly? You're going to cocoon.