Ours is one of six townhouses built in a the shape of an L. They are large townhouses but we live very close to our neighbors and this makes our "sins" more annoying than in the usual housing situation. We all share the back driveway and the garages are also connected. We share walls, roofs, and grass.
One of our neighbors has three cars that are always parked on the street. They never use their garages. Snow plows can not clear our street. If they have any visitors (often), they take up even more of the street. Sometimes their cars don't move for days, and I mean days. What do they do inside their house for all those hours. They also keep their large recycling bin in front of their front door. They stack fire wood there too. They have set up everything to require the least amount of effort. There are a lot of other issues, but you get the idea. Plus side: they are quiet.
Another neighbor missed the final pickup last fall for leaves. A bin of leaves has sat in back of their house since November. As I look out my kitchen window, it's the first thing I see. They could move it inside their fence, they could put it in the garage, they could put the debris in a bag and put it out with their trash. But no it sits there. It also makes our way in and out of the back more difficult. Whew! Plus side: this family is as nice as can be. So nice, we just can't bring it up to them. I bet they stopped seeing that bin of dead leaves and limbs long ago. I bet they also don't notice we rake up the leaves outside their fence every fall.
Another neighbor now moved tortured the neighbor closest to him to the point they moved. Every day brought confrontations with him over wind chimes hanging two feet from their windows, parties that went far into the night, issues over car placement, problems over the garage.
What drives you crazy about your neighbors? Or do you live in harmony?
32 comments:
Patti - I'm sorry to hear that you've got annoying neighbours. We are lucky right now, as we've got very nice neighbours who really do not bother us, and I hope we don't bother them. At one point, though, we lived in an apartment right above a couple who played their music so loud that it made the dishes rattle on our dining room table. Really.
3 new people just moved into the apartment upstairs. Last night they were blasting music and it was past 1AM, and they were still moving furniture.
It was only their second night in the apartment, so I'm hoping that the music was just to keep them going while they finished moving in.
If it keeps up, I might have to say something. 9 or 10 PM is one thing -- 1:30AM is a whole other ballgame. Not cool, in my book.
Mostly harmonious. Mostly. We are surrounded by neighbors who have dogs, often more than one. Most of the animals comport themselves with dignity. But there is one neighbor, owner of three dogs, whose animals bark the entire time they are outdoors, daylight or dark. One of them has an unfortunate bark that sounds as though the poor beast is being strangled, and it sets my teeth on edge. Frankly, these dogs make me wish I could grab the owners by the throat and force the same sounds from them. If everyone else can teach their pets not to be an audible nuisance, why not them? Talk to my neighbors about it? Why, certainly. Have you noticed anyone more reasonable than a defensive pet owner (save a defensive parent)?
Everyone in our neighborhood works an insane amount of hours. Diane hears our next door neighbor leave at 5 A. M. each morning (Diane is a light sleeper) and he doesn't return home until 9 P. M. However, when my neighbors are home they plunge into fanatic yard care and gardening. I have given up trying to keep up with their horticultural excesses. But Diane goes out there and spreads tons of mulch.
I have neighbors that never come out, let their yard be taken over by weeds, and run their air conditioning even when it's forty degrees out.
We joke about what they're doing in there, but really...
Barking dogs--don't get me started. And now I hate the invisible fences because when you see a dog you don't know whether he will attack you or not.
Our walls are really thick, the house was built in 1927, so we don't hear much.
Phil is the one with the horticultural excess, George.
I think our neighbors have a meth lab. If I am up really late, there is some traffic next door.
We are pretty much in harmony with everyone, although we've had our share of wacky, strange, and bad neighbors.
Early in our marriage, one neighbor stole our Siamese kitten and denied the whole thing, even when we could hear the kitten cry and see her in the neighbor's window.
One neighbor worked for a moving company and would lift all sorts of things from the truck. He and his girlfriend went on a long jaunt, leaving the 14 year old daughter and her two younger siblings to fend for themselves. We came home one day to view about half a dozen members of a local gang carrying an awful lot of guns out of their apartment.
A more recent neighbor with very young kids used to try to sell me his food stamps.
He and his family skipped town one night and were replaced by a family that raised pit bulls, which would get loose and attack other dogs and themselves. They sold the the constant flow of puppies to dog fighters.
Not exactly a neighbor, but she lived two streets down was the woman who beat and locked her 6-year old adopted daughter in a second floor room. No one even knew she had a daughter until the child jumped out the second floor window and wandered through the streets. When police investigated they found the bodies of the girl's two sisters wrapped up in a freezer.
I could go on. Suffice it to say that loud neighbors don't really bother us because we know it could be worse.
The most annoying thing my neighbors do is keep their house and yard very very clean. We have two small kids, I work full time, write in the off hours, and my wife goes to grad school. I can't stand how tidy their lawn is. Their walk is always shoveled before ours, the leaves are raked often in autumn and before the snow is all gone in spring. They have lids on every trash can and their boxes are cut up or neatly folded into recycling bins. Their old magazines are tied up in little bricks and the old cans and bottles look like they've been scrubbed.
I think Jerry wins: there's material for at least a dozen crime novels there :-)
At least my neighbors are not actually touching our house. WE do have a neighbor that plays his music unreasonably loud at godawful times of the morning.
This time around, we're pretty lucky, neighborwise. Probably helps that our house sits on over an acre of land... =) And pretty much everyone around us is retired.
There is some dick on the street behind us that has a barking dog... they leave the dog outside for hours and hours while the poor thing barks and barks and barks. I'd like to punch the neighbor for treating his dog that way (let alone the annoyance of barking).
One of my neighbors has an uneven lawn-deck on his tractor, so it leaves a uneven grass gouges and lawn boogers all around his large lawn. It makes me kind of twitchy.
Patti, did you ever open a can of worms with this one!
Note that the following all were issues when we were in our condo in southern California. Since we have lived in SW Portland we have had zero problems with our neighbors. None. They are all friendly, helpful and quiet. There is one dog that occasionally barks, but only when a stranger is walking up the street, which is rare since our street is a steep cul-de-sac.
The most often-heard complaints I know of are loud music and barking dogs, and we have had both. I tend to be a little more didactic (confrontational, my wife would say) in these situations, which I’m afraid doesn’t usually improve things, in spite of my message that good neighbors show consideration and respect. The last time I tried to discuss the barking dog with a neighbor, he flipped me off and said “Then respect this, a**hole.” Soon after he moved after the entire building signed a complaint and gave it to the Homeowners Association.
There were two things that used to bug me, but compared to the things Jerry tells, they are nothing. I think Jerry needs to move. Right away. Our condo was a one story end unit and there was guest parking only a few feet outside our front door. With the advent of key fobs used to lock/unlock cars, everyone (and that guest parking quickly became residents’ overflow parking) would walk away from their car in the afternoon/evening when they arrived and then push the lock button on the fob, causing the car to beep once or twice. Not a big deal, unless you get it a dozen times a day, every day, especially during summer when doors and windows are open. I mentioned to one neighbor that it’s possible – and polite to the neighbors - to lock the car with the button on the door or use the key and was told “If you don’t like it, move”.
My other big complaint in the old place, where the neighbor said “they’re just being kids.” So it’s okay to scream at the top of your lungs as if you’re being eviscerated, cause you’re a kid? It wasn’t when I was a kid! I told them once I wouldn’t know if their child was being harmed in some way, had been hurt, or worse. They just looked at me like I was nuts.
The horticultural excesses George mentions are probably normal gardening practices in the mind of most people, like moving the lawn (now that we have a yard and small lawn, we use a small non-powered push mower) trimming hedges with power trimmers (we use hand-held hedge shears) and the like. Of course all our neighbors all have a gardening service, and Thursdays and Fridays are full of the sounds of power movers and blowers, but that’s life.
I don’t see what Dan’s complaint is, sounds like the perfect neighbor, unless their kids squeal and scream a lot,
We are told that our next-door neighbor (our closest neighbor) does have a lot of pool parties in the summer, even they have told us, so we’re expecting the usual screaming, splashing and so forth. Hopefully not loud music. Otherwise we hope they will either invite us or not mind when I turn up Bach, Miles Davis or the Eagles to noise-cancel their whatever-it-is.
In my 31 years of practicing law, I have represented many a client in his or her purchase of a condo or townhouse. I have a two page list of "concerns" which are really warnings which I have the client sign before the closing.
Right now we are representing a client where he and his neighbors have personal protection orders issued against each other and we have a trial coming up later this month where my client has been sued for trespass, assult, defamation of character, and intentional infliction of mental distress. And all this started because my client's shrub grew large and encroched on the other party's postage stamp patio.
So far, each neighbor has at least $7,000 into this nonsense battle where the maximum damages allowed are $500. However, the other side won't settle. They want their day in court. Hopefully, the judge will find the suit to be frivolous and award my client costs and attorney fees. However, I must admit, that my client is not sweetness and light.
Call me if you need representation!
Last summer I had a drug addled prostitute as a neighbor. In and of itself, that might have not been too bad, but her decision to turn her apartment into a makeshift homeless shelter was too much. All day, every day, vagrants and pill heads sat on the porch drinking beers, starting fights, and offering all kinds of "services." It took about six months of courts for my landlord to get them all kicked out, but not before numerous police raids, ambulance rides, and fire department visits.
And this is all in small city Maine.
Jerry wins and one of our houses is up for sale should Michigan begin to look good to him.
Over the years we have had neighbors that committed almost every sin including waving to us through the windows every time we passed. And since he sat in his driveway all day, that was often.
I'm sorry too, Patti, that you have these mysteriously quiet but annoying neighbors. I'm pretty lucky I guess. My next door neighbors are a very nice family but they think nothing of letting their yippy little dog bark incessantly whenever they put him ouside. It's a pain, but it's not unbearable. Could be worse. I remain philosophical.
The kid upstairs used to play the saxophone and I use the word 'play' as an euphemism. It was horrid. But he's since stopped.
Barking dogs must be the most common. How about sh***ing dogs? We have a few people who slip that by us.
Relative harmony, but that may be due to the enormous vicarage grounds around us. Most of the time we can´t hear a sound - apart from our own. Some summer nights their sons drive around on old motorbikes for hours, though. Not popular!
It's a clergyman who lets the can of leaves sit out. I don't think he's adapted to the lives of others.
When I lived in apartments I had all of the usual aggravations to endure. I know some of it, like the music, happened because the places were built from tissue paper. When I bought the house I decided there was no excuse for inconsiderate jerks disturbing my peace and quiet. I call the cops and let them handle it.
We used to that with unruly teen across the street but the cops never did more than give them a warning. Suburban cops! Never even looked for the pot we could smell from across the street.
I remember the one time we were the annoying neighbors. For years we acted as therapeutic foster parents, taking in kids with physical and emotional problems. One child, a girl, was with us for six years. She was a mentally retarded crack baby with cerebral palsy and, when we got her at age eleven, was not toilet trained. As she grerw older, it became clear that she was also schizophrenic. One time, we were living on the second floor of a three story apartment building, she kicked out the screen of her bedroom window and jumped out. We found her wandering several miles away. This was on a weekend and we could get no help until the following Monday. I had to nail her bedroom window shut and sleep on the floor outside her bedroom door. For a whole day, she screamed and pounded things, making life hell for our neighbors. Shortly after that, we bought a single family home.
(We took care of the girl for another two years, with few incidents, until her schizophrenia became so acute she was a danger to herself and had to be institutionalized. A sad end to our involvement with a warm and loving child.)
Patti--your post is the reason I live in a detatched, single-family home with LOTS of space between our house and those on either side. We've been blessed with good neighbors through the years, but when I lived in an apartment in L.A. back in the day, I had a neighbor who was in a band and they would practice until the wee, small hours. Nothing worked--complaints, calls to the police (they'd show up, the volume would go down, they'd live, the volume would go back up), confrontation, tears, threats, etc. Finally, the band was practicing one day when the owner of the building happened to drop by. Although we had complained to her for months, it was only when she heard how throbbingly loud the music was that she took some action. The guy and his bandmates were going within a week.
I had one that forced us to move a few years back; she lived below us in a development. We did not get along so she purposely banged on my ceiling during the day before she went to work to keep me up. I worked nights at the time. She's on my "take care of once the cancer goes to chemo stage" ...
We bought a corner, completely detached house because of her (and because we were both working two jobs). Now only one of us is working one job ...
Hey, Patti, if I'd known about the leaves I'd have moved them. You should have asked. As for the others, yeah I agree the cars on the road are a pain.
This is a wind up by the way - but it would be fun if your neighbours did join in and we could find out how you torture them!
LOL!
My neighbours would tell you that we are horrible people who don´t lift a finger to kill our ´killer slugs´ (very aggressive Spanish slugs). I saw their glares. But we had a million or so and with our huge grounds...
I am very sure we torture them in several ways. One, Phil leaves gardening implements lying around.
He also leaves the garage doors open although most of them do too.
There are probably many more.
We have very little to do with our neighbors other than to say hello in the elevator and laundry room. In the past we've had several elderly people on our floor who would often ring the bell to ask for help (changing light bulbs, etc.) and one guy who was a fascinating character (he worked with Einstein in Princeton) who kept locking himself out of his apartment. Mostly I think he was lonely (he didn't get along with his son in law so saw little of his daughter).
I was always happy to help them, however, and none bothered me, even Sal ringing the doorbell because he'd locked himself out yet again.
Our previous landlady, however, was another story. She was a real bitch who objected to everything - typing too loudly (!), bringing too many books in the house, etc.
I was thrilled to get out of there.
Jeff M.
That seems to be the case in apartments. I don't know anyone who knows their neighbors who lives in apartments or condos.
Hey, welcome home, Jeff. Did you have a good time?
We did have a generally excellent time, starting with the business class flight(s) and the better than New York weather. The books were disappointing, however.
I won't say we don't know any of our neighbors - we do know a few but not to socialize with as friends.
Jeff M.
Wind chimes drive me right over the edge. I will never understand why people think that someone else would want to listen to these ding a lings 24/7. If people have to have them, they should hand them in their living rooms and direct an oscillating fan toward them.
So many people lack common sense..
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