W9: Sharing Food

I grew up an only child for most of my life so I never really had to fight my other siblings for food. I would generally get access to whatever food was there. When we would go to the store, any special foods would be just for me or my father.

This year was the first year I moved to into an apartment and has been the first time I have ever had to share food. When we moved in, my three other roommates and I attempted to establish a set of rules to how the kitchen would work. We said that the basics would be shared: eggs, milk and bread. Then we said that any other food that we did not want others to eat would be marked with our initials. This small set of rules seemed simple enough and that we could easily follow them. For the most part, the rules remained in place.

However, after a couple of weeks, things began to fall through. One problem we had was how often we were going through those basic materials. We would eat all of the eggs or drink all of the milk and then no one would be willing to buy more because they felt they didn't eat their share. The next problem we had that people began to be lax with their labeling process. One roommate in particular took advantage of this and if it wasn't explicitly labeled he would assume it was for everyone even when it came to things like cookies or brownies. Food soon became a free-for-all. I started keeping all of my food in my room or my mini-fridge and I would only bring it out when I wanted to eat it.

It's hard coming into a living situation like this without having any experience with it from my childhood. I never had to ferociously guard my food so that others would not eat it. I would generally share food with others if they asked, but when they start taking food without asking it becomes difficult to maintain that mentality. Especially when hypocrisy is involved. One time I asked one of my roommates if we could use one of his eggs that he kept in his room. This was the same roommate that would eat anything that was not physically attached to my other roommates. He interrogated me with questions like "How many are you going to use?" and "Who is going to use them?"

It is a constant struggle to maintain fairness in the kitchen when you live with three other people who came from different backgrounds than you.