How do I ask my upstairs neighbour to move her late laundry when that is when she gets home?
Neighbours“If I wait until Saturday, what do I wear on Thursday?” my upstairs neighbour asked when I suggested keeping laundry to weekends.
Her washing machine's final spin usually starts around 10:40 p.m. The picture above my bed rattles, then stops, then rattles again. I get up at six. She gets home from a care-home shift after ten and has two work uniforms. Until that conversation, I knew about the noise but not the uniforms.
I had already slipped a note under her door asking for no machine use after nine. She showed me the note and said, “That means no washing on any workday.” She was annoyed, but she also offered to let me hear the machine from her kitchen. Up there it sounded much less dramatic.
There is a laundrette nearby, but she says her usual wash there costs £7 and means another trip on her day off. I can tolerate an occasional late load; four evenings a week is leaving me tired and increasingly ready to knock on the ceiling.
Would it be fair to ask her to explore the vibration with the building manager and agree a latest finish time while that happens? I want to withdraw the impossible nine-o'clock demand without making it sound as though I have withdrawn the whole complaint.