  Growing up there were a few things that seemed quite obvious, regarding personal hygiene. Little things like first washing your hair, then yourself in the shower. Everyone has their own towel, washcloth and toothbrush. Then along comes sharing a house with 6 other people with different ideas on hygiene. In the mornings there was a certain routine to things. Remember, 7 women, 2 bathrooms and none of us were into using the bathroom at the same time.
The first ones up in the mornings would be Sally and Petra since they had to catch the bus quite early. Then Cathy would start to get ready to go to her real job, although running late was also part of her routine. Then it was Abby and Mandy's turn. Both were students and either rode their bicyles or walked to class. This generally meant that I was the last one to get up ( which seemed to have become a pattern in my later life as well). By the time I get to the bathroom most everyone had already left the house.
Ah, peace and quiet and wet towels, dirty bathtubs and dirty clothes. I'm quite possessive about my towel and finding my towel, wet, truly freaked me out. After closing my eyes and taking deep calming breaths I'd go and get a fresh towel. There always seemed to be a shortage of clean towels so I resorted to keeping my towel in my room, as well as my toothpaste, toothbrush and well, frankly everything that would usually reside in the bathroom. If someone didn't have a problem using my towel, there's a distinct possibility that they would use my toothbrush too. Then I'd walk into the kitchen and have my second deep breathing exercise of the morning.
A pig sty would have been cleaner. I am not exaggerating. Well, maybe I am exaggerating a little, pigs are after all uglier. Everyone had their own set of cupboards. Petra found the only cupboards that had keys and would lock her stuff away. She had really nice plates and glasses which the other would just use, since once again, they'd run out of clean kitchen stuff and hey, here's some clean stuff, let's use this, without asking!
Now I am not one the neatest people myself, but it took me about 2 weeks to throw a hissy fit about the state of the kitchen. Especially after walking into the kitchen one evening to find a big rat sitting in the middle of the floor. Then there was the incident when someone was actually doing the dishes. Nothing wrong with that, until she used the drying cloth to wipe something off the floor! The difference between dish cloth and floor cloth was explained. We had a talk about the state of the kitchen and I volunteered to give the kitchen a spring clean.
That's when I found the cockroaches. We are not talking one or two, we are talking hordes! I was busy unpacking all the cupboards when I noticed a few cockroaches running from under the one bowl, so I peered closer and almost did the "cockroach dance". The back of the cupboard was covered in cockroaches, you could barely see the white of the wall. These ones didn't even run away! Promptly everything was moved out of the kitchen and I went to buy fumigate stuff.
My skin still crawls when I remember the number of dead cockroaches that we found every morning for the next week. We were never able to get rid of the rats though. Having 7 people in the same space is challenging enough, but then there was the family and friends to deal with ... more to come on that ... 
