Bloody upstairs neighbour

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When does she sleep?
I’d suspect she is tweaking.They like to clean 24/7.

I don't know whether to tell the landlords just how noisy she is, but I just can't bring myself to do that, because I know I'll feel guilty afterwards. Facing her and telling her, even in the most tactful way, is even more harder. My boyfriend said he has told her before, but that didn't seem to solve it.

My right ear is very sensitive to low, rumbling sounds on the floor above me, and she seems to do a lot of that. I don't know if she's opening drawers all the time or if she's moving furniture, but she does it every day, several times a day, and even in the night.

I just wish she worked so that I could get a break from her noise, but since the pandemic started she's now home 24/7 (either furloughed, unemployed or retired).
Sometimes I don't always get up until midday (I work late afternoons/evenings), because I put the TV on to drown out her noise but I don't like to have the TV on all day. I don't want to go around with earplugs in forever, because sometimes I like to hear the birds outside or have conversations with my boyfriend. I'm not the sort to have music on all the time (music is one of those things I can only do if I'm in the mood).

Most people will say that I'm trivialising and that it could be worse like I could have people having loud music or parties - but if that did happen the landlords would kick them out and then the problem would take care of itself. But you can't really stop somebody from moving about in their own home. She doesn't sleep much because she's an insomniac. I understand that, but I wish she'd be a little more considerate and do some quieter activities if she can't sleep at night. She needs a hobby or something. I'm sick of living below her. I wish we could move, but it's easier said than done at the moment.

Ever thought of making your bloody upstairs neighbors bloody? Just hammer some nails or drive some long screws into the ceiling. They will step on them and it would put them out of service for a while so you'd enjoy some peace and quiet.

She very well might genuinely not realize how loud her noise sounds to the people downstairs from her. I strongly suspect that her noise sounds much louder to you than it sounds to her.

Unless you have other reasons to believe that she is generally a nasty, inconsiderate person, I would strongly encourage you to find a diplomatic way to tell her.

See How To Be Assertive Without Being Aggressive (podcast & transcript) - Personal Excellence.

I would suggest NOT complaining to the landlord until AFTER you have complained to her directly at least a few times, to no avail.

Ideally, you and she would reach an agreement whereby you have her phone number and could call her to let her know whenever she is making too much noise.

Moderator, please delete.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 30 Mar 2021, 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wow! have you considered a career as a counsellor?

I hope both of you were just kidding here ....

I hope r00tb33r was kidding.


I do know that, but it's just a pity she has to be a compulsive cleaner. She sweeps her living-room floor several times a day (I assume she has no carpeting), and hoovers a lot too. We can hear. Surely she must know that hoovering can be heard on the floor below, especially that my boyfriend has actually politely told her before that she's noisy to live underneath, surely that could have gave her a hint of some sort. But I suppose you can't reason with obsessive compulsive cleaners. She just needs to be educated that dust doesn't appear for a few days, and you are not going to get ill from every germ that you may have in your house. And she was like this long before COVID.



I don't really believe that she's nasty, but I do think she's inconsiderate and also weird. It just seems like she's got too much time on her hands and doesn't really have any hobbies and can't sleep, so she just finds unnecessary activities to do all day such as cleaning, cleaning and cleaning.
She seems to have certain times where she makes a lot of thumping and rumbling sounds, and it's usually around 10am, 4pm and about 1am. It sounds like she's moving furniture around so that she can clean behind it. I think she moves the furniture out at 10am and moves it back at 4pm. I don't know why she needs to move furniture at 1am mind.

She's very nosy as well. Each time there's something going on outside, like a neighbour's car pulling in or something simple like that, I hear her rush across her apartment in her big concrete boots (which it sounds like she's wearing but that was sarcasm) to look out of the window. Then I hear her start up her banging routine again.

I mean, it doesn't take a genius to know that moving furniture, particularly in the middle of the night, is going to be heard in the apartment below. Also she's often banging about in the room above the bedroom, which I assume is her bedroom, since these apartments are all built with the same plan. These apartments are pretty small too.

Yeah does kinda seem like it could be a possibility.

Not having carpeting could be big problem right there. Without carpeting, in old apartment buildings such as the one I live in, it would be a major challenge for even the quietest person to avoid sounding like a herd of elephants to the people downstairs, even when just tip-toeing to the bathroom.


You'll need to give her more than a general complaint about being noisy. What's necessary, IMO, is to try to negotiate with her about specific noises at specific times of the day.


Hopefully you would be okay with her cleaning once each day at some reasonable hour? It would probably be easier to get her to scale back to once a day than once every few days.

I suspect she also wants to sweep up crumbs every time she eats, which is a reasonable thing to do, especially for someone who has ever had a cockroach problem.

We don't really get cockroach problems here, and especially not upstairs. I only vacuum once a week and we never have pests.

Our apartments actually aren't old and are mostly made out of brick and concrete. She just decides to have hard floors. We have carpets.