As a part of the western world Sweden can very easily be perceived as a country of individualism a quite a high level. I was thinking about that a while back when another thought struck me, we share a lot of things as well. Maybe not of our own personal belongings but none the less common facilities which you find in a block of housing apartments for example. So maybe this post of more about the renting sharing Swede rather than the house owning Swede.

When you rent an apartment you also are entitled to a garbage room, where you recycle and compost. This little house is used by two or sometimes more whole houses of apartments. On top of that there are common washing rooms, usually with two washing machines, a dryer and a tumble dryer, in addition to those appliances there is a ironing board and a mangle. About the mangle, I don’t know if that is something Swedish or not. Do you have a mangle in your country? Everybody uses their own apartment key to open the tvättstuga (washing room) and has an additional key to a time schedule system as well. Once you have used the machines you are supposed to leave the room looking the way you would want to use it if you were the next person. So you should sweep the floors, empty dust from the tumble dryer and if necessary wipe off the tops of the washing machines.

Another shared facility for some apartment blocks is a Sauna, Bastu. There are bike rooms for all buildings and usually in the centre of all the different houses there is a sort of building which you can rent or borrow for parties. All you have to do is book way in advance (since they are usually very popular) and you can host different types of events or parties. Different places probably have different rules, but in general you have to clean up properly after you leave and give back the key to the local apartment building office.

So all in all, at least as a person who rents an apartment you have to get along and share the facilities with your neighbors. This is quite a big part of Swedish culture and say if you don’t clean up after you it can actually lead to a lot of ill feeling.

How that ill feeling is taken care is often in quite an indirect way. Anonymous note writing is a very common form of complaint. Recently in the block of apartments I live in there is a couple who have just got a puppy, occasionally there is barking. On the bottom floor a quite unpleasant note was left to the owners of the puppy. The owners then replied with a very polite answer saying they were trying their best to train the dog and they would continue doing so. Quite a common thing in Sweden; note writing.