Mediating Language at Home

I live in an apartment with two of my friends.  Most of the time, everything is great.  We have a lot in common, so we do a lot of things together.  We do projects together (our latest project is building a wood lathe), and we generally get along really well.  However, living with anybody can cause animosity.  One of my roommates is a very opinionated person.  He’s a great guy, but he is very stubborn. Sometimes I wish he would compromise more.  One of the things that gets on my nerves the most is when he doesn’t clean his dirty dishes.  Whenever he uses a dish, he just throws it in the sink, claiming it needs to “soak” before it can be washed.  In reality, he could just rinse it off and put it in the dishwasher.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t see it this way.  When confronted about them, he claims that he will do them later, but invariably, either my roommate or I end up loading the dishwasher.  The problem is, the sink gets so full we can’t load all of the dishes in the dishwasher, so the sink is only half empty, and it quickly fills up again.  These situations are very trying, and it very important to use mediating language when dealing with them.  If not, angry roommates can make life difficult and not enjoyable.  Mediating language is there to make sure that we’re still friends when we move out.  I’ll be happy when that is the case, but I also wish that he would do the dishes more often.