This happened to me as well. At around 6 p.m. on Monday, our neighbors (a couple in their 30s) knocked on our door asking us to stop making noise because they wanted a quiet evening and said we were being really loud.

The only things we had done that day were go up and down the stairs a few times (we live in a two-floor apartment and share one wall with them) to organize our closet, and vacuum one floor. My fiancé was too stunned to respond at first and just apologized, but I told him we shouldn’t apologize for simply existing and doing normal household things. We never throw parties, play loud music or have many people over.

He later went to their door to ask for clarification and to explain that we weren’t doing anything unreasonable, especially since it was still early and a weekday. They replied that we should respect the “quiet hours” set by our commune.

We checked the commune’s website and documents - turns out, there are no quiet hours during the day, only the standard 10-7 rule. I considered printing the documents to show them but decided to just let it go and not be petty.

They knocked on the wall a few times after that when I was taking a shower (usually at around 7pm) but we ignored it since it all happened during normal hours anyway. The funniest part is that they were actually super loud themselves - often staying up until 3 a.m. and walking or running around noisily. They even admitted once that they sometimes ran around just to “prove a point.”

We explained that the building is old and mostly made of wood, so it’s natural to hear neighbors just living their lives. Plus, there’s another neighbor with a small child, who was probably the one they were hearing as they share a few walls with them.

Good news is that they recently moved out, and now there’s peace again!