Can I make my warned housemate throw away his stuff?

Questioner

I live in a student house with a total of 6 residents. We all have our own rooms, but we share some facilities, including the laundry room. This laundry room of ours is an incredible mess, mainly because one (very difficult, stubborn) housemate leaves half his wardrobe lying around there (the light is literally everywhere). The person in question has been aware for quite some time that the majority of the other residents are bothered by this, but does nothing about it. As a tenant of this house, I also have a duty of care towards the common areas according to my contract, which I cannot meet because of his mess in that room. That is why I have warned EVERYONE in the house today (max. 5% of the mess there does not belong to the person in question) that I want to clean up the laundry room after next week. This is only possible if everyone's mess is gone and if not, then I see myself forced to consider everything that I think does not belong there as waste and throw it away in garbage bags. I also explained that, if it has to come to that, I will leave the garbage bags in our hallway for a maximum of one week, so that people can then look for any missing items. After that I want to throw away what is left. In my opinion, I am giving a timely, clear and reasonable warning, which is necessary to meet the duty of care for the house. It also concerns items that are in our common area, which is shared with 6 people. However, I wonder if I get to the point where I want to throw things away (based on the first reaction of the person in question, a real scenario), whether this is not legally seen as theft, vandalism or something in that category? So I want to be sure whether, by announcing my intentions, I am within my rights if I were to follow through? Because I don't want to accidentally commit a crime, when I personally think that I have set up a reasonable course of events. And no, unfortunately a nicer way doesn't work with this person. We've tried that more than enough. Kind regards and thanks in advance for your insights!

Lawyer

If you were to throw away other people's property, this would in principle be unlawful. You could be liable for the damage caused to the owner, although the question is of course how great that damage would be.