Article: How dealing with these five common housemate problems can make you a better person

House-sharing at uni is a big adventure and one gigantic life lesson. Living with different people with different expectations of cleanliness and common courtesy can be a little bit mind-blowing. It’s worth realising early on that some people can be pretty clueless and not realise how their habits are affecting their housemates.

Here are five housemates you might run into at uni, and how to handle them while retaining your own sanity.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/content.php?r=22283-how-dealing-with-these-five-common-housemate-problems-can-make-you-a-better-person

Reply 1

Tanqueray91

Oh my god! The stealing food one is really hitting home - except, no one is owning up to it :colone:

Some of us have now had bottles of vodka, jack daniels, pepsi and ben & jerrys stolen now! (And one of my burger buns was moved out of my cupboard onto the table, before being burnt to a crisp and then binned!!!!)

Strange things are happening!

Reply 2

She-Ra

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by mobbsy91

Oh my god! The stealing food one is really hitting home - except, no one is owning up to it :colone:

It used to drive me nuts :angry:

I feel your pain mate.

How many people do you live with?

Reply 3

username1221160

It's good advice, but I only wish the slings and arrows of outrageous housemates could be solved in such a calm fashion.

I had a housemate move out after another extremely hairy housemate refused to clean his hair from the bathroom for several months. The arguments and endless door slamming got out of control. I called it The War Of The Pube.

Reply 4

She-Ra

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Quantex

Some people just love a good door slam and have zero emotional intelligence, they just don't realise how frustrating their behaviour is.

Sometimes some of the conversations we had as a house were really quite uncomfortable and tense and there were periods when certain housemates would ignore others, but thankfully no huge arguments. Although sometimes I think that might have been my preferred option to some of the silent treatment I saw others experience.

Reply 5

like_marmite

Original post by Quantex

Gosh, a shared bathroom? How could one cope?

Reply 6

Nirgilis

Guess I was lucky and was never bothered by any of those?

1. It doesn't matter if my housemates took the bin out or not. It took 15 seconds to take the bag and put it in the bin outside and then put a fresh bag in the bin - no biggy :tongue:

2. If my housemates were eating my food, I would have cursed myself for being silly enough to be friends with them to begin with :tongue:

. I'm lucky in that only one can of soft drink went missing in my 4 years in shared accommodation.

3. It was normally my hair blocking the drain :lol:

.

4. When my housemate's routines became obvious, I got up 5 minutes before them and had a shower, so they could have their long showers and not inconvenience me.

5. It's always nice to have a chat... Whenever I needed to settle in and do some solid work, I'd go to the library and turn all electronic devices off. Archaic, I know, but I don't apparently need the Internet to function as a human :lol:

A big skill to learn when living with others is adaption and compromise. Just because it's inconvenient for you, doesn't mean it should become inconvenient for them in order to appease you. Find some middle ground and work it out. Some people I lived with were happy to live in an utter pig sty, I wasn't. Since it bothered me more, I dealt with it :tongue:

. The only thing I didn't have experience with was food-theiving. If my housemates ate my food and refused to stop, I would have bought a mini-fridge for my room - they're, like £80 at Argos for a decent sized one :tongue:

. The worst thing you can do is spend 4 years being miserable, even though all of the things mentioned above are very, very easy to just man up and sort it out yourself.

Reply 7

Kvothe the Arcane

I'm still tempted to lace some of my food with laxatives.

Reply 8

Tanqueray91

Original post by She-Ra

It used to drive me nuts :angry:

I feel your pain mate.

How many people do you live with?

First year, so 9 of us in total. We all have our suspicions, as someone's been trying to suggest it's someone else whom we know wouldn't do it, but is an easy target to 'frame'.

Got a flat meeting with our SR tonight, so hopefully things will stop... Otherwise, Detective Mobbs will come out :rofl:

might start dusting for prints :colone:

Reply 9

drbluebox

None of the suggestions work though really, I had a flatmate who just took took took, never even paid his share of bills, had long showers and one day I went in and just had enough time to undress and turn shower on for him to complain at the door that "I have been in there ages, and other people need to use shower" so I got out and he spent OVER A HOUR in the shower then left it dirty and hair in it, he wasnt even young he was in his 30's

As for the food nicking I was on benefits at university and had middle class people nick my food telling me they were poor (but they could afford booze, laptops, cannabis etc) even twisting it around to saying I was greedy filling up MY fridge with food and lazy for not going to the supermarket every day when I bought in bulk as I was poor, I eventually faked putting in bodily fluids into my butter and milk for them to scream how they would beat me up, sue me for putting their health at risk.

When I moved to another propery I counted 18 full up bin bags, well at least they put stuff in bags but then dumped it in garden at back, I deep cleaned the house when I moved in for the current tenants to boast to their friends about how the "new guy" did all their cleaning for them.

Reply 10

beautifulbigmacs

On the food front I stored dried food in my room. It made it easier to have stuff to eat when people were hogging fridge space.

Reply 11

beautifulbigmacs

I used to keep dried food in my room because it meant I always had something to eat even when people were hogging the fridge.

Reply 12

drbluebox

Original post by Quantex

You don't have to be extremely hairy to have the sink full of hair just as being hairy doesnt mean its all pubes.

Something like you said can be offensive in certain contexts,I am a hairy guy so I was always the one accused of blocking the shower even if I was away all weekend or slept in so didnt get a chance to have one, and there was never any problems till another tenant moved in but they were friends with the others and I didnt get on with the other tenants that well.

Reply 13

thehistorybore

Personally, I have a granola theif. I'm yet to find out who it is, but my granola goes missing way too often. I'm down by a bag most weeks. Answer is; keep dry food in your room.

Reply 14

natasyacat

My roomies talk a lot of crap behind my new roomie's back. Who's a junior. I find it rude and I never join in because I don't see the point in doing so. Now they ignore me too. I'm like whatev.

Reply 15

elleay

I went home for Easter and found bits of my food gone including almost a full jar of nutella - which isn't cheap. I still don't know to this day who it was. I wouldn't have minded if any of them were stuck and asked (as it was the last two weeks before our loans came through) but taking without asking is rude.

Reply 16

JessicaSparrow

A lot of people havent ajusted not having their mother pick up after them and clean. No excuse for it, people in my flat said they found my kind of intimidating so i only had to tell them once. I'm not, i think it was just cuz im direct and northern. We never had a problem with food, downstairs flat did, i wouldve totally flipped if someone was taking my food without asking. We had quite a few spats. One girl had the cheek to call me princess because i told her off for leaving her cups and plates to go mouldy. Drama.

Reply 17

Crabb1ey

I remember someone once ate all my fishfingers as in 10 fishfingers. I was very upset as I wasn't doing too well mentally and fishfinger sandwiches were one of my comfort food back then. So in order to ensure this never happened again I hid my fishfingers in my Quorn boxes, as no one ever nicks the vegetarian food.