A Guide to House Sharing

A Guide to House-Sharing

As the new academic year starts many of you will be house-sharing, possibly for the first time, or perhaps moving in with a new set of friends because the previous year just didn’t work out as well as you hoped. The air of excitement at the prospect of an amazing year together is tangible and most certainly audible as so many of you will say to each other, “This is going to be so much better than last year.” Make no mistake, it will be better than last year; the annoying next door neighbour who thought that 4 am was a good time to make all of his phone calls, the inconsiderate girl that seemingly marked out all of the washing machines just as you needed them and the horrible 5am fire alarms are all gone, you will never have to encounter them again almost guaranteeing a better year (this is not to say that living in halls wasn’t amazing, but let’s face it, you physically couldn’t do it again!). However this is not the time to get complacent about your living arrangements. House-sharing brings about a whole new set of complications and nuisances, many of which you won’t see coming. This guide hopes to advertise some of the tricks, tips dos and don’ts to help you have the best year ever.

Location, Location, Location

It is to be assumed that the house location has been taken care of, your tenancy agreement has been signed and your first few rent instalments paid, what may be less certain is which room is yours. In most cases the solution to the room allocation problem is to draw straws. This almost never works. Perhaps no one will want the room downstairs, or the smallest room, or perhaps the room next to the bathroom. Whatever the reason there will be often be at least one of you that has great objections to a particular room and a list of increasingly trivial reasons why they shouldn’t have it. This leads me to my first piece of advice: the room you want is the front downstairs room. This will be seen by your housemates as a bad choice: it’s right next to the front door, you’ll get all the noise from the street and the living room/kitchen and you’ll be isolated from the rest of the bedrooms. Be insistent, tell them that all that stuff doesn’t really bother you and if the others really don’t want it then it makes sense for you to have it. You will be labelled as the passive housemate, the one that tries to avoid squabbling and you will also avoid the ensuing argument about whose room is whose.

The truth of the matter is that the downstairs bedroom is the best of the lot and the many benefits far outweigh the few, more obvious disadvantages. Firstly, arriving home at an embarrassing hour; it should be noted that it is not the time you arrive home that is embarrassing but what you have spent the previous hour doing and the visible state that it has left you in. You can make it to your room without your bird’s nest hair and smudged make-up (if this applies) being observed by anybody that you know and your dignity, for the most part, shall be intact. The second major advantage to the downstairs room is that it provides a first class escape route. When you can hear an argument at the point of eruption on the floor above, an argument that you feel you may be roped into, you can easily leave via the front door undetected and hide out until the coast is clear, never having to get involved in who should have cleaned the bathroom (unless it’s you that hasn’t cleaned the bathroom, in which case, why haven’t you cleaned the bathroom?!). The final advantage that I will mention, as this is not a finite list, is being able to hear when people go into the kitchen and boil the kettle, the sound which lets you know it is time to skilfully appear in the kitchen, mug in hand, ready for someone to make you that cup of tea. If you wish, cups of tea on your own may be a thing of the past.

Gastronomy

If your culinary skills are somewhat lacking it is important to be extremely generous with any of your housemates that can cook as the best way for them to repay your generosity is with the food that they have made. This could be done by simply allowing them to use as much of your milk, bread, eggs etc. as they wish until they have replenished their own stocks, making them a lot of cups of tea, or the classic, buying ingredients that you know you will definitely never cook with and donating it to them. A classic example would be – “Do you want this chicken? I’m never going to use it; it’s just taking up space.” “Aww thanks. I can make (fill in dish here) with this, do you want some?” This will thus ensure that your diet is punctuated regularly with real food in between the pot noodles and toast.

“Tidy”

Now the rules of cleaning your house are unique to you, general tidying however there is one good tip for: if you can bear it, keep your room looking as close to a bombsite as feasibly possible. If your housemates believe you to be a naturally messy person they’ll appreciate your efforts to keep the communal areas tidy all the more. If however, you make the mistake of keeping your room spotless then they’ll put your tidying efforts down to a compulsion and will expect you to do your fair share, or maybe even more.

The Girls and the Boys

Whether they are your housemates’ friends, boyfriends or girlfriends don’t pretend to like people that you really don’t. This is not to say that you should be rude to these people, of course not, you should go out of your way to be nice to them and then later confess to your housemate your true feelings and that you find the individual particularly taxing. This may seem cruel but remember, in house sharing, all marks are for effort so let people know that you’re making one! This also means there will be more lenience towards any annoying friends that you may have.

Bonding

Over the year times may get tough – there will be times when exams and coursework get you down, times where you’ll get a little bit sick of each other (luckily this usually comes right before the holidays but it’s still a difficult week) so it is important to have something to fall back on, something you can bond over, as a house. You need a house project. This may be a wall of shame with increasingly terrible photos of yourselves and your friends, a collection of the best looking men/women that you see in magazines or, my personal favourite, an homage to the set of “Have I got News For You” (newspaper cuttings all over the wall). It should be something you can do together, something that is cheap if not free and it should be ongoing. It is not the completion of the project that matters but its existence: it is a talking point, something that can be shared and a point of nostalgia to help you get over the stressful times.

The most important tip of all though is to enjoy the year, even when you’re beginning to drive each other crazy, because by the end of the year you are closer to your housemates than almost anyone else you know or are likely to know in the near future.