5 things that may make you a bad housemate

pyueck

Here are 5 things that in my opinion are the most common causes of a bad housemate. Feel free to add your own.

1. The unofficial housemate

Friends and girlfriends/boyfriends are great. A mate over to watch the football, a girlfriend staying over a few nights a week, no problem.

However there is a fine line between 'coming over' and somebody living in your house rent and bills free.

These people normally come in two forms, firstly the couples that think that one person renting a room allows them both to stay and secondly the 'friend' who never has any money and goes from one person to the next for handouts.

The following is totally unacceptable for somebody not paying rent and bills:

a) Staying regularly more than 3 nights a week
b) Using your place to crash at to get to work
c) Washing their clothes at your house
d) Staying in a house they are not renting when their friend is not there
e) Leaving their stuff in the bathroom
f) Telling rent paying housemates how they should live in their own home or thinking they have a say in the workings of the house.

Anybody does the above is taking the !!!! and should be removed and reminded of this fact at the earliest opportunity. This includes anybody that thinks they can get out of paying rent and bills by making a meal which cost them £10, while everybody else is spending half their salary on the rent and bills!

Finally another annoying habit of these people is that they think it's OK to crash over as long as they creep around and never leave the room of the person they are staying with, so annoying!

2. Lazy habits

We all sometimes forget to do things. However there are some housemates things that some housemates constantly do which makes you very very annoying to live with. Sometimes these things can be small, but send out a message to the other housemates that you are lazy and inconsiderate:

a) Never taking out the bins or recycling even when spilling over. Your housemate does not want to come back from holiday to find that you have been piling up the rubbish around the bin while waiting for them to return.
b) Not buying your fair share of toilet roll, seriously?
c) Add to that using a new roll and leaving on the old one, a small thing but just sends the message that you are mega lazy.

3. Expecting your housemates to be your overdraft

If you move into a shared tenancy you take joint liability for the rent and bills.

Some housemates will use this fact to allow all bills and rental payments to be taken from somebody elses account and then have excuses as to why they don't transfer the money on time.

This is completely unacceptable, you should never put the other housemate in an awkward position and deny them of their financial freedom because of your problems.

4. The non communicator

If you share a house you must communicate either when a) things change or b) you are not happy. It's amazing how often I speak to housemates who barely knows that the other person is starting a job abroad in a month.

At the absolute minimum the following things must be communicated:

- You are wanting somebody to stay over more than a couple of nights
- You plan to move out
- Your landlord has given you notice
- You have no money to pay the rent.

What is completely unfair is to do something bad (like move somebody in without asking) and then put the other housemate in the awkward position of having to bring it up and then make them out to be the bad person.

5. Cleaning

This comes back to laziness. Seriously nobody wants to get to the kitchen with your dirty dishes there. Also why do people put dirty dishes in the sink, really this is the most annoying place to put them it means nobody else can use anything!

For me I like to have housemates who will tidy everything up the night they make the mess without fail. I think this is a good rule that works for me. If you are happy with a rule of a week or a month then fine, but make sure your other housemates agree.

Finally it is completely unacceptable to think that you shouldn't clean up the place regularly. If you notice that the last 3 times the place got hoovered or the floors mopped your housemate did it, ask yourself why. The answer is probably not because they love doing it but because in their minds they are thinking your are a lazy !!!!.

moneyistooshorttomention

Sounds like a lot of hard-won experience there:rotfl:

When I moved out of parental home (about 40 years back:cool:) and couldn't afford the one bedroom flats I was looking at.....I think I made the right decision to go for bedsits (ie rather than houseshares) from what you say...

Newlyboughthouse

House sharing, for me, is the absolute worst. So glad it's just me, partner, dog and cats now and no need (or space) for anyone extra. I hope I never have to do it again!! I don't enjoy small talk and find generally find making friends difficult, so that aspect made me a bad housemate perhaps under point 4 although I never did anything 'bad'. But I've lived with all of the rest. Just so stressful.

Pixie5740

Don't forget about the housemate who eats other people's food and then uses the excuse, "Well I didn't know whose it was." Well that means it's definitely not yours so don't bloody well eat it. :mad:

That one is from personal experience.

kiss_me_now9

I had a hat trick in my second year of uni - was meant to be living with four English girls but they all pulled out leaving me to find replacements. I ended up with four Chinese students. That rapidly became 6 Chinese students. And then 7. As each one (bar the one who never left his room) brought in their respective partners to live with them.

They never ever cleaned, the kitchen was disgusting. When I was moving out I cleaned a fifth of it and made it clear to the estate agents that I had done my part (I'd been communicating with them all through the year and they were happy to accept this, as I'd shown them photos and everything). I found a bok choi on the windowsill that had dissolved because it was five MONTHS out of date. Five !!!!!!!g months.

They rotted the shower room ceiling, because they either didn't read or completely ignored my signs that said "Please open the window to avoid damp". They never ever hoovered or tidied their own rooms. When they left, I heard from the estate agent afterwards, they left all their clothes, furniture and items in the rooms. Didn't take anything.

3 of the four couldn't speak English and I have no idea how they studied at our university. I suspect rich Chinese parents paid the uni off.

I never ever saw them, apart from when I went to collect the bill money. Which they paid me for in unmarked £50 notes. The bank accepted them so they must have been legit, but it was a bit odd. Did I mention our heating bill for the first three months was nearly £500 because they put the heating on to the top of the thermostat and left it on all day? The place was like a sauna. I know it was North Wales but it wasn't that cold. If I turned it down or off they'd come out of their rooms and turn it back on.

m1kjm

I have a few from personal experience:

Do bother to leave your pit to visit the lavatory and refrain from using empty milk bottles to widdle in, of which you then keep a full to the brim collection around your pit.

Do bother to clean your hair out of the plughole, especially if your hair is long. Please don't traumatise your housemate who has to pull such a massive, solid fur ball out of the end of the pipe she suspects it's a dead rat.

Don't drive your housemates to clearly marking the levels of their groceries which seem to mysteriously drop without the contents being used by the owner.

pyueck

kiss_me_now9 wrote: »

I had a hat trick in my second year of uni - was meant to be living with four English girls but they all pulled out leaving me to find replacements. I ended up with four Chinese students. That rapidly became 6 Chinese students. And then 7. As each one (bar the one who never left his room) brought in their respective partners to live with them.

They never ever cleaned, the kitchen was disgusting. When I was moving out I cleaned a fifth of it and made it clear to the estate agents that I had done my part (I'd been communicating with them all through the year and they were happy to accept this, as I'd shown them photos and everything). I found a bok choi on the windowsill that had dissolved because it was five MONTHS out of date. Five !!!!!!!g months.

They rotted the shower room ceiling, because they either didn't read or completely ignored my signs that said "Please open the window to avoid damp". They never ever hoovered or tidied their own rooms. When they left, I heard from the estate agent afterwards, they left all their clothes, furniture and items in the rooms. Didn't take anything.

3 of the four couldn't speak English and I have no idea how they studied at our university. I suspect rich Chinese parents paid the uni off.

I never ever saw them, apart from when I went to collect the bill money. Which they paid me for in unmarked £50 notes. The bank accepted them so they must have been legit, but it was a bit odd. Did I mention our heating bill for the first three months was nearly £500 because they put the heating on to the top of the thermostat and left it on all day? The place was like a sauna. I know it was North Wales but it wasn't that cold. If I turned it down or off they'd come out of their rooms and turn it back on.

I think this has to do with agreeing to living with total strangers. For me a housemate vetting his housemates is more important than a landlord vetting their tenants.

Cisco001

kiss_me_now9 wrote: »

I had a hat trick in my second year of uni - was meant to be living with four English girls but they all pulled out leaving me to find replacements. I ended up with four Chinese students. That rapidly became 6 Chinese students. And then 7. As each one (bar the one who never left his room) brought in their respective partners to live with them.

They never ever cleaned, the kitchen was disgusting. When I was moving out I cleaned a fifth of it and made it clear to the estate agents that I had done my part (I'd been communicating with them all through the year and they were happy to accept this, as I'd shown them photos and everything). I found a bok choi on the windowsill that had dissolved because it was five MONTHS out of date. Five !!!!!!!g months.

They rotted the shower room ceiling, because they either didn't read or completely ignored my signs that said "Please open the window to avoid damp". They never ever hoovered or tidied their own rooms. When they left, I heard from the estate agent afterwards, they left all their clothes, furniture and items in the rooms. Didn't take anything.

3 of the four couldn't speak English and I have no idea how they studied at our university. I suspect rich Chinese parents paid the uni off.

I never ever saw them, apart from when I went to collect the bill money. Which they paid me for in unmarked £50 notes. The bank accepted them so they must have been legit, but it was a bit odd. Did I mention our heating bill for the first three months was nearly £500 because they put the heating on to the top of the thermostat and left it on all day? The place was like a sauna. I know it was North Wales but it wasn't that cold. If I turned it down or off they'd come out of their rooms and turn it back on.

Those chinese people is a bit extreme...
You should have offer cleaning up service with charge. I think they will be happy to pay you to clean as they probably have very rich parent...

Anyway, from my previous experience, english housemate are not any better. But I somehow find other european like italian/ spainish are quite good to live with.

I had english housemate leave the pasta in the kitchen until it get mouldy for 3 days and never clean up. I cleaned that up eventually.
I also had english housemate leave dirty dishes next to the sink, even we have dish washer in the house, and he did not bother to put it in.
Some young english housemate got drunk in the house and break the toliet...

googler

Tales of Australian house/flat sharing hell...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Died-Felafel-His-Hand-ebook/dp/B00FH4Y1I6

calydon

pyueck wrote: »

5. Cleaning

Also why do people put dirty dishes in the sink, really this is the most annoying place to put them it means nobody else can use anything!

^^^ This! My husband does it. I can't work out why he thinks it's better to leave things in the sink than on the side.. Can't fill the kettle up sometimes without having to empty the sink first!

stardust09

The problem with cleaning is different standards. I think that a house containing 4 people should be hoovered once a week, bathrooms cleaned once a week and dishes washed and put away every day. My male housemate thinks you hoover once a year, don't bother ever cleaning a bathroom unless it looks disgusting, wash up when you want, store dishes on the draining board, and if you run out of room, just leave dishes to drain on the worktop and cooker. How do you get around that one?!