5 things that may make you a bad housemate

AdrianC

googler wrote: »

Tales of Australian house/flat sharing hell...

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

It's a superb film, if you ever get the chance to see it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172543/

kinger101

stardust09 wrote: »

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?!

I student digs, I once gave someone two weeks notice to clean their dishes or they'd be disposed of. They went in the bin.

kiss_me_now9

pyueck wrote: »

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.

It got to the point where it was two days before term started (the other girls helpfully pulled out a week before I went back) and all the sensible students had houses... and rather than take one straggler every day hoping that I had the house full by term starting, I took the bunch of them.

In my third year I lived with a bunch of strangers and now they're some of my best friends it can work, equally it can go horribly!

Cisco001 wrote: »

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...

The place was disgusting, I wasn't touching their crap! Honestly it was foul. I also naively thought "If I leave it, eventually they'll *have* to do it". This works with British people who care about their deposit... not so much with transient Chinese rich kids.

Don't get me wrong, my ex's flat in his first year was equally disgusting, so I think it's an 'incompetent student' thing rather than a national average

Jhoney_2

Inviting friends back late at night/early morning and exclaiming shhhhhh! all the while they are there/until dawn.

Lack of communication (any variety that requires housemate knowledge )

Passive/ aggression

Quirky habits that require the tolerance of all other housemates as opposed to accepted communal norms. e.g Not cleaning up after themselves in communal areas.

Not paying rent

Jhoney_2

stardust09 wrote: »

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?!

I wouldn't last a week. :eek:

Jhoney_2

stardust09 wrote: »

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?!

What I don't understand is. if a person doesn't like washing up, they don't simply buy disposable plates and rinse the bath etc after use? I could cope with vacuum and the piles of dishes everywhere would be eliminated or at least just a bin liner away.

BinGo!

Randomjargon

6. People who make lists

Nasqueron

Randomjargon wrote: »

6. People who make lists

7. Irony...

System

Totally agree about the dishes in the sink thing. My husband still does it now and I have to remove the bowl to fill the kettle. I understand that you sometimes want to leave things to soak, but you also have to actually wash them up at some point! I got so fed up with doing all the washing up in my student house that I decided I would only wash things up once - if I had to clean it to use it, I wouldn't clean it afterwards. The dishes were piled ridiculously high after a week. (Yes, very passive-aggressive of me, I know - I was young!)

Another one that irritated me was constantly coming into my room uninvited to just hang out. We're not friends; I'll let you know if I want you to sit in my room for hours while I try to study! I might have been able to bear that a little better if the person hadn't also decided it was ok to come in when I wasn't there to borrow my dvds without asking or even letting me know until I was looking for them.

ManuelG

I remember having to boil the dishes for about 3 hours to lift the dirt before I could wash them in one student house, that wasn't nice.

And I'm not the tidiest myself, either!

So one time I went on strike, and decided I'd only eat chocolate fudge cake until someone else washed up (it was cheap on offer from the corner shop!!). A week later, feeling slightly ill and with nobody either noticing or caring, I gave up on that...

Can I also add people who decide to use the washing machine at 11pm when it's next to my bedroom? The noise on a spin cycle doesn't exactly help sleep.

Oh and people who are sick in the loo and sink but don't flush/wash out after...