House of flowers, or Horrors? (Choosing The Right Housemate)

Member Name: Grimsbygal

Product:	Choosing The Right Housemate
Date:	12/07/01 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: can be fun

Disadvantages: disagreements

Here I am again continuing to write about student matters. I feel as a student I have more experience in this field than any other and I want to share my experience with you my readers.

At university you often have a choice house or halls. Last year as a first year student I thought a house would be way better than halls. I had already chosen my house mates so the next thing was to look for a house. I made my mind up too quickly and a few months down the line once in the house I started to regret it.

There are several things to think about when choosing whom you are going to live with. Fair enough a year or two isn’t that long but when you are living with people you cannot stand it can be hell. When I lived in halls I hung about with the same three girls all the time. We went out together and were constantly in each other’s pockets. Due to this we decided quite early on that we were going to get a house together for our second year. We had already paid a retainer by February to the landlord and everything was sorted.

When I first moved into the house last October things were fine. Everything seemed fairly keen and we all got on really well. A few days later I was ready to pull my hair out and found myself confined to my room to prevent myself from lashing out. I began to regret things and wished I were back in the halls.

I think there should be key issues in student houses. There were several things that bugged me about living in a house with three other girls. I have pointed out some of the main ones below.

Cleanliness – Okay so this is not a students strong point. I am not suggesting for one minute I am tidy but I hate living in a complete pigsty. It is important to think about how clean your housemates are. I am not suggesting you go around and smell under their armpits I am talking about housework. Trust me you have to do some housework when living in a house. Dust does appear however clean you ar
e. You have to trust your friends to do their fair share of the housework.

Social Lives – I have had a few problems when it comes to my housemate’s social lives. I am not as outgoing as them, in fact I would prefer to stay in and be on the phone to my fiancé than go out every night. I have nothing against people going out and enjoying themselves but I like to think they are going to respect you when they come in at god knows what hour. This is where my housemates and me didn’t get on. I often went to sleep before midnight and didn’t appreciate it when I got woken up at 2 o’clock in the morning by screaming drunken girls. I wouldn’t mind too much if it stopped there but it often didn’t. I was getting used to going downstairs to find blokes asleep downstairs whom I had never even seen before. I was beginning to forget that I lived there too. One night that I remember in particular was last October when I got woken in the night. I opened my eyes to find a bloke stood in front of me with a fag in my hand. If I weren’t on another planet (like I often am in my sleep) I would have stood up and planted him one. He was actually looking around the house but trust me that didn’t make things better.

Commitments
In a house you have bills to pay exclusive of the rent. We ran out of electricity a few times, once in particular when I had almost finished my assignment on the computer and the power went off. Needless to say from that day on we always had plenty of electricity and I learnt to save my work every few seconds. I know of friends in similar situations who were having problems with one person paying up. Luckily we didn’t have this problem but you have to be careful you are not living with someone who never has any money at all and will fail to pay they fair share.

Conclusion
I think the best tip I can give you when choosing your housemates is Be Careful. The worst things you ca
n do is just go ahead and regret it afterwards. Luckily towards the end of my second year things got better and it helped that I was hardly there. I have not fallen out with any of my housemates but I often felt like losing my temper. Maybe I was stupid; I let them get away with a lot but mainly just because I didn’t want to live in a bad environment with constant arguments. Now I have left the house I am moving into halls again for my third and final year. I will continue to keep in touch with my housemates and do get on with them well; I just prefer not to see them in the middle of the night.

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