Advice for living with humans

Posted on 11. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in News

“If they have a taboo, socially inept tendency, it will come out at home”

Sigh, I have to confess to being, at times, a housemate from hell.

I read Lil’s story about being given the ice maiden treatment and saw myself.

On the other hand, I myself have made the same complaints featured in all of the above stories: so and so was too messy, so and so got too defensive when we pointed out his unhygienic ways, so and so was too pushy (my current housemate from hell falls into that category).

If I am a housemate from hell, I am probably the hypercritical kind but reading this site reminds me that we all are. At least I keep my mouth shut, most of the time!

Face it: humans are a bit unnatural in their behaviour, their psyche, their lifestyle. Everything about us is a little more neurotic than it probably ought to be.

Even the nicest people in the world become a pain when you have to deal with their flaws and neuroses every day. Why is that?  Because our own flaws and neuroses are enough for one person to handle, thank you very much!

Added to this is the fact that, when people are in their home, they want to relax and let it all hang out. That means behaving in the way that they can’t behave when they’re out in public.

If they have a taboo, socially inept tendency, it will come out at home.

But before you shake your head and start citing examples of taboo behaviour right left and centre, why not try practicing a little forgiveness?

I mean, aren’t the standards for public behaviour a tad too high anyways?

Isn’t that the reason why all of us have days when we ‘can’t face the world’, when we throw a sickie so we can just ‘be’ in our own comfort zone instead?

People do not like having the spotlight turned on them at home. End of story. For that reason the best place to discuss any problems you’re having, in my experience, is outside the house.

Keeping in mind that being flawed and neurotic is just a natural part of the human condition, let’s move on to the task at hand: identifying what kind of person will make an awful housemate from the first encounter.

I won’t pretend to have all the answers here, but I definitely use a checklist when going to a new home to meet prospective housemates.

Figuring out who is annoying in a normal, forgivable way and who is going to be downright dangerous and/or disturbing to live with is a difficult call.

We all have an equal propensity for being childish, dirty, petty, controlling, you name it, and conflict in our safety zone – the home – will only exaggerate all those tendencies.

With that in mind, living with strangers, or even friends you don’t know very well, becomes a case of damage limitation. So finding someone who 1) is not at home all day, every day, is the first point on my checklist.

‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as they say.

Now, I admit to having a problem with taking this approach too far, as I tend to be TOO absent in times of conflict (and as Lil’s story reminds me, this is unfair when the other person is unaware what the ‘conflict’ even is).

Nonetheless, I have to defend my approach to the extent that too much exposure to anybody with the possible exception of your life’s true love and your children becomes annoying.

So when meeting a potential housemate, ask them how much time they spend at home. The perfect answer is somewhere between “I only sleep there” and “I work from home” but exactly where depends on your individual tastes.

So feel free to ask them to give you an idea of what their weekly or daily schedule is like. But for the love of god, DON’T move in if they work at home or are jobless not if you want an easy life!

2) Avoid somebody who complains about every housemate they have ever had, at length. They will be a nightmare to live with for the sole reason that they are probably unable to consider that they are equally difficult to live with at times.

They lack perspective. House-sharing successfully does not require totally submission of one’s values, but it does require a ramped up sense of humility.

3) Stay away from somebody who puts excessive conditions or clauses in your contract or has a totally spotless, showpiece of a house. Being in THAT much control of your home is a privilege that only the rich independent house can afford.

The rest of us have to do with compromise and that means accepting that the shared areas and so on belong to no one.  They will always be a bit of a quagmire of conflicting habits and if you don’t like it, you should stay in your room!

4) High turnover of housemates. The person sitting in front of you may look sweet and innocent. And your city may have a highly transient population with lots of students.

And it may be that there’s a recession on, or that the housing market is going through an upturn/downturn that has renters on the go. It may also be that the last five tenants had to move out at short notice because their maiden aunts in the Outer Hebrides took ill.

But what is far more likely is that a raging maniac from hell lurks underneath your new housemates smiling veneer. Trust me if no one wants to live with them there is always a reason.

They probably don’t know what it is themselves but by god, you don’t want to find out!

So if you’re unhappy with your current housemate, do get out there and start looking for a new one but take care and good luck!

Sang Froid
London

Military accommodation memoirs

Posted on 10. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in News

“He literally wanted me to drive from three states away to deliver his shot glass collection”

I lived in Norfolk when I was in the military. Housing there is at an extreme premium and it’s very difficult just finding a place close to work let alone something that is within your means.

I ended up living in a pretty bad area with 3 other guys in the military, in a two bedroom/two bath place. You know it’s a crap hole when the landlord doesn’t care that many people were on the lease.

Two of us were on one boat, and the other two were on another.

Basically when my housemate and I were out to sea, the other two housemates were in there and vice versa except for about maybe six weeks out of the year when we would all be there together.

It worked out okay for about nine months until I came back from a four month deployment with a living room that was falling into the apartment below us. One of the housemates bought an AC window unit and must have had it running on the coffee table (none of this makes a lick of sense because we had central air).

To this day, I have no clue what the hell they were thinking (all the hot air was just going into the same room?!?). Despite the water damage, the unit must not have run for very long because they stop paying for electricity for about 1 month after me and the one roommate left.

And no, they did not empty the fridge. I got the joyous job of contacting the landlord and informing them of the massive amount of damage to the place (the living room, the one toilet was smashed into bits, holes in the wall) naturally we got evicted even after me and the other dude put up the funds to prevent the four of us from getting sued.

(To be clear the two morons were on a deployment when we got back so I am not sure as to when they abandoned the place and left the mess for us).

The best thing though was not only did we have to cover for the damages, these other two a-holes never attempted to make contact with us until about two years later when the one clown demanded to know whatever happened to the crap he left in the place (no kidding the places was a natural disaster and there was nothing worth selling or holding onto).

He literally wanted me to drive from three states away to deliver his shot glass collection to him along with a string-less guitar that had a broken neck and he threatened to sue me or some shit because I neglected to protect and hold onto his crap for all this time.

Diablo
Norfolk, VA

Living with backstabbers

Posted on 09. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in News

“It’s gotten to the point where C and I don’t eat much, or at all”

I’m in my first year of university, living with 3 other people who will be referred to as A, B and C.

C and I have gotten along since day one. In fact we all got along until November. This is when A developed some serious issues with C and I.

We have done absolutely nothing wrong, we keep to ourselves, clean up after ourselves etc.

I should mention that A and B are on the same course so they have more in common.

For whatever reason A stopped talking to me and C, then A and B started talking crap about me and C, after the Christmas holidays things start to get progressively worse.

They have their friends around most days, making a lot of noise, slamming doors, smoking (I’m a non-smoker, and C has really bad asthma), they enjoy talking about me and C, making fun of us, this’ll go on for hours!

They won’t leave till late! They always stay in the living room, which you have to go through to get to not only the kitchen, but also the bathroom!

What annoys me most though is how pathetic they are. I overheard A and B making fun of me just for filling the kettle using the bathroom sink because A was doing the washing up and I didn’t know how long she was going to be, and quite frankly I limit my time around them.

It’s gotten to the point where C and I don’t eat much, or at all. We wait till after A and B have retired to their rooms until we go to the bathroom.

I’ve even started having headaches nearly every day, some of them making me feel nauseous because of the noise and how stressed I get because of them.

I honestly don’t know what C and I have supposedly done wrong to deserve this.

If you have any advice on how you could resolve this issue please leave a comment below.

Angel1991
Carlisle

Ganging up on me in my own home

Posted on 08. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“I come home and the toilets and bathrooms are FILTY full of their clothes, the toilet hadn’t been cleaned since I left”

I have been living with my two best friends and one of their boyfriends’ for the past six months. It’s been a complete nightmare! I just need to vent my anger and get some feedback on my story. What makes me believe my housemates are from hell?

1. Liars

They lied to me before I even moved in, they said the lease was six months, but when I signed the lease a day after I moved in I discovered it was actually a year-long contract. Now I’m stuck with these people for a whole year.

2.  The car

One night the two sisters asked me if they could borrow my car being too lazy to get the

bus and I said “No sorry, there is something I have to do in the morning and I need my car for it”.

I wake up in the morning and my car is gone. My sister who was visiting informed me that they had taken my car, even when I told them they couldn’t use it. This made me so angry.

They didn’t even reimburse me for petrol and they drove it about 30kms or s

o. I mentioned how I felt about it to them and they just kept changing the subject, this made me even more angry.

3.  The chopping board situation

I was given an expensive wooden chopping board as a gift, which I didn’t mind people using in the house until I realised they never cleaned it after using it. Even if they chopped up uncooked chicken on it, they left it sitting th

ere overnight afterwards, I just think this is so unhygienic!

I informed them that this was disgusting and unhygienic of them and when I told them I didn’t want them using my stuff anymore if that’s the way they’re going to treat it and I received a smart arse comment back from t

hem saying “you use all our furniture and sit on our couch and watch our T.V. which is ours”.

I feel that that is so petty. I treat their stuff with respect all the time.

4. The kitchen

I stopped eating dinner altogether so I don’t have to use the kitchen. Every night they cook their dinner, they leave dirty pots and pans for me to clean up, I really don’t think that’s fair at all.

I asked them on a number of occasions to clean up at the end of the night

so dirty pots and pans aren’t sitting there overnight working up a stench but No, nobody listens.

I’m trying to make some kind of order in the house so we don’t get sick but they still leave pots and pans sitting there for weeks. It’s depressing to live with, not being able to use my own kitchen and it’s such a shame because I love cooking.

The lounge room is usually crowded with bowls still with bits of dinner left in them.

Once there was a really bad situation where they all left bowls of chicken and bacon pasta in the lounge room for weeks, it stank out the house and when they finally dealt with it the bowls ended up having maggots in them. That’s how bad and foul it is.

I cry a lot because of it and I’m scared to speak up because they will just gang up on me again and start making excuses, thus causing conflict.

6. Going away for Christmas

I went away for three weeks at Christmas time while they stayed home.  I come home and the toilets and bathrooms are FILTY full of their clothes, the toilet hadn’t been cleaned since I left, there was rubbish everywhere, toilet rolls, dirt, even brown stains in the toilet bowl that had obviously been there a while.

It still hasn’t been cleaned.  One of the two sisters doesn’t even work and is at home all day. I’m at work 7am to 7pm, no time to clean unless on the weekend, which we usually do but they didn’t do anything at all over the break.

All the crockery and cutlery are completely dirty in the sink, they’ve been there for at least a week. The grass is up to my shoulders too. It’s one of the housemate’s jobs to do but he doesn’t do it nor does he clean the house much.

I get hives from long grass so I can’t go outside to hang my washing on the line so I’ve got a pile of dirty laundry to do.

7. The air conditioning

There is one air-conditioning unit in the whole house which is in the main bedroom (where the one girl and her boyfriend sleep). They have it going everynight and the box is right under my window.

I get no sleep whatsoever. It’s unfair that a large part of the electricty bill from the aircon is being on the whole night and I have to pay for that when I dont get any of the air at all!

I asked them if they could not have it running over night and just have the window open instead because I’m sleep deprived from it.

They said ok but that same night and two nights later it has been going the whole night and into the morning, still, Even when I asked them not to have it running all night.

8. They use my work clothes, which I need!

They tend to go into my cupboard and take whatever.  So when I go to wear them they are stinking of sweat. They are my clothes and I have asked so many times for them to not take my belongings and they just don’t listen.

I want move out so badly but I paid a $900 bond and won’t be able to get that back until the end of my lease and if I move out I will loose that big lot of money and it will all go to the other housemates.

It’s hard because I love them, they are my best friends but I can’t deal with this any longer. I don’t know what to do.

If you have any advice on how to confront people and to resolve the issue of bullying and ganging up on someone please leave a comment below.

enl
Australia

Lazy housemates from hell

Posted on 07. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“When I get to choose housemates for my second year, I’ve already eliminated a few candidates”

Living in a shared house with total strangers was expected to be difficult.

But it’s barely been three weeks and already some of them are driving everyone else insane. There’s the usual drama about washing up, most of us hate doing it.

Fair enough. The problem is that if it doesn’t get done before the cleaner shows up for the weekly clean, we all get fined. Unfortunately some of my housemates are so used to having someone else clean up after them that they won’t lift a finger.

The rest of us have had to try to sort the two kitchens out without them. Personally, I think we’re incredibly lucky to have someone clean the surfaces for us, and be courteous enough to do the dishes even only once a week, shouldn’t be so beneath my lazy, snobby, housemates. Then there’s the guy who keeps peeing in the shower every time he gets drunk.

The shower is next to my room, so the smell wafts in. Why he uses the female shower as a urinal is beyond me. Hopefully, things will get better. I’d like to think we’ll all sit down and talk about it like adult, but after reading some of the stories here, I doubt it.

When I get to choose housemates for my second year, I’ve already eliminated a few candidates!

Ren
UK

My housemate is too contrary, get me outta here!

Posted on 06. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“even the sound of his voice is beginning to make my blood boil”

I am sharing a flat in Plymouth with a person from my course, who I thought to be nice in the first year of being in class with them.

Shortly after we moved into a flat together, ready for the second year, I realised the reason he had found no-one else to live with.

He treats everything like a business transaction, and is very, very blunt. Furthermore, he doesn’t tidy up after himself and has left the same pile of dirty washing up in our tiny, over-crowded kitchen for the better part of a month and a half and I have suspicions that he is using my cutlery and kitchen equipment.

The bathroom is a mess and he continually throws-up down the toilet and does not bleach or clean this area at all. His music is always on at a ridiculous volume & time and even the sound of his voice is beginning to make my blood boil. His bluntness does not stop with me and he has acted the same way to our landlord.

Also we have a group of people living in a flat downstairs that appear to love him and they invite him down and they come in to our flat whenever they so feel. As I have not been out with them the past couple of times, they have decided to completely ignore me and be solely ‘his’ friend.

What makes matters worse is that I am contracted to live there with him until September and I do not know what to do.
If anyone has any comments or suggestions I would very much like to read them!

JakeyB
Plymouth

My mate’s crazy girlfriend

Posted on 05. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“we should be trusting of them because they are good honest folk. BARF.”

I moved in with a mate of mine, his girlfriend and another girl about 15 months ago. Typical shared house arrangement. After a short while I begin to become weary of his girlfriend’s manipulative narcissistic behaviour. No job, lazy, demanding and always a crisis of some sort happening to try to make you feel sorry for her.

Leaches off anyone and everyone and believes she deserves special treatment. I distrusted her very early on. She is the expert at blame diversion and everything is everyone else’s fault but her own. Had suspicions about her honesty early on so kept my bedroom door locked when I went out and convinced our other flatmate to lock her door as well.

Lo and behold my mate’s girlfriend questions why we would do that as we should be trusting of them because they are good honest folk. BARF.
Anyways I am becoming sick of her constant dramas, family and monetary. I decide to leave my bedroom door unlocked, but put a hidden webcam in my room that records when motion is detected. Can you believe that the very first day I record her stealing money from my change tin and the second day as well.

A third time a few days later. I am over her but she is my friend’s girlfriend. What should I do now?

loudisgood
Western Australia

The couple with very poor hygiene

Posted on 04. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“One morning I opened the door to the shower cubicle and was greeted by a nice big smelly yellow puddle”

I have less of a story and more a long list of difficult moments:

The Toaster:

The electricity went off in the house one evening, which was strange because the lights remained on. So on a trip downstairs to have a look at the fuse box, I peered around the kitchen door to see what might have happened.

Finding my housemate and his girlfriend with a rather large knife jammed into the toaster. ‘oh we were just trying to um… get it out’

The Oven:

I preheat ovens, because that’s what it says to do on the pizza box. I tend to make the assumption that nobody would be stupid enough to leave something in the oven and am usually right.

But not on this particular day, on this particular day I found myself coming down the stairs to a very peculiar smell. In a moment of great kindness, my housemate’s girlfriend had decided to dispose of the plastic cartons and wrappings from last night’s meal inside the oven, it was not appreciated by me in the slightest.

The gas:

(Here’s a nice short and sweet complaint) I came back one afternoon to find the gas hobs running on full with no flame. The house was full of gas. They had been running for over four hours. Clever, I think Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t apply to my housemate.

The Yellow Puddle:

One morning I opened the door to the shower cubicle and was greeted by a nice big smelly yellow puddle. Now let me just explain the layout of our bathroom.

You walk into the bathroom and immediately to your right there is a shower, two steps away from the shower is the toilet. Now I know that my housemate is lazy, but that’s just ridiculous, and I have a horrible feeling that his girlfriend and him may have been in their together the night before.

The bathroom:

One day I came home with some friends to find the bathroom in a disgusting state. The bath was FULL of LONG hair, there was smashed glass down the back of the bath tub, my shampoos and shower gels had all been moved and used.

There was white gunk in the toothbrush holding glasses. It was commented that it looked as though somebody had shaved a dog in there.

The thermostat:

Now I know that some people are very picky about the heating and won’t let their housemates turn it on unless it’s absolutely necessary. Well here’s a horror story for you guys!

One winter’s day I opened the front door to be greeted by a heat wave, I looked at the thermostat, it had moved to a place higher than numbers! It was in the blank zone above 30!

There was not a single surface in the house that was even slightly cool, everything was boiling to the touch, it was as if the house had been picked up and dumped on the equator!

I ended up going into my room and removing all of my clothes, and still found myself dripping with sweat. I later asked one of my housemates why they didn’t turn it down. I received this response: ‘oh.. I didn’t realise… I just came home and it was so nice in the kitchen that I kind of just chilled out for a bit, sat in the heat and just got nice and cosy’

And these are just the incidents worth mentioning.

The rest of my complaints are fairly normal e.g. poor personal hygiene, lack of cleanliness, communal areas becoming dumps, accidental damage to the property on a regular basis, poo on the toilet seat, menstrual discharge on the toilet seat, wiping of toothpaste covered faces all over communal hand towels, housemates not paying rent on time, housemates having very loud sex, housemates using dirty dish cloths as face flannels, imagine every inconsiderate thing that you might ever have to put up with in a house because the chances are that I’ve had to deal with them all in one property.

It is however very important to note that these are not horrible or unpleasant people.

They are great people to hang out with, chat to etc. But I have learnt the hard way that nice people can be very difficult to live with.

Venting
UK

Not home enough to clean up after everyone

Posted on 03. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“The smell of urine is still there….”

I’ve been living in my current place for 6 months now.

The landlord is the only person who can kick people out of rooms (share place) and include people. He also made a majority of the rules up. My contract states that there are common areas and then personal areas. One of his rules was “to clean after yourself” – obvious common sense rule.

When I moved in I clearly told my landlord (who is next to useless and doesn’t really act on anything) that I would only be cleaning after myself, I did not agree to cleaning rosters as I could not commit (for work/time reasons) due to not being in the house most of the week. My landlord told me he agreed with what I said. I also told the only other tennant at the time the same story. She agreed at the time but has been pushing this cleaning roster onto me.

I’ve suggested using a calendar to mark who cleans what but I am forgetful and often forget to write when I do things. I am literally in the house for an hour or two tops and cleaning roster calendars are the least of my priorities.

There are 3 other housemates who have now joined and the problems regarding cleaning have mounted. One of my housemates constantly parties and I came home from a 5 day shift to find 150 people eating and drinking the house silly. The landlord failed to act. The 1st housemate has been complaining about the lack of effort on my part to clean the party mess (some of which is still in the house today). Another housemate constantly cooks burnt food and leaves rubbish on the floor and the stove top is black and sooty, so no one else can use it. He also urinates on the bathroom floor – and I’m not going to be spending my day off cleaning someone else’s urine.

Whenever I ask the cooking housemate to clean he tells me in broken english (no I am not making fun of people who can’t speak fluent English) “yes I know” “I know” but never does anything about it. It took me several weeks to leave pissed off notes around the house before he started attacking me saying I’m the wannabe landlady.

I’ve had discussions with the 1st housemate about the behaviour of the two messy housemates and she agreed with me – until I confronted the cooking housemate who started screaming at me that I do not do anything in the house. The 1st housemate literally stabbed me in the back and started badmouthing me as well saying I haven’t cleaned any of the communal areas.

My landlord is pretty much the same and has agreed with me over the phone but when we (all housemates) had to meet in person to talk about this, the landlord told me I have to clean the party mess and other messes that are communal as well. I wouldn’t have agreed to rent the place if I knew what he was like on his word (pretty poor).

I believe since I only eat in my room and stay in my room that I should be cleaning any mess I make. Simply I think lots of small messes make big giant messes and it shouldn’t get to that point. I hired a cleaner so I could use the bathroom again but the fact is the smell of urine is still there….

Elle
West Coast

I can’t even cook in my own kitchen

Posted on 02. Mar, 2012 by Alex Ronan in Confessions, Housemate stories

“I was apparently expected to clean up their mess that they had left behind and not just my own?!”

I lived with 3 girls last year who would invite their weird friends over almost every night to watch DVDs in our kitchen (we didn’t have a living room).

So when I got home from college or work and wanted to cook my dinner, I couldn’t because there was about five or six people sitting in our tiny kitchen, whom I felt I was intruding on.

They’d usually be sitting in the dark all huddled on the sofa and would moan at me for switching the light on to go into my kitchen to cook?!?
They would never do their dishes, so dishes had to be washed prior to using, instead of after.

I was last to move out and they blamed me for not getting their deposits back because as last out, I was apparently expected to clean up their mess that they had left behind and not just my own?!

BeeBee
Scotland