How To Deal With Housemates From Hell

And you thought living with your parents was bad! 

You’re sharing a flat which you actually pay rent for, despite it looking remarkably like a squat. 

There are four bedrooms, each of them full, with you having the smallest and least smelly. 

There is one bathroom, from which all of your toiletries have been stolen (‘borrowed’) several times, until you put them in you room. 

Clothes have gone missing, the washing machine is broken, the TV disappeared ages ago (and might have turned up in the pawn shop down the road). 

You’ve gone without breakfast every Thursday, Friday and Saturday since you can remember because someone eats the last of the bread, finishes your pint of milk and your cornflakes. 

No matter how many pints or packets of stuff you buy in preparation for it vanishing, your locust-like flat-mates can devour it all. 

Cockroaches have moved in, and kicked out the rats, but at least these hard-shelled fiends are easier to live with than the human inhabitants of the house. 

You’re seriously thinking about packing it all in and going back to live with your parents, but you can’t face that. 

Don’t believe that people can only survive in a pig-sty so long, some people actually like the kitchen piled with dirty plates, take on as pets the various creatures inhabiting the fridge, and go without food until someone else buys it. 

Your flat-mates will not get any better. 

Throw them out and start again, just kicked out the smelly buggers and stick up posters around uni asking for attractive, quiet and clean flat-mates to share a ‘doer-upper’ conveniently located. 

There will always be more people seeking places to live than there are places to live, just ask the bloke you stepped over on your way in this morning. 

If there are a few of your friends looking for a place you could always move in together. 

Giving up is sometimes an option, no don’t go back to your parents, things are bad but let’s not be hasty. 

Try acting as bad as your flat-mates. When you drop a piece of toast on the floor and it lands butter-side down, just kick it into a corner so that it’s safely out of the way. 

Eat anything and everything you can lay your hands on, just because it’s got someone else’s name on it doesn’t mean that they’re going to want it now, and you do want it now. 

You could always get a replacement, sometime. 

Stop washing, it takes time, and unless you fancy someone it’s just a waste of water: you could always say you’re doing it for the environment. 

If all else fails have a massive screaming fit, stab a wall with a kitchen knife in front of them and say: ‘If I have to kill someone round here to get you to do something, then I promise you I will’. If that doesn’t work it might be time to visit the parents.