About my House Share

By Kim

There was one night last week where I was sat in bed and caught myself listening to figure out where all of my housemates were, just to make sure I'd be in the kitchen alone. Recently I've gotten tired of the awkward small talk about our days while we chop up vegetables for our respective dinners. But I‘ve also noticed that I'm not the only one doing this. The almost perfect way everyone just misses each other is too suspect.

I haven’t always been like this, and I‘m sure my other five housemates hadn’t either.  I used to be bright eyed and ready to discuss the events of the day as we cooked together in the kitchen but the times have changed me.

I live in a shared house that I found on Spareroom a couple of weeks before I started my placement year last June. This meant it was a massive gamble with who I would live with, and anything was on the cards. But the risk has luckily paid off as everyone that’s lived in the house whilst I have has been a young professional.

Some more good things about living in shared accomodation are:

• Truly having your own space. I could count on one hand the amount of times that someone has knocked on my door asking me about or to do something. Unless you choose to leave the confines of your bedroom, nobody’s coming to you. 

But there are some things about living in shared accommodation that I've not loved so much this year:

• The awkward chat in the kitchen that I mentioned earlier.
• When one of you is ill you all get ill, even if you never see each other in person.
• Mess & people using your stuff without asking, then leaving it dirty or not washing it up properly.

• We go through phases of cleanliness in my house. Currently we’re at, “washed up, never put away”. To be fair, the kitchen is immaculate in comparison to my Fresher’s Year halls’ kitchen. But this still didn’t stop a hoard of ants living in the kitchen and bottom floor for about two weeks a little while ago...  I had freak outs daily thinking there was ants on me and resorted to cooking at my friend's house until the exterminator came and saved us all. 

I hope this hasn’t deterred anyone, I have actually had a nice time living with strangers for the most part when we interact. I've met some lovely people and it has been a glimpse into the real world, outside of the Uni bubble. I've met girls that find going to the bingo as appealing as I do. And a guy that helped me get the House Mouse out of my room whilst all I could do was stand crying and screaming on top of my toilet (love London). All part of the fun.

Let me know if you have any housemate stories in the comments below or on the Insta post. (P.S. it’s really easy to comment on here and you can even do it anonymously😋)