Do you know what’s worse than sharing a flat with people you don’t know? Sharing a flat with messy people you don’t know. University largely consists of shared kitchens, hallways and bathrooms. Bathrooms are relatively easy to share. Without including graphic detail, if you can’t share a bathroom like a civil human being, you probably shouldn’t attend a top 10 university. However sharing kitchens is a different story. Many people will have spent little time in a kitchen before arriving at university – thanks to relying on mum’s home cooking – and it’s fairly easy to make an epic mess with very few resources. However, there are certain things when it comes to sharing a kitchen, and indeed a flat, that are simply unacceptable and should be prevented at all costs – unless of course you are intending to be the world’s worst flatmate.
Food in the fridge
Guess what? Food has a sell by date. So if you leave it in the fridge for months past that date, it will go off. Cheese will get mouldy, milk will go sour and raw meat will turn into a goopy foul-smelling mess. To become a really bad flatmate, wait until one of these products explodes and raw chicken juice drips down to your flatmates’ shelf. This works especially well if they have anything open or unpacked, although you’ll only have yourself to blame when they eat the only safe thing in the fridge – your food.
Noise
Don’t get me wrong, music, chatting and the occasional drunken karaoke session singing ‘The Circle Of Life’ are all fine, however, singing ‘What Does The Fox Say’ at 2am in the corridor during exam season is not. If you want a load of people over – invite them with your flatmates, if you want to sing in the shower – make sure it’s in tune and if you want to drunkenly Gangnam style down the corridor to become the next YouTube sensation – well there’s clearly not much I can say to stop you.
Alcohol
This is fairly simple, don’t be a drunken moron in the flat unless:
a. Your equally drunk flatmates are involved
b. Your poor studying flatmates are out
c. Your sober flatmates are allowed to film you and repeatedly show you the footage as a constant reminder of your mortifying drunkenness.
To earn extra bad flatmate points: spill some horrifically cheap florescent alcoholic substance that may as well have come straight out of Homer Simpson’s powerplant onto the table and don’t clean it up: EVER.
Mess
There’s nothing nicer than coming into the kitchen and finding the lean mean grilling machine dripping with fat, or spag bol splattered up the walls, or especially a leftover meat carcass littering the work tops. For all really bad flatmates out there, don’t be a douchebag – clean your stuff up otherwise an unceremonious battle of wills will occur until you are living in squalor. Literal squalor.
Notes
It’s funny how the person who can hear you in the shower would rather leave you a note requesting you to empty the bins than have an actual face-to-face conversation. A lesson to all aspiring bad flatmates, nothing ticks off your flatmates more than post-it notes around the kitchen reminding everyone to move their pans off the draining board. The first thing to address here is be a grown up and have a conversation with them; also secondly that’s what draining boards are for.
So there you have it, the useful hints and tips for those who aspire to be a terrible flatmate and inevitably live alone. Basically ladies and gents, be a decent human being, show a bit of respect to your flatmates, it’s their home too. But if really bad flatmates do rear their heads, feel free to point out you know exactly where they live!
