When you go to university, there’s so many things to think about. Where you’re moving to, what your course is going to be like, who your friends will be. One thing that we don’t really consider is who we’re going to end up living with. When you’re in halls, you’re just so excited to be there. But before long, the reality of living with complete strangers sets in. Not only that, but when you move out of halls and into a house with your friends, you start to realise that you didn’t know them at all.
We asked a load of you for your worst housemate stories ever, and we weren’t disappointed. Some of you have really gone through it.
Ollie* had a housemate who didn’t seem to understand personal space: “One of the guys in our eight-bedroomed house was a mature student (26 – makes me feel nauseous that that is considered mature now). Anyway, he had a habit (when the guys in the room either side of his brought anyone back) of sitting at the wall with a glass to listen in. He would then relay the evening over the breakfast table in his attempt to feel cool, when in reality it just creeped everyone out.”
Shaunice’s* worst one literally set her life up in smoke: “My housemate burnt our house down. Left a candle on the window ledge in her room and shut the curtain, the whole upstairs was gone. I wasnt allowed back in to get anything. Shocking.”
Katey’s* seemed to live her life by ‘finders keepers’. She said: “One of my flatmates used to come out of her room the day after we’d been out, pick up every single bottle, like 10 – 15 of them, that had any remaining booze in it (even if it was a drop) and return to her room only to appear again an hour or so later completely w*nkered. No explanation, it wasn’t required, just let her crack on. She’s actually one of the most successful people I know now, not saying there’s a correlation but I am.”
You’re going to need a strong stomach for this one from Peter*. WARNING: This is absolutely disgusting: “I used to study with a girl who lived in a different shared house to me. One day in conversation she was like: “Someone has been cooking mackerel in my house and it’s driving me crazy, the whole house stinks of fish.” She lived with six other people. The next day I asked her if she’d found out who’d been cooking mackerel. She said she’d asked everyone and they all denied it. But the smell was getting worse. It was driving her crazy.
“The next day I asked for an update on the fish smell situation. She said she’d got the whole house together, sat them down and explained it was making her furious and demanded that whoever it was owned up. They all swore it wasn’t them. But she had a theory, their final housemate, we’ll call him John*, had been away visiting family during the smell situation. It was unlikely that it was him but she’d exhausted all other options. He was getting back from his trip in a few days. I couldn’t wait, I was hooked on the mackerel mystery.
“Finally, the following Monday I asked what happened when she confronted John*. She threw herself onto a sofa completely exhausted and relayed the story. In her words: “I asked him in the hallway downstairs. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me a bit weird and beckoned me upstairs into his bedroom. I followed him and he pulled an ice cream tub out from under his bed, the smell immediately got so much worse. It was full of ejaculate. He told me he’d been collecting it for months.” We never found out why. But at least nobody was cooking Mackerel.”
Lara’s* worst housemate had a bit of a strange habit: “Six of us lived together from halls until we graduated. When we moved out of the house one of the girls revealed shed been stealing lighters off three of us for the whole time. Her stash had about 200 lighters in it (and yes, Ive lost every single one of the ones she returned).”
This next one from Harriet* is really… gross: “One of my first-year housemates had some aversion to hygiene – she’d wipe herself down with baby wipes and then sort of sprinkle them around the house.”
Gina* had a couple of… interesting people she lived with: “I had a housemate that only ate Chicago Town microwave pizzas and drank Coke. That was it. He was stick thin like a rake. I also had a nightmare housemate who made a list of rules, including how we ‘couldn’t use the kitchen or communal areas’ until she was done. I’d go into the kitchen to make breakfast and she’d storm out.”
Little bit of advice from Bal*, don’t give your flat access codes to random people: “This girl used to do the WEIRDEST stuff when she came in from a night out… One time she put a full pizza in the dryer when my clothes were in there.
“She also gave the codes to the man who worked in the kebab shop across the road and I came in once after a night out and he was just sat in our living room on his own.
“Another time she had her WHOLE family to stay… mum, dad, sister, and brother (in our uni flat). All their clothes were just drying everywhere. Id come in from uni and her dad would just be chilling on the sofa and her mum cooking a family meal – they stayed for a whole week all in her room. It was so strange”
The last story comes from Lia*, who it turns out may have actually been the nightmare housemate: “When I was at uni I was a bit of a cleaning obsessive. It was not a secret. When one of my flat mates decided to leave loads of her dirty dishes in the sink and go home for Easter for four weeks… I scooped them all up and took them downstairs to the skip. She came home to find a packet of paper plates in her cupboard,
“In that same flat, we had a first year student alongside me and some other final year students. He was playing loud music (as students do) but me and my friend were working on our dissertations. Once hed left for the club, we took the fuse out of the plug for his boom box… put it into my hairdryer to blow the fuse… then replaced it in his boom box. He was pretty puzzled the next day, never having changed a fuse before.
“Im less of a cranky b*tch nowadays. No wonder they seemed afraid of me!”
So there you have it. Write your own nightmare stories in the comments, and thank god that your flat has never stank of mackerel.
* All names have been changed.
Featured image credit: Unsplash