24 January 2008
By Harriet
In Wild card
I’ve been writing these emails for ages, but am not sure how many people I’ve mentioned the
Laundry blog to, whether people actually visit your work’s website if you put it on facebook and how sensitive people are – here goes.
This week in our flat (house-share three women, city livin’, yeah) we had an “incident” that I think Louisa (housemate A) would refer to as SHOWERGATE. I forgot that since Hannah (housemate B) has changed jobs, I was supposed to get in the shower 15 minutes earlier and held everyone up. There was a very cross lady in a shower cap standing outside the door when I skipped out, steam-a-steamin’, Apart from the who-will-take-the-plastic-bags-to-the-supermarket-for-recycling stand-off, that’s about as traumatic as it’s got in this house. Not so in other places I’ve lived.
In my first house share – we had a very, very tidy housemate. Every now and again I’d find little piles of my belongings just inside the bedroom door tidied away. Other measures included: we were only allowed one pair of shoes in the front room, cups were cleared as soon as the drink was finished, envelopes disposed of (I mean recycled!) as soon as letters were opened, the bath mats were washed once a week. What used to wind me up the most was the radio in the shower. To get a signal the aerial had to dangle down, but this obviously wasn’t tidy enough, everyday it was coiled up in a little ring and tucked behind the radio, by “someone” and every morning it had to be unfurled again to listen to the radio – that’s a lot of coiling and uncoiling, a waste of precious time, some may say.
We had a housemate move in to fill a room, who started watching Pretty Woman, My Best Friends, Wedding and Notting Hill in a film-a-day rotation. I like Julia, but not that much, so we confronted her about the TV being a shared resource and the next day a TV/ video set got delivered, she spent the next 6 months eating all her meals in her room, presumable to the films, not speaking to us and doing the washing up in the bathroom.
House two: We had a ridiculously thin housemate who used to spend hours cooking gourmet meals (e.g. homemade hamburgers, slow roast lamb) only to throw 3/4s of it in the bin after taking about two bites. Some portion control, please, had she never heard of Tupperware and what about share and share alike?
House three: I had an interfering housemate who gave me advice on how to chop an iceburg lettuce (rip don’t cut), follow me round the kitchen turning off gas rings, clearing away dishes, getting on my nerves. We used to cook for each other and every time we had quiche he used to say – fancy a Qui-che?, (quickie, geddit?) oh ho ho.
I can’t believe my luck that in almost every house I’ve lived in there has been someone who made me want to poke them in the eye with annoyance, my sister has suggested it might be nothing to do with luck and I should start with the woman in the mirror and her tolerance levels.
Other housemate stand offs:Cups should be stored upside-down to keep out dust, versus the right way up to keep them touching germy surfaces.Alarm clocks being left on when away for the weekend Everyone thinks they are the only one who buys toilet roll.
GO ON – hit me with your best
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9 Responses to “City Livin’”
Posted: Jan 24th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Being honest I did keep leaving my alarm when I was elsewhere for a few months, and I do like to subject housemates to avant garde 20th century classical music or bargain bin DVDs about fishing!
I’m sure everyone has lived with a recluse, but one summer a spare room was invaded by a bloke who used to somehow get the whole of our fairly sizeable bathroom covered in water and hair every single bloody morning. I mean it, the walls, ceiling, everything, flecked with hairs! I also lived with a white rastafarian who moulted so many straggly clumps all over the carpets that we started to wonder if it was a wig.
Posted: Jan 24th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
O mi gosh- well am about to leave the world of shared houses and thought I was feeling all sentimental about it, you know looking lovingly at the tea-bag splatters on the kitchen floor and tapping my foot to the woodpecker-esque kick-drum from right above my bedroom at midnight on a tuesday- but THEN… tom was on early shifts last week and got up far later than he should have done, was banging on the door while I was in the shower trying to untangle my hair with industrial-strength conditioner and a comb made of wrought iron (I also should have got up earlier if I was planning to untangle), then there was a queue of ben (no shower, quite anoyed, just wanted to brush his teeth before leaving the house) and Alex (also quite annoyed- competing with tom for levels of desperateness for dash to the loo before leaving for the train) and I was forced to get out of shower with continued and insistent door knocking without having fully detangled so proceeded to stomp downstairs with a bang of the bathroom door leaving puddles of wet footprints as I went. 5 people is too many people for one bathroom!!!!
Posted: Jan 24th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
My favourite (gripe) is finding an empty packet, put back in the cupboard.
Posted: Jan 24th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
At uni, we once had a housemate who was, what my other housemates and I would have described as THE most annoying person ever.
Little things that built up rage:
1 - Brushing her hair in our rooms, taking the hair that fell out, and just dropping it on our floors.
2 - Cleaning the freezer to get rid of, what she decided, was not needed anymore. So basically, that meant other housemates food. Surprisingly, hers was left there.
3 - Walking around in her dressing gown - for the entire day. Even when guests were round (does anyone else find that annoying?).
We did get revenge though (hey! we were students!). We put laxatives in her chilli. Too far?
Posted: Jan 24th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
My old housemate Harry used to have a terrible habit of lying on my bed with me watching copious amounts of Sex and the City and then falling asleep. Usually staying there until morning fully clothed J Ring any bells me dear?
Posted: Jan 30th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I have lived in six shared houses, which is getting on for too many! I’ve lived with all sorts, some who never come out their bedrooms and some who are never there.. I lived with one girl for two years who was very, shall we say, emotionally highly strung, and would get upset if we hadn’t read her blog and so didn’t know what was going on in her life, not that she told us face to face! She also used to take 45 minute showers and had a sixth sense to always take these just at the minute you’d thought about going to the loo - although that last bit might just be paranoia.
The best part of house sharing has to be the post it note communication when face to face talking breaks down, which I resist despite having had many things I’d like to write about! There’s a book called ‘I lick my cheese and other notes from the front line of flat sharing’ which is essential reading for anyone who has ever shared a flat, it made me realise that there are far worse people out there I could have lived with!
Posted: Jan 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
And as for Chris’s point about the dressing gown - my boyfriend used to live with a girl who would literally spend the entire day sat in front of the TV in her PJs. Each to their own - but it was quite unnerving when you left her in the morning, came back 4 hours later and she was in exactly the same position that you left her…
Posted: Jan 31st, 2008 at 11:11 am
I have lived with a grand total of 15 or so different housemates over the last 5 years, with many varying annoyances and unmentionables… the worst however being the canadian girl who decided to kept getting off with my boyfriend in the living room whilst i was asleep in the next room. unsurprisngly i dumped him and swapped him for a much better one that i’ve just moved in with. Things are going well so far, he’s lovely, and not that annoying to live with at all!
Posted: Feb 14th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I am a person who has lived with Rachel and may I just add something…Whilst cleaning the kitchen surfaces Rachel accused me of using ‘a more than necessary’ amount of kitchen spray…