Living in a student house is one of the most exciting parts of going away for university. You’ll no doubt create friendships for life, and learn some of your most important household skills! If you’re searching for student accommodation, or you’ve already moved into a student house, you’ll certainly recognise these six things which happen in your student home:
1. Kitchen tetris
We’re not sure if this is the official name, but it certainly should be. It’s also something that every university student has definitely done at least once.
With any student accommodation, one thing that you’ll quickly learn is that storage space in the kitchen comes at a premium (and you’ll be very lucky to have more than one cupboard and one shelf in the fridge). Some days you may have found yourself spending a chunk of your time packing and repacking your food to find that extra bit of space. You may have even resigned yourself to eating some of your haul just so you don’t have to deal with the battle of storing your food.
2. Storing your special food and drink in your bedroom
Sure, you’ll spend some time squeezing your food into your allocated kitchen space, but some food and drink is far too precious to be stored anywhere your housemates could access it.
Favourite brand of tea. Expensive bottle of vodka. Maybe even your tomato ketchup. There’s nothing worse than coming home from a busy day to find that something you’re most looking forward to has gone. You’ve probably learnt by now that anything left on the kitchen side or even in your cupboard is fair game. Sometimes, it’s just easier to stash your goods away in your bedroom to stop your housemates pinching it.
3. A severe lack of boundaries
After living in very close quarters for some time, you become sort of immune to each other. There’s basically zero shock factor anymore. You’ll now be at a point where you’ll be dishing out advice to each other and share every detail about your personal life, no matter how embarrassing.
The only thing you should probably remember is to close the bathroom door when you have guests.
4. There’s an area in your house which is getting slowly worse
A pile of washing up in the sink. A garden that’s becoming more overgrown by the day. A bathroom which is a bit like a biohazard. Pretty much every student house has somewhere which doesn’t get as much attention as the others (and if you don’t have an area like this, it could well be your whole house).
5. Group chats
Look away from your phone for one second and BAM, 83 notifications are flashing up from your housemates WhatsApp chat. But let’s be honest, maybe just one or two of those messages are actually something important that you need to know. The rest, they’re just random messages.
You see, your group chat has this uncanny way of weaving into your everyday university life; the latest drama, constant one upping, plenty of memes and drunk photos from last night are just some of the things you can expect to receive.
6. Emptying the bin
An overflowing bin - the most common house foe.
Forget deadlines, that Friday feeling or even your birthday… there is no more important day than bin day. Just as with all good things, bin day is something you don’t appreciate the value of until you forget to put the bin out. Especially when you live in a house of seven, so there are six other people to rely on to take it out.
So, who’s turn is it to empty the bin?