Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

To never want to flatshare again?

62 replies

poshsinglemum · 08/12/2010 17:08

Anyone with flatmate horror stories most welcome.

At uni I flatshared for years. had to put up with;
Post it notes left on hoovers and fridge doors
Socks in my saucepans with water and eggs still in them
My cheese/pizza nibbled
Arguments over men/football/housework
Loud sex in next room
Female flatmtes getting competetive
Male flatmates getting am orous

IMO peopel are far too territorial to flatshare for long. Can be a laugh tho. Couldn't go back to it. More stories please!

OP posts:

AbsofLatkes · 08/12/2010 21:18

Yes - if you want to stay friends with someone, don't share with them. Unless you know for certain you can live with them.

DP's friends had a flatmate (they all were living in this flat at various times) who was incredibly mysoginistic, and would shout the girls down if they dared to disagree with them. He used to bring home hookers every couple of weeks. Charming man. Last I heard, everyone else had moved out as they couldn't stand living with him anymore, and the landlord is still trying to evict him.

purplepidjbauble · 08/12/2010 22:36

One guy I shared with had a habit of sitting around in his undies. This started out as longish boxers and tshirt, which was fine, but rapidly progressed to him and his mate both on the sofat in holey short tightywhities...

I was working in London at the time so one particularly cold day I indulged in my keep warm strategy of stockings under trousers. Matching pants and suspenders. Lace top stockings. When I got in, they were sat there in their grubb grundies so I calmly walked in, stripped, sat down and crossed my legs. They got the hint.

My best one was a girl who lodged with me when I first bought my place. I had just got a kitten which she totally adored (so do i) so she said could she get one too. I said yes as long as she paid for it and stayed for at least a year. She buggered off to live with the boyfriend 3 weeks later, leaving me with an unspeyed farm cat as a birthday present (the cat is now very happy, if a bit shy with strangers)

BitOfFun · 08/12/2010 22:53

Way to punish the undie-wearers- they must have been furious

ShanahansRevenge · 08/12/2010 22:55

Loving this thread! My high points were lovely folk singing flatmates who fed and watered me very well when I was a poor student an also filled the tiny Hackney flat with amazing music...singers and musicians there all day and night.

Low point was the awful terrace, home to a shifting and shadowy collection of nobodies...the guy who slept on the sofa and pissed on it every night...the girl who wrote poetry, broke hearts and never wore shoes...even when she was going to sign on in town...the man who pushed a tea trolley full of drugs around the flat on a weekend.

Good times...but bad also.

BitOfFun · 08/12/2010 22:59

I can see it now..."Crack, anyone? Gwan gwan gwan, you'll have a little pipe, surely?"

I think my worst flatmate was the lovely boy from Cornwall who took up selling weed to boost his student grant...and then incurred the wrath of the local professionals who descended on us with baseball bats and nicked our stereo.

ValiumSingleton · 08/12/2010 23:05

Absoflatkes, reminds me of a flatmate I used ot have who refused to clean because he wanted to "minimise his impact on the house". COMO?!

Another flat mate used everysauce pan in the house and then went away for a long weekend (over easter, four days) and he left them in the sink. I screamed at him when he got back and he screamed back at me. nigthmare.

never again. would rather live in a caravan.

ShanahansRevenge · 08/12/2010 23:07

BitfFun...He WAS like that! he has long, long dredlocks and he used to conceal "handy things" in them...his lighter, his pipe, his coin purse ...they were all tied into his dreds!

He used to push his trolley around many local dens of iniquity houses and sell his jolly wares.

ValiumSingleton · 08/12/2010 23:10

psm, oh the post it notes! i remember writing on a psot it note (at work though) will you please stop writing pissy little post it notes? thank you!!!!

i disguised my handwriting.

giraffesCantDanceOnAllThisSnow · 08/12/2010 23:12

I have to admit its part of the reason I worry having my friend living with me just now and why before she was admitted to hosp I made an effort to do things alone so as not to become sick of each other. We are still in the honey moon excitement phase of it though.

I flat shared at uni - she left mouldy bread under her pillow and slept on it. Her room was fully of crap up to your knees. She is now a teacher.

topsmart · 08/12/2010 23:20

Has anyone shared a house with someone so reluctant to do the effing washing up that they'd rather eat their baked beans off a pizza box than clean a plate?

No? Just me then.

[Love this thread btw; am bursting with bad housemate tales]

LoudRowdyDuck · 08/12/2010 23:26

Oh lord, post-it notes! I once did my washing-up and left it to drain, went to the loo and came back to find a note already there. It read, 'please do not leave your things out in the communal areas'.

It was gobsmackingly petty. I'm afraid I wrote 'it's a draining board' back.

melezka · 08/12/2010 23:38

Worst: flatmate who thought she had seen my (dead) boyfriend standing at the foot of her bed, decided I was evil and wrote me a note saying I was evil and could I never speak to her again (this was actually devastating as we had been very close and although I understood the contents of the note it took a mutual friend six years to explain the reasoning for it - "ghost-seeing" friend never actually explained WHY)

Best: was just reminiscing today with darling BF who took me in and flat shared for many years through varying circumstances including both of us having long-term relationship breakdowns. Think it has something to do with finding a friend who (finally) just accepted me and was just so affirming through everything. It didn't even matter that every. single. person. who came to the house fell in love with her. (Except person who eventually became DH. Luckily.)

I think I was worst flatmate in many ways and I would like to apologies and also to thank flatmates who took time to explain how world actually worked.

melezka · 08/12/2010 23:39

*apologise

maize · 08/12/2010 23:41

I married my flatmate too :) I think it cuts a lot of the hassle when you have lived with each other before you go out.

One of my housemates wouldn;t shower unless he was going out and it was 'worth his while' so he sat around smelling watching Queer Eye for a Straight Guy.

Another housemate made chicken stew and left it to go mouldy sit for a few weeks with the lid on and we didn't realise until it sort of bubbled over with ming.

Oh and the trails of vom. I used to get people out of bed and then stand over them making them clean it up while they were hungover. Nice person that I am.

DingALongCow · 08/12/2010 23:43

When DH and I met we each had a nightmare flatmate so we moved in together very fast to get away from them
Mine:her father owned the flat so she commandeered all the space as hers except my room even though I was paying half the rent. OCD clean freak, followed me around the kitchen with spray and kitchen roll whilst I was cooking. Devoutly religious, major issues around food and basically the opposite of me.

DH's-Used the washing machine twice in 6 months and had to ask DH how to use it. Opened Dh's post. Lived off boiled eggs and microwaved frozen mixed vegetables. Kept a 2 litre bottle of water next to the toilet to use instead of toilet roll but never cleaned off the seat afterwards so always random brown splashes on the seat. Told DH I would make a useless wife as I couldnt cook and hated housework. Kept the housephone in his room always even though it was DH's phone in the first place. Turned the TV volume down if he was watching it and DH and I were in DH;s room next to the lounge so he could listen in on any action.

Never again

Joolyjoolyjoo · 08/12/2010 23:52

Ooh- good and bad! the best thing was that I met my best friend, and lived with her and random others for 4 years, which was great.

There was always a dirty frying pan. You would have to wash it before you used it, so you would refuse to wash it again after you had finished. This went on for the whole year- "who left the frying pan dirty?" "well, it was dirty before I used it" "and me"...etc etc.

Most of my flatmates were ok. But we did get one horrid one. She was a total slob, kept switching the heating on - never never never, although we were all out all day, and she was in alone. Kept leaving the immersion on. Refused to pay for anything. Even the cat didn't like her!

At the time, my friend was also the landlord (well, it was her dad's flat, we were students) and this girl demanded that my friend be the one to buy her a new lightbulb for her room. We bought lightbulbs ourselves, generally, so this was explained. cane home to discover Miss Slob had removed lightbulb from the hall. Next time she was out we nicked it back....and so it went on, like some silly farce. Thank God she eventually moved out, and we rejoiced....until we came back from the pub, fell in the cat litter tray and realised she'd taken the bloody lightbulb with her!!!

It's hard to convey just how indignant that made us at the time

brightsparkleribbon · 09/12/2010 00:17

Have only had to flatshare for a few years but that was enough. Nasty bullying girls at university, thud-thud techno fan next door, having no fridge space for months, having to tiptoe around their mates crashing on the living room floor...

My flat might be council, people might sneer at the area, but it's mine. I would never share again.

melezka · 09/12/2010 00:21

This is a very interesting thread. Because we are (were?) Australian we had loads of people coming through the house and flat sharing for varying amounts of time. It was really interesting to see how different people lived, how you got on with them, what was ok to live with and what was gross.

It's a little bit like MN - in RL you surround yourself with people who are like you, who think and behave like you do, so when you come on MN and have to deal with widely differing opinions it is confronting and fascinating and sometimes annoying. Just like the old days...

ValiumSingleton · 09/12/2010 13:16

maize, I had another flat mate (female) who vommed up clear liquid around the sink in the bathroom and wouldn't clear it up. I let her go back to bed for a bit, but then an hour or so later I said to her 'are you going to clear that up?' and she reacted as though were Aggie and KIM rolled into one big mean bitch.

DasherandSmugly · 09/12/2010 13:42

My worst was the flat mate with mental health issues who used to stay awake all night being incredibly noisy and sleep all day. One night he rang the doorbell at midnight, getting me out of bed (I worked, he didn't)and as I got to the door I heard him put his key in the lock. I told him how inconsiderate he was being and he went mad at me. Apparently I was an ungrateful bitch as he'd spent the evening saving me and my boyfriend from an armed gang you wanted to kill us. And didn't I realise how important he was to the CIA? I rang boyf and held up the phone so he could hear the ranting in the background. DH rang the police who came to check I was OK. I moved out the following weekend.

Boyfriend (now DH) lived in a house that was actually two knocked into one and had 13 bedrooms. They had some amazing parties there where they hired DJs and charged people to get in. I remember staying there one night when people at a local club decided they wanted to have another party there and bashed the door down. The police ended up being called and we had to prove to them that we should be there.

knitpicker · 09/12/2010 14:35

I had a nightmare flatemate who never, ever changed the sheets on his bed, made a massive pot of chilli every sunday and lived off it for the week and had his brother move in and sleep on his floor for months. We have been married now for twelve years

Ephiny · 09/12/2010 14:42

I'd never share again, my flatmates when I was a student never washed up or cleaned anything, would pile food waste on top of and around the bin sooner than empty it and take the rubbish out, smoked in our no-smoking flat, had noisy parties when I had an exam the next day, used all my pans and utensils and didn't wash them up so I'd arrive home hungry and have to do a huge load of washing up before I could eat, or worse still ate the food I had in for dinner so I'd come home hungry and have to go out again to the shops before I could eat left used sanitary pads on the side of the bath, had massive rows with their horrible boyfriends, including throwing things and threats of violence, followed by horrible boyfriends banging on the door and windows at all hours of the night and standing in the streets shouting abuse.

They had the heating on high all the time, and often went out and left the hot tap running (which meant the boiler running constantly)

Oh and they never paid any bills (which were in my name as I was the only one to bother signing us up with the energy companies before we got cut off) and disappeared at the end of the year with no forwarding addresses, leaving me with massive energy and water bills to pay on my own

Never, ever again.

These were nice, middle-class girls as well, not the sort you'd stereotypically expect to be trouble!

bethelbeth · 09/12/2010 15:29

We have had a 28 year old teacher who used to block the shower by leaving huge clumps of her thick black hair in it... we asked her to take it out after showering as we were sick of doing it....

Next morning in the shower there was a big clump of black hair slapped against the bathroom tiles and it had dried in there.

I was

She also flooded our downstairs bedroom by leaving a bath running, stained carpets with guinea pig wee, had a horrible taste in music and was prone to pinching my socks.

She went last year and I danced a happy dance!

bethelbeth · 09/12/2010 15:30

Oh AND she cooked frozen salmon in the microwave and it stank the house out.

Aaaaand she was addicted to the sims which she played on the living room tv for hours at a time. It was either that or she'd nab the remote and make everyone watch Battle Star Galactica.

I hated her.

AbsofLatkes · 09/12/2010 15:31

On the passive aggressive notes, the hair in living room flatmate developed an annoying habit of leaving little passive aggressive notes lying around like "lock the door!" and "switch off light" (you get the idea - even though he was incapable of any form of housework/living with other humans).

Anyway, the flat was rather old and things didn't always work properly, like the toilet. One night I came home hammered to find one of his notes saying "please flush the toilet". I then cracked and went around the flat writing notes and putting them on everything "wash your dishes" "stop watching so much tv" "vacuum for once" "use the hand towel for goodness sakes" "clean the basin after shaving" and under the shoes he and the other flatmate constantly left lying in the hallway to trip people up "shoes of death! trip over shoe and die!"

They were both very well behaved for weeks after that.

Another flatmate in winter used to turn the heating up to crazy high levels in the living room, and then open the window

Flip

1 2 3