Finding it hard to house share...please help!

[youknowhatsup]

Hello all,

I am currently a mature student and need some help to try and have a happy house share as I am struggling a little bit.

Last year I lived with some masters students and we were all pretty clean, and we did our bit with a cleaning rota as well. There were some things that annoyed me, but day to day, despite being strangers we all got on really well.

This year I am finding it a lot more difficult. It is a bigger house but with less people so I thought I'd find it a lot easier! I get on really well with one housemate. However on the top floor it is me and this one girl who is a lot younger than me, and is also on the same course as me, so I am finding it difficult to escape!

We are all washing our dishes and stuff, but I do feel that I end up putting a lot more effort in to wipe down surfaces when I am done, or to put people's stuff away on the drying rack. That's pretty minor. However I'm the only one who has hoovered the house or cleaned the bathroom when it's getting a build up of hair and dust. (I don't think I've done it particularly often or anything either - every two to three weeks!?) I guess I need to be really friendly and implement some sort of cleaning rota, like we had at our old house?

This one girl also has her boyfriend staying every weekend, and they hog the bathroom (she takes forever in the bathroom anyway) so I have just put my toiletries in my room so I can brush my teeth in the kitchen. They usually go in and out of doors and slam them so it wakes me up. Damn paper thin walls anyway!

It's hard as we also are on the same course and we weren't really friends to begin with. She has checked up on me quite a lot to see how much work I have done, or what grades I have got, and made jokes before we lived together about my previous room being dusty and "oh as long as it is just your room that is dusty", or making comments about getting disgusted by tinned soup - I had a pizza the other day and I was worried that I was being judged for having it!

All of these seem like pretty petty things and I feel like a crazy woman for getting annoyed at things like being woken up by loud door slamming. How would you guys deal with this? I hate feeling so angry!

I would not be happy at all. These "petty" things build up. I think your concerns are valid.
Slamming doors is unacceptable and having a boyfriend over every weekend without checking it was ok with other housemates is bang out of order. Also she pays rent for one person not two but boyfriend still uses all the facilities.
Do you have to live there? Is moving out an option? If not then you need to share your concerns with the others and try to sort things out.

House sharing would be my idea of hell. Can you afford to move into a different house-share if the dynamics of this one isn't working for you.

1. Have an informal house meeting and implement a house cleaning rota and a kitty for cleaning products etc.
2. Next time she wakes you with door slamming mention it the very next morning as in, ‘You probably don’t realise you are doing this but please can you close the doors quietly as you’ve been waking me up a few times recently.’
3. Food judging, ignore as far as possible or make a joke about the food police.
4. Bathroom hogging, after a few minutes knock on the door and ask if they will be much longer as you need to use it. Possibly bring up at house meeting if everyone needs to get ready at the same sort of time in the morning.

Some good ideas above but when it comes to commenting on your food, just comment back on everything she’s eating.

You sound v reasonable and it’s hell when people make your home difficult to live in. The door slamming alone would drive me mad (but again if you bring it up and she ignores you and there’s ever the opportunity to reciprocate, eg early in the morning when she’s having a lie in - do it!)

What do the other people living in the house think? It sounds as though none of them are helping with cleaning/tidying etc. You don't say what the age difference is, but if they are much younger than you, they may not realise cleaning needs to be done if it has always 'just happened' at home, and may have different standards to you as well.
I think you need a house meeting and ask everyone to put forward any issues they have for discussion.

Are you the halloween decs poster....

Thanks everyone for your messages - I don't feel like quite so much of a weirdo now for getting so annoyed. At this stage in time I think finding a new house would be very difficult, so yes I think a house meeting is necessary to live in peace!

There is seven years difference between me and the youngest girl, and yeah, both haven't house shared properly before - they lived in halls of residence previously, where a cleaner would come in twice a week to keep on top of things.

The boyfriend thing is really annoying, though I don't see her that often for her to ask I suppose. I just feel like I signed up to live with her, not an extra person each weekend! We do have an extra bathroom downstairs, so it's not that bad, but it is annoying that she never goes down to use it, I always have to. I feel a bit weird about knocking though! It's hard too because sometimes they don't spend that long in there, but they just go in one after the other, over and over again, so I can't get in there! Drives me mad! It just feels really inconsiderate, and when I've tried talking to about cleaning she gets very defensive and says "ER I ALWAYS clean my things afterwards", when I know for a fact she doesn't. I feel like I've gone out of my way to be considerate, whereas maybe they haven't, or they just don't realise what small things can annoy others.

Thanks again!