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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask for a lock to be fitted on my door? Housemate constantly stealing clothes

152 replies

Aeroflot21 · 08/01/2023 02:40

I live in a house share with a couple of friends and my sister, and my sister keeps on coming into my room and taking my clothes when I’m not there. When I see her wearing them, she either lies and says she’s not wearing them, or she’ll insult me, or she’ll apologise and say she won’t do it again.

We were all out tonight celebrating a friend’s birthday and I noticed my sister wearing a dress I had. She denied it and said it was something she’d bought herself recently, but I knew it was mine. I then tried to search for the dress in my room later, and it was missing, so I knew the dress she’d worn was actually mine.

In the grand scheme of things, yes this might seem like a small thing, but I find it really difficult to deal with, because I see it as a big invasion of my personal space and privacy that she thinks it’s okay to go into my room when I’m not there, help herself to whatever clothes of mine that she likes, wear them and then lie to me about whether they’re mine or not. I really try to take care of my room and my things, whereas she doesn’t. I find it really disrespectful that she just doesn’t care. It’s also been going on for so long and I’m just at the end of my tether. We are both in our late twenties and she knows it’s not on to behave like this.

As my housemates and I are all lodgers, we don’t have locks fitted on our bedroom doors. Would I be unreasonable to ask our landlady (who also lives in the house with us) if I can have a lock fitted on my door?

I might just ask for a lock, and not tell her the reason, and then just see what she says. I’m so pissed off.

OP posts:
AlannaOfTrebond · 10/01/2023 21:02

It's not particularly relevant to the lock situation, but your landlady is actually running an HMO, not just a normal house with lodger arrangement. You mention other tenants as well as you and your sister, which takes her over the limit for lodgers.

Does she have all the extra safety stuff like fire doors, interlinked alarms etc? It sounds like locks might be the least of your worries.

Testina · 10/01/2023 21:58

@AlannaOfTrebond that’s a great point! Well spotted!
It is possible to still be a lodger in an HMO, and it’s a little bit down to interpretation, but in this case I’d say not lodgers. To claim lodgers in an HMO you’d have to show it was temporary and not intended as a business.

As I understand it - unmarried couple who rent their spare room out for a year for extra cash to recoup savings from the house purchase: possibly lodger.

Letting out 4 rooms (as here) with a turnover where you replace people: operating like a business, not lodgers.

Which does make it harder for LL to tell this weird sister to piss off! Not that I’m sure the LL wants to admit to her tenants having more rights than they probably realise!

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