The inevitable problems (and solutions) that occur when you move into a second year house.
Moving out of halls and in with just a group of your best friends seems like a surefire recipe for success! Surely with you guys all together nothing can go wrong, right? Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that and instead of solving everything moving into your second year house can open you up to a whole new selection of problems ready to pounce.
From arguments to mould, life isn't always perfect in a student house! Luckily for you, we've predicted these problems AND given you the solution; you can thank us later.
The Bedroom Issue
Problem:
As much as you knew that other aspects were more important when you were looking for the house (like it’s location, or whether the landlord was a psychopath) you were probably pretty focused on which bedroom you wanted. Unfortunately, if you’re like most people then you probably ended up in a house with at least one bedroom which was, shall we say, of a lesser standard. Basically, the room makes Harry Potter’s cupboard look like a luxury suite.
This leads to the awkward situation where you either all agree on a rent difference and suddenly it’s the battle of the poorest student over who gets to inhabit the dingy little cave, or you decide to draw straws each believing you won’t get it – inevitably leading to the loser secretly resenting the rest of you.
Solution:
Take the warriors fighting it out over the neglected pit with the door that gets stopped by the bed halfway and make them draw straws, it’s win–win! The winner gets the discount price, and the loser gets to sleep in a human-sized room where they’re less likely to be crushed by the decaying walls. Yay!
Bills
Problem:
Unlike when you were in halls, you can’t just turn up and expect running water and electricity – crazy, we know. Inevitably it will come down to the appointed ‘Responsible One’ to completely control the bills in order to prevent the one with about as much common sense as a piece of bread getting their hands on them.
However, each time a bill arrives the same situation will occur. Panic will rise in the house as nobody quite has £150 right now, not that the energy company cares as they cut you off leaving you end up standing under an ice cold shower desperately trying to get the suds out of your hair.
Solution:
This one’s glaringly obvious people – a joint bills account. Set up one of those bad boys, put the responsible housemate in charge and for the love of all things good somebody remind the ditsy one to actually pay their £10 a week. The bonus of this solution is that £10/week from each of you is bound to be too much.
This means that when the end of term’s rolling around, your overdraft’s crying and you’re not sure how many more meals of pasta and ketchup you can handle, there’s probably gonna be a spare £40ish coming your way – kerching!
Internet
Problem:
You rock up in September feeling pretty proud that you guys set up the bills last week, so you’re good to go, right? Wrong. You forgot to sort you’re internet, and unbeknownst to you it can take up to 6 weeks for internet to start to work. No jokes.
Plus, inevitably once you actually have the internet it still won’t work when more than two of you are on it, which really puts a spanner in your plans to stream the entirety of Breaking Bad series one online in one night…
Solution:
This may go without saying, but it’s actually a pretty good idea to look into reviews on the internet provider before you commit to anything. If they say you can have five people online and by the time the fourth’s logged on it’s so slow that you’re actually starting to miss the dial-up connection you had as a kid, then you have every right to complain. Alternatively, hide your housemate’s laptops/smartphones so the internet’s all yours for the binge-watching!
Mould
Problem:
It’s unavoidable. Even if it’s not there when you move in, it’ll rear its ugly green head at some point during the year and start creeping its way across the walls. Despite its grim appearance, its existence will be completely ignored until it manages to sneak its way into the shower or one of you manages to inhale enough spores to contract (and no doubt ignore) bronchitis.
Solution:
This is one of those situations where you’re just going to have to bite the bullet and tell the landlord. Yes, he’s going to tell you that you should have aired the room out better (even though it was 4 degrees outside and the heating’s already been cut off once) but if he’s not a total waste of space he should whack some anti-mould treatment on and you’ll be good to go!
There is no cleaner
Problem:
Even though the cleaner in halls wouldn’t actually touch your kitchen unless it was pretty much spotless anyways, at least when they left it was clean and it made you guys actually wash up once a week. Now that you have your own house you will realise how reliant on that cleaner you actually were as you watch in awe to see your housemate steadily working their way through every possible vessel for holding food, adding them to the decaying tower piling up by the sink.
It’s not that you don’t like your housemate, it’s just that you’ve come to realise as you step over yet another discarded sock in the hallway that they are an absolute slob. Plus the smell is getting kind of embarrassing, just saying.
Solution:
Some would say that the mature, adult response to this situation would be to sit your housemate down and talk to them about what it is that bothers you so that you can both work it out. Others would say that the best solution is to don some rubber gloves, take the festering pile of plates they’ve abandoned and dump the lot in the middle of their bed. It’s hard to know which the right alley to take is, really.
Your lectures are so far away
Problem:
It’s Thursday morning, its 8.52am, you have an incredibly important lecture in 8 minutes time but you also have the world’s worst hangover and you’re not entirely sure you’re gonna make it out of this one alive. In halls you could have rolled out of bed at 8.57, thrown on a hoodie and be sat at the back of the lecture hating your life by 9.02.
However, now you live a gruelling 15 minute walk from campus and making that journey in this state is seeming about as likely as you actually never drinking again like you swore last time this happened.
Solution:
Well, you could refrain from going out on nights when you have important 9ams the next day, or you could just write the lecture off and promise yourself that you’ll actually catch up on this one and not leave it until you’re just one massive ball of stress around exams. Both seem equally responsible, right?
House arguments
Problem:
Whether one of you has literally never paid into the bills on time, somebody insists on leaving food on their plate to block the sink or there’s yet another massive chain of hair blocking the shower drain, living together is going to cause a little bit of friction now and again. This isn’t to say that you don’t all love each other, it’s just that you simultaneously have the power to make the others want to rip your head off.
Solution:
House arguments have a weird way of festering for ages without actually getting solved. There’s only one real, adult solution for this – get really drunk together. You’ll go from having out your issues to hugging in a circle crying about how much you love each other and how lucky you are to have found each other in about 4 minutes. You’re welcome.
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