We live in troubling times. A housing shortage and competitively high rents mean that we've all basically resigned ourselves to the fact we’ll be renting for life and will never own our own property. In the mean time (the mean time being, well, forever, or until the powers that be plonk a few extra houses in the country) we have to live with other people. And other people are annoying, aren’t they? Here are 19 things you’ll only get irritated by when other people do them in the place you live, each of them hurting just a little bit more because it's the sort of shit that, left unchecked, will continue forever…
1. Heating dicks
And then turning it off when you are FREEZING. It’s not the temperature that annoys you, it’s the simple lack of consultation.
2. Indoor shoe-wearers
Watching someone traipse wet gross outside around your abode is hideous. Unless you’re late, you’ve just put your shoes on and are about to run out of the door and then you remember that you’ve forgotten something and it’s fine if you just tip toe back into the house to get your stuff, right? As long as the housemate you’ve been telling off for never taking off their shoes never sees you’ve done it, that is.
3. Stuff-abusers
Stealing mugs, not washing them but leaving them to grow mould and then hiding them because they’re a) too gross for them to clean but they can’t throw out because they belong to a housemate b) so gross they might amount to toxic waste – is potentially the biggest housemate dick moves we’ve heard of.
4. Scrooges
Be it shower gel, oven cleaner, sugar, milk or loo roll, the housemate who just takes, takes, takes but never gives is a dick.
5. Lying scrooges
Some people pride themselves on the fact they’re not that dick, they’re not the person who takes, takes, takes. But they do. A spoonful of honey here, a splash of milk there, but everything put back in its place correctly so you just don’t know how much of your stuff has been taken.
6. Hairy-sharey housemates
Ok, so we’re all hypocrites, blissfully ignorant of our own hair but obsessed with other people's, but having to clean someone’s pubes out of a shower waste disposal because they’re apparently too embarrassed to clip them over the toilet (where they might lie at the top of the water) is a nuisance that also puts you off ever eating again.
7. Freakily tidy housemates.
We get everyone has a different standard of living, but re-organising your flatmate’s DVDs (who even watches DVDs anyway?) into alphabetical order while they’re out at work one day is worrying on so many levels.
8. Needy housemates
They can’t be bothered to do the washing up they’ve left by the sink for five days, but they do think you’ve got time for them to wander into your room and talk to you while you’re trying to get shit done. You begin to pretend you’re a very sweaty prude so you can use the excuse ‘um, I’m getting changed now’ to get them out of your space.
9. Light flickers
Be it candles, lamps or actual proper over the head lights, the dick housemate is the housemate who thinks the whole place should be lit up, like their room’s a stately home that pulls in tourism revenue or something.
10. Bill ignorers
Maybe they’ve been spoiled by previously paying an all-in rent at their previous place, or maybe they’ve sneakily always relied on someone else to handle the bills. Regardless, your dick of a housemate will just assume you’re good for it, even when the bills go red.
11. Rubbish stoners
Using plastic bottles or tin cans as pipes and bongs is a hygiene issue for everyone. If you’re cultured enough to put the world to rights while so stoned your mouth feels like dough, you’re cultured enough to go to a headshop for a pipe/novelty ‘I like the pope, the pope smokes dope’ ashtray.
12. TV wankers
You personally might not want to hear your flatmate giggling along to gunfights or people’s throats being chewed up and spat out in some re-runs channel's zombie programme. You might not want to watch Embarrassing Bodies over dinner, or experience someone enjoying a re-run of Friends when there is so much life out in the world to be living that isn’t the same old ‘how you doin’?’ joke played out. But you do, because walls are paper thin and who are you to tell your flatmate not to watch TV?
13. Deep fat friers
No. Unless you’re making nice crispy food and sharing it then getting rid of the fat tidily, along with all the fat smells, then just no.
14. Bin deniers
Whether it’s leaving the food bins to go stinky because, well, they’re not full so why should they need changing? Or plonking teabags in the recycling, or refusing to take the bins out because oh poor you it’s too dark outside, refusal to deal with refuse is a big dick move.
15. Bathroom hoggers
Water closets are in short supply, but they’re dolling themselves up. Preening, shaving, checking their phone, pooing, weeing, smiling at themselves in the mirror, picking spots, plucking hairs, shaving pubes, brushing teeth, looking into bellybutton, rinsing hands five times, putting on horrible perfume, showering, re-applying perfume, leaving in conditioner until hair is the texture of, well, conditioner, listening to music and yelling along to it out of tune, putting make up on; how much of this needs to happen in the bathroom? Especially considering your dick housemate looks exactly the same when they emerge and you’ve needed a wee the whole time.
16. The sartorially unaware
Your dick housemate doesn’t get that wet clothes over radiators = damp and that not everyone’s going to wear their hideous faded worn jumper they’ve been wearing since 2010 because one person told them they looked fit in it, so why is it taking up an entire clothes horse on the middle of the landing that you have to trip up over to get into your room?
17. Navel-gazing cleaners
They acknowledge the house is a mess, and proudly announce they’ll be doing a ‘spring clean’. A short hoover later and they’ve begun lobbing binbags full of their crap into the hallway, to be left there until they can face the lonely embarrassment of lugging them the short walk to one of the UK’s billions of charity shop. Meanwhile, the toilet still has their shit stains in and the oven’s home to a centimetre-thick layer of grease.
18. Stayers-in-ers
Any time you want a friend round, you have to forewarn them that your housemate’s going to want to do boring catch-up chat with them, or is going to drone on about their boy problems. Or you have to huddle into your room because your housemate’s already set up camp in the living room for the night.
19. Go-ers out-ers
Yeah, housemates can be dicks, but what happens when they’re just…never…there? You never signed up to be a hermit checking Instagram to see what your other mates are up to, (spoiler: they're off having fun because they assumed you’d be having a grand time with your now-extant housemate). Aw. We take it all back now…because despite all of the above, we’ll miss you dick housemates when you’re gone.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.