What To Do When Your Flatmates Hate You
Sharing a living space with people you don’t really know much about can get tough. Living with these people day in and day out becomes even more of a challenge if they just don’t like you. Here’s what to do if you’re flatmates hate you.
Most roommate problems start with kitchen wars. Problems usually arise with the sharing of the kitchen. If your flatmates hate you, and you can’t take the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.
Dirty dishes everywhere, every time you walk into the kitchen can be a real turn off.
We’re not talking one or two dishes left in the kitchen when you’ve popped out to run a few errands. But leaving crusty, mouldy dishes in the sink for days is definitely less than ideal, and definitely be the beginning of tension among housemates.
How we can solve this is either by having a conversation about it and seeing if they fix their ways, or you could just ignore it. Yes, ignore those dirty dishes. Don’t go cleaning up after your flatmate because if you do it once, chances are you’ll be stuck doing it until the end of your lease. It might sound petty, but the mature thing to do if confrontation doesn’t work is live and let live- even if that means ignoring them.
Another problem that crops up constantly in the kitchen tales of housemates, is the mouldy food in the kitchen. I can admit I’ve been guilty of leaving food gone past its use-by date in the fridge. Again, not ideal. And again we could try having a conversation about it and fixing it. I had this conversation with my flatmates, made an effort to fix my ways and they did the same. This problem was quite easily taken care of in my case, but if it doesn’t work for you maybe tell your flatmates to get their own damn fridge to store their mouldy treasure in!
The kitchen wars continue where taking out the bin is concerned.
When I was living with my now ex-housemates, we had a passive-aggressive feud that lasted for months just over who needed to take out the bin. Every time we tried to discuss we ended in pointed fingers and shrugging shoulders.
Overcoming this can either involve coming up with a rota of days in which each member should take out the trash. Or you can do what we did, and just get personal bins for our own rooms. There, problem solved, and if your flatmates hate you, that’s their problem.
Flatmates who like you can turn out to be your best friends.
And flatmates who don’t like you…bitch about you. All the confrontation you did about the kitchen and the bin, probably didn’t win you any ‘roommate of the year’ awards and probably also made you the subject of a few unfriendly conversations among your flatmates. I definitely was.
You’ve got two options on how to handle this.
One, you could sit quietly in your room and pretend you didn’t hear any of it. You know, just let things go? I did this for a while. Or…you guessed it, confront them. Calmly of course. Bring up the fact that you heard them talking about you. It might be uncomfortable to talk about, but maybe it’ll teach them not to act in this way in the future. If this doesn’t work, just unleash hell, because why not?
Having to listen to a live audio version of the Kamasutra while you’re trying to grab some shut-eye, in one word, sucks. What your roommates do in their private time is their own business. But I had to live with a flatmate that seemed to have sex more than she breathed (just a slight exaggeration here!).
The best friend that got me through these rough times? My trusty pair of headphones. Good music, played loud is the perfect way to ignore the shenanigans that go down next door.
Finally, if none of this works and its early enough in your lease, just move out. If you’re a first year dealing with terrible housemates and you can’t take it anymore, just find someone to replace you and leave the place to find a better, more welcoming home. It gets harder to do in your second and third year, so try to leave early and avoid all the unnecessary tension.
