Mental Flatmates

[erranta]

Worst landlord was a money grabbing Banker in Essex (working in the city)

I rented a couple of rooms in his house as a sort of house share.

Had some girl friends back from the pub one weekend for a session when he was away. Someone told him about it!

(He was an extremely jealous type)

Anyway, he waited till I went to parents to visit for a weekend - changed the locks and locked me out of the house - lol

Bloody pathetic.

Best house share ever was with a couple of Experi_mental design engineer bikers.

Amazing parties & never a dull weekend!

[juvenal]

a crazy animal rights activist/vegan/hippie who lectured us for eating meat and hid our bacon.

One of my students once told me that he (a carnivore) had lived with a group of vegans. One afternoon, alone in the house and craving meat, he fried some sausages.

The vegans returned home early, and caught him eating.

The forced him to go into the garden, dig a hole and bury the sausages.

They then held a short 'funeral service' for them.

Shamed and shunned, he found other lodgings.

[MrsNoelEdmonds]

I've never shared with anyone really horrible/gross but I did have a friend at uni who when we were in halls (a)didn't change his sheets for a whole year and ( used to have a pint glass in his room which was used both for drinking from and for p*ssing into if he needed a wee in the night.

At the start of the year I quite fancied him, but as time progressed the attraction wore off somewhat!

[mikeymadman]

I've been lucky, only had one screwball.

Top tip:

If you are in the kitchen one day and your flatmate says:

"I'm not taking those tablets any more; they're not helping. The doctor is only giving them to me to keep me ill to keep himself in a job because I have to keep going back there to see him."

Then move out.

[Guest Parry aka GOD]

Just curious as to know how many of us have ever found themselves unwittingly sharing accomodation with someone who is either:

A: Mental.

B: Utterly impossible to live with.

C: All of the above.

So far in my illustrious few years on this planet I have found myself sharing flats with a ball crunching feminist, a crazy animal rights activist/vegan/hippie who lectured us for eating meat and hid our bacon. A kleptomaniac yank who, on his leaving day tried to exit with a duffel bag loaded with most of my wardrobe and one guy who was quite a nice chap until he hit the drugs a bit too hard and went completely section 8, having to be escorted from the premesis after flying into a paranoid rage and destroying most of the house.

There were quite a few more but that should get us started, those above are quite tame really, some people I knew in Uni found themselves shacked up with some absolute nutters.

Yep, but we're separated now, divorce pending.

[pl1]

In my first year as a PhD student I ended up in a large house which the university rented to around 12 postgrads. One of them was a Nigerian who, on the rare occasions that he'd actually talk to anyone, claimed to be a world famous poet. He would spend days on end sitting in the communal living room watching a video of Princess Di's funeral. He'd watch the whole three-hour tape, rewind it and then start again, taking only occasional breaks to boil a large cauldron of pigs' trotters in the kitchen, thereby stinking the whole house out. After about a year, a new cleaner started one morning. She went into Reginald's room, came out looking white as a sheet and ran from the house. By the time I got back from the campus that evening, he'd gone, never to return. I don't know what she found in there, but it can't have been pretty.

A few years later I ran the bloke's name past someone I was introduced to at a conference as being an expert on West African literature - she had heard of him and he did have a significant reputation in those circles. As with Van Gogh's DIY plastic surgery, I guess arty types just have unusual habits.

I lived with that guy. He had the funeral on DVD by the time I flat-shared with him and he used to stick his head in the microwave while chanting some weird African mantra.

[Three Pint Princess 2]

Never had that problem,

In fact i've have never met the "mental" person in a house share.

[Guest tbatst2000]

Everyone's mental once you get to know them well enough, I guess that's why there's so many divorces.

The worst flatmate I ever had was one who gradually collected all the cutlery and crockery in the house in his room after using to eat off. He mostly finished his food so it took a while for a real stink to build up, at which point, he'd try to mask it by buring some really horrible extra-strong incense sticks. To add insult to injury he was a terrible guitar player who used to spend hours on end playing improvised jazz very badly and at extreme volume. Utterly anti-social, but probably not actually mad. We chucked him out after a year.

[winkie]

Never had that problem,

In fact i've have never met the "mental" person in a house share.

No all the people I have ever shared with have been a pleasure to live with...we did have one compulsive cleaner, who enjoyed cleaning but never made us feel inadequate or guilty, let them get on with it, the only problem was they loved rearranging the furniture in the rooms so you never knew where anything was...one others boyfriend used to use her bedroom window as a front door...each to their own, happy and wild days.

[Tin Foil Hat]

I lived with that guy. He had the funeral on DVD by the time I flat-shared with him and he used to stick his head in the microwave while chanting some weird African mantra.

You serious? 2 HPC'ers who don't know each other both lived with the same nutter?

TFH

[helenreed]

Many years ago I shared a flat with 2 other girls and a bloke. The bloke was gay and very quiet, non camp, vegetarian, painfully shy and not around that much as he worked in a restaurant. When he was there he never cleaned up anything and hogged the living room TV as he was obsessed with Prisoner Cell Block H. None of us could afford TVs in our room then (days before credit) so quite often we were all sat there watching this absolute drivel as he would video all the episodes and play them over and over. The only time he actually shed his shyness was discussing and reenacting lines from the show. That was the OK part.

He was also into really, really violent sex. He would turn up really late after work and after a quick visit to the local gay club (this was in Islington where there were many) we would regularly all be woken up by the horrific sounds of him being beaten up. The next day he would appear with cuts and bruises and we were all so bloody polite we never said anything! We all caught him numerous times in the living room in the early hours being fisted by various heavy duty macho guys. Again nothing was ever mentioned. When I think about it now I am horrified that I lived there, as did the other flatmates, for over three years. The things you put up with when you're young.

[thecrashingisles]

Many years ago I shared a flat with 2 other girls and a bloke. The bloke was gay and very quiet, non camp, vegetarian, painfully shy and not around that much as he worked in a restaurant. When he was there he never cleaned up anything and hogged the living room TV as he was obsessed with Prisoner Cell Block H. None of us could afford TVs in our room then (days before credit) so quite often we were all sat there watching this absolute drivel as he would video all the episodes and play them over and over. The only time he actually shed his shyness was discussing and reenacting lines from the show. That was the OK part.

He was also into really, really violent sex. He would turn up really late after work and after a quick visit to the local gay club (this was in Islington where there were many) we would regularly all be woken up by the horrific sounds of him being beaten up. The next day he would appear with cuts and bruises and we were all so bloody polite we never said anything! We all caught him numerous times in the living room in the early hours being fisted by various heavy duty macho guys. Again nothing was ever mentioned. When I think about it now I am horrified that I lived there, as did the other flatmates, for over three years. The things you put up with when you're young.

And you say he was painfully shy?

[helenreed]

They do say that the quiet ones are the worse.

[SNACR]

You serious? 2 HPC'ers who don't know each other both lived with the same nutter?

TFH

No surprise, genuine stand out nutters are like the Kevin Bacon thing.

[indirectapproach]

I have been very good friends with three men who were all afflicted with the unfortunate condition of urinating in regrettable places while sleep walking, in flat mate's hatbox with hat in said box, all over flat mate's bed with flat mate in said bed.

Occasionally I wonder how it can be that I have been friends with no less than three people that suffered from such a rare condition. All are completely successful in the other walks of life. One was a city of london based commercial property lawyer (retired early), the second is a cashed up fashion photographer and the third owns a few pubs and a micro brewery.

Perhaps it had something to do with never sharing a flat with them.

[Y-QUERK]

I've had a total of 13 flatmates at various times over the past 6 years.

11 were absolutely fine. 1 was so messy, flies would buzz around her. The last was a total cockend who stole food al the time.

I think if you are easygoing and accept that people are different life is much less stressful.

Or maybe i WAS THE MENTAL PATIENT in all thier lives.

[Live Peasant]

I've never lived with a nutter, but the 4 hours a day bagpipe practice generally doesn't give me time to find out...

Oh...

[DementedTuna]

I've never had any trouble... some minor problems with a girl who wouldn't clean a damn thing and tried to avoid every single bill.. but nothing seriously bad.

Then again, I've only ever really moved in with friends (or friends of friends at the worst), never with randoms, that's just asking for trouble.

It helps that I'm incredibly stubborn on certain things... one example would be

"No, [insert random smelly homeless fat bloke's name here] cannot sleep on the couch for more than one night."

"Yes, he is, and there's nothing you can do about it"

"Fair enough, I will be down the letting agent at 9am tommorow morning, and handing in my notice".

Being a good housemate is an excellent bargaining chip... if anything goes wrong, you can threaten to leave and the other housemates will immediately turn on the one causing the problem... they don't want a good housemate to leave and be stuck with a dodgy one + whoever else moves in after. It is blackmail to some extent, but a reasonable form of it... you have to be a good person for it to work in the first place.

That applies to houses of 4+ people anyway. For a 2-person flatshare, live alone or with parents until you've got someone solid to move in with... disagreements between 2 people are harder to deal with because you can't get any backup, it's all you vs. them.

[Bob8]

I've never had any trouble... some minor problems with a girl who wouldn't clean a damn thing and tried to avoid every single bill.. but nothing seriously bad.

Then again, I've only ever really moved in with friends (or friends of friends at the worst), never with randoms, that's just asking for trouble.

It helps that I'm incredibly stubborn on certain things... one example would be

"No, [insert random smelly homeless fat bloke's name here] cannot sleep on the couch for more than one night."

"Yes, he is, and there's nothing you can do about it"

"Fair enough, I will be down the letting agent at 9am tommorow morning, and handing in my notice".

Being a good housemate is an excellent bargaining chip... if anything goes wrong, you can threaten to leave and the other housemates will immediately turn on the one causing the problem... they don't want a good housemate to leave and be stuck with a dodgy one + whoever else moves in after. It is blackmail to some extent, but a reasonable form of it... you have to be a good person for it to work in the first place.

That applies to houses of 4+ people anyway. For a 2-person flatshare, live alone or with parents until you've got someone solid to move in with... disagreements between 2 people are harder to deal with because you can't get any backup, it's all you vs. them.

The bargaining chip of being a good housemate does work. There was a house I shared with three others, where I would often be keeping the piece, doing the cleaning, removing strange fauna etc.

I was therefore allowed to let off steam occasionally. One a whiskey night, I would send one of them out to buy me a bottle of whiskey, which I would sit drink entirely to myself while watching TV (no matter what anyone else wanted to watch or whatever social events they had planned) and spend the time being abusive and Father Jack like.

This was accepted utterly as something I had every right to, as I would be stopping them from killing each other and removing strange, presumably terrestrial forms from parts of the house the next day.

[Guest Parry aka GOD]

The bargaining chip of being a good housemate does work. There was a house I shared with three others, where I would often be keeping the piece, doing the cleaning, removing strange fauna etc.

I was therefore allowed to let off steam occasionally. One a whiskey night, I would send one of them out to buy me a bottle of whiskey, which I would sit drink entirely to myself while watching TV (no matter what anyone else wanted to watch or whatever social events they had planned) and spend the time being abusive and Father Jack like.

This was accepted utterly as something I had every right to, as I would be stopping them from killing each other and removing strange, presumably terrestrial forms from parts of the house the next day.

My pick, post of the month.

[Kingding]

One of my students once told me that he (a carnivore) had lived with a group of vegans. One afternoon, alone in the house and craving meat, he fried some sausages.

The vegans returned home early, and caught him eating.

The forced him to go into the garden, dig a hole and bury the sausages.

They then held a short 'funeral service' for them.

Shamed and shunned, he found other lodgings.

Just read that and emitted a loud sound that sounded suspiciously like a large fart and have honked coffee all over my screen. The office is watching me with suspicion.

I thank you

[newly registered voter]

+1. It's all about expecting the rest of the world to conform to your standards, which of course is unrealistic.

Hopefully a happy medium can be achieved.

I lived with one person who used to get mad because they cleaned all the time but no one else did. No one else cleaned because eveything was always clean ! Why would you clean something twice ?

When I pointed out that maybe they should leave some stuff to get dirty they said "but I want it that clean". I suggested that there are lots of things I want, but I don't expect the rest of the world to get and do them for me I got a dirty look, as if cleaning resides in some sort of special catagory where you are allowed to impose your will on the rest of the world.

Fortunately people with excessive cleaning habits normally clear off pretty quickly. It's the slobs that tend to linger....

In my younger more stubborn days I had what can be described as a mexican stand-off with a slob of a housemate. I was the clean freak (monica from friends) and he used to repeat pretty much what you said above..why should we be cleaning when things are already clean.

This stand-off lasted about 9 or 10 months during which time

a) He managed to drive me insane

b ) I managed to drive him insane

c ) the both of us drove all of our housemates and their girlfriends / boyfriends up the walls to such an extent that they stopped speaking to both of us

d ) finally the atmosphere in the house was so poisonous the slob relented so I won ...........well actually all four other housemates moved out aswell....so when I found new people to move into the house I decided that I would chill out and never mention cleaning things again.

Lesson learned.

[Jim B.]

These stories are funny. And remind me why I have decided to live alone in a hovel rather than share with anyone (except a sexual partner). I just can't relax sharing with people, it's like being round your girlfriends parents house or something, you have to be on best behaviour all the time.

Worst I had was a young couple who seemed to have a female friend sleeping in their room all the time. And they would hoover up at 1 in the morning. The worst thing though was, being a veggie myself, that they cooked those goats heads in a pan in the oven. Horrible.

But on the whole I have been lucky, but know many friends who haven't.

[General Melchett]

The worst thing though was, being a veggie myself, that they cooked those goats heads in a pan in the oven. Horrible.

I think that would freak out most people, carnivores included.

I actually had one really good year of sharing, we all ended up life-long friends. We only split because we were all students and had to go our separate ways. Think Big bang Theory, but without the nice furnishings or hot chick across the way. But every other sharing experience was, at best, disappointing.

[Si1]

I've never had a flatmate who isn't mental and/or difficult to live with. The last one had a habit of sub-letting every spare room to his mates without telling the landlord, resulting in no end of conflict when the landlord paid a visit.

Never again do I share.....

I shared with a chef, he totally screwed about wrt rent and bils, I ended up leaving after 5 months and several stolen things - bottles of wine, a vacuum cleaner 'honestly no idea where it's gone, must be under something', money and the like. His mate even came to live on the sofa for 3 months - when I approached him about paying the (agreed) rent for living on our sofa, he said (no sh*t) 'I would do, but I'm skint, which is why I'm living here'. Despite spending several nights a week in the pub. Probably lost £1000+ after that flat-share. Aftwerwards my ploy is to rent a whole 2 bedder myself and agree beforehand to be alowed to sublet spare room, taking responsibility to the landlord for all costs. Has worked a treat, I'm in control, and if anything one of my sublettees thpought (correctly) I was the nutter after I had a bad relationship breakup and started mumbling to myself for months on end.

I was socialistically inclined beforehand, and I became the reactionary right-winger I am now as a result of the chef experience. Irresponsible tw*ts.

edit: oh yeah, the chef once commented to me how his girlfriend was a big cryer-baby because he only had to slap her slightly and she'd start moaning. Then he admitted he was a former amateur boxer. At that point I made my escape plans.