Just in case you were looking to revisit your most horrific housemate memories.
Emblematic of the young Melburnian’s experience is sharehouse living. It’s a rite of passage for those of us lucky enough to be living our young adulthood out in this thriving city.
Some of us jump into the rental market with a bunch of mates and others clamber in together with total strangers from the internet. No matter how close or distant you originally were with your housemates, the sharehouse dynamic can change things drastically.
And while not all of us have been lucky enough to have housemates we love, we’ve definitely all had at least one bad housemate. Or at least one bad housemate experience.
Your bad housemate might have been the kind that left dishes in the sink for a little too long or they might have been a flat out criminal.
Here are our top 20 most cringeworthy housemate experiences:
1. Catching your housemate relaxing in the lounge room on a scorching hot day with an icepack on her shoulders. There was nothing cringeworthy about this until you realised the “icepack” was a bit of frozen salmon she was defrosting for dinner.
2. Drying your laundry in your room because you were afraid your housemate would steal your underwear. You may or may not have started cataloguing your underwear during this time.
3. Your housemate accidentally leaving their vibrator in the shower… for three whole days. You haven’t yet figured out if they either saw and forgot it every day or if they just didn’t shower for three days.
4. Your housemate using your other housemate’s electric toothbrush as a vibrator. You quite happily turned a blind eye.
5. And because bad things come in threes: coming home to find your vibrator turned on in your drawer without you having touched it. One of your housemates must have come in, turned it on, and then couldn’t figure out how to turn it off again.
6. Hearing the phrase, “Hey man, are these your dishes in the sink?”, asked by someone who definitely left those dishes in the sink themselves.
Image by Eva Marchingo
7. Your housemate not changing his sheets for the entire year you lived with him. He also didn’t have a bed frame.
8. Your housemate using the same bath towel for weeks until it literally turned black and you had to tell her enough was enough. She didn’t understand what the problem was.
9. Your housemate catfishing you on Tinder. To be fair, he came clean about it in the end.
10. Having to constantly remind that one housemate not to use metal on your Teflon pans. “Yeah, of course, I know that!” But you’d catch them doing it again and again and again and again.
11. Your housemate photoshopping bills to scam you. And the clandestine police investigation.
12. Your two housemates having a covert friends-with-benefits relationship, but everyone would always hear them sneaking into each other’s rooms. Needless to say, it didn’t end well.
13. Having to get between two feuding housemates in an alcohol-fueled midnight brawl. Weirdly enough, one of them was wearing a head torch. You never figured out why.
Image by Eva Marchingo
14. Your housemate stealing a whole bunch of your stuff, which they then sold to buy a Nintendo.
15. The spew and run. Your housemate has a big night despite knowing full and well they’ve got work at 7am the next morning at the café down the road. Forgetting their exploits from the night before, they set the alarm for 6:50am and dash out the door bright and early. Suddenly, you’re the one cleaning up the barf in and around the toilet.
16. That one demonstrative, patriarchal housemate finally moving out but taking both the vacuum and good couch. Neither actually belonged to him.
17. The toilet turning brown while you were away because no one else cleaned it. You were tempted to call in a forensic cleaner.
18. Your housemate passing out naked on top of his bed every weekend with the door wide open. His high-rise bed positioned his genitals right in your line of sight.
19. Your housemate’s puppy eating your hash stash from underneath your bed. The dog was a bit wonky afterwards, but then again, he’d always been a bit like that.
20. Or the same dog taking a wee on your housemate’s bed. The owner tried to cover her tracks by saying it must have been a stray cat. No one bought it.
Keen on another fun read? Check out our piece on the awkward situations all Melburnians are facing right now.
Never miss a story. Sign up to Beat’s newsletter and you’ll be served fresh music, arts, food and culture stories three times a week.
