When you’re sharing a house with others — whether partners, friends or strangers — you’re bound to commit a faux pas in the eyes of someone. But is it an innocent mistake or a glaring red flag? In other words, on the grand scale of housemate no-nos, how bad are yours really?
Roommates.com in the US has conducted some research into the biggest housemate red flags — i.e. the worst things roommates can do in a shared house — and, apparently, according to the survey of Reddit users, the biggest red flags were messy shared spaces — specifically, the bathroom and kitchen.
Things like leaving the entire bathroom wet, not cleaning up hair (from one’s head or otherwise…), and, of course, leaving dirty dishes hanging around for days at a time.
Surprisingly, this ranked above not paying bills. (We can only surmise it’s because fewer people commit the faux pas of not paying a bill, and not because it’s not as annoying as a dirty bathroom.) Without further ado, the most annoying share house habits.
What Are The Worst Housemate Habits?
In other words, what NOT to do if you live with housemates. The top red flags are:
1. Leaving the bathroom messy
2. Leaving the kitchen messy
3. Leaving dirty laundry out
4. Someone who drinks all the time
5. Pets (Not taking responsibility for them etc)
6. Playing loud music at night
7. Inviting friends over too often
8. Not paying shared bills
Given that housemate horror stories are thick on the ground in cyberspace, these seem a little tame to us. However, there’s no denying that these are both very common and very annoying.
Questions To Ask Potential New Housemates
If you’re looking for new housemates, and need some help separating the wheat from the chaff, here are a few questions approved by the roommates.com team to help you out.
How loud do you like your music/ TV? How often do you drink/ smoke? How long do you think it’s ok for dishes to sit in the sink or for messes to sit in the common area? How often do you prefer to clean the floor/toilet? How have you handled conflict with roommates in the past?
Few of us genuinely want to terrorise those with whom we share our four walls. Depending on how bad your ‘red flag roommate’ is, it never hurts to be patient with other’s quirks.
Check out the Original Article At ELLE Australia.
