‘Weaponise the Sharpie’: Five tips for surviving Lancaster University housing hell

Picture this, you come in from your evening lecture, you are tired, soaked from the rain and you fancy relaxing in your accommodation.

But all of a sudden, you are met with the dank smell of decaying, overflowing bins – even though you had just taken them out the night before, and the sink is filled with dirty plates that aren’t yours.

We’ve all been there, some of us are currently there, but don’t worry – we’ve graciously come up with five tips to make housemates a little bit hellish.

1. Weaponise the Sharpie

Thieves are common criminals in student halls which means you better whip out the good old permanent marker.

Mark your territory and brand your kitchen valuables with your name. The bolder the better. Of course, we all know what the most valuable and coveted kitchen item is: milk. It is milk that will arouse housemate warfare.

I have seen people go to extreme lengths to protect their precious dairy product, even sketching a line on the carton to mark where the milk was up to last time they used it.

This is evidently a serious matter that, left unchecked (and un-Sharpied) could lead to bloodthirsty, barbaric outrage.

2. Create a bin rota

Ah yes, the dreaded rubbish disposal. Now, to many of you reading this, it may come as a surprise that bins do indeed need to be taken out. Unfortunately, there is no recycling fairy who does the job for you; this is a misconception that many housemates will fall victim to.

To avoid condemning yourself to the title of “binman”, you should suggest creating a rota with the remainder of your housemates to ensure that everyone plays their part in this ball-ache of a job.

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This way, you are spared the inevitable seething resentment that soon grows between you and your housemates when they indeed, do not, take the bins out of their own volition.

3. Remember this is temporary

Although a select few of your housemates may make you want to scream into your pillow every night or indeed drink bleach (a cleaning chemical which they are likely not familiar with, or just hygiene in general), you must remember that your current housing situation is temporary.

Next year, you will hopefully be living with rational human beings who are familiar with basic hygiene. Likely, they are people whom you already live with (the clean ones) or friends on your course who seem to keep their keyboard clean, so you have high hopes for their treatment of a shared kitchen.

4. Invest in some ear defenders

We all make a fair bit of noise in student accommodation: halls are meant to be baptised by blast-worthy music and feral pre-drinks. However, this particular tip goes out to all of you with nocturnal housemates who decide to come alive at 3am, on a Monday.

Of course we may applaud a late night squeaky bed (good for you), but we have all retired to our rooms ready to get plenty of sleep for the encroaching 9am seminar the next morning when suddenly… the stadium-level speaker in the room above is activated.

Worst of all, it’s blasting heavy metal. Very heavy metal. Now this is where I can help all of you sleeping beauties: instead of being the naggy grandma, demanding the volume be turned down, all you have to do is pop those ear defenders on and embrace the tranquillity. Very easily, the heavy metal becomes much lighter metal.

5. Bacterial wipes are your bestie

Housemates left a mess? Give it a swipe with a wipe. Although we don’t want to turn into these messy housemate’s mummy’s, sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and wipe down the stove top if you want to use it.

Moreover, the best thing about these bacterial wipes is that they’re like a cleaning set for dummies. So your housemates who have spilt last week’s bolognaise all over the counter (and watched you clean up their mess) may follow in your footsteps once they see just how easy it is to clean up after themselves.

Hopefully, having read these five housing hell tips, you may be able to survive first year student accommodation and, having selected next year’s housemates carefully, never have to read this guide again.

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