The ins and outs of living in a house of all boys’ house

They’re any landlords nightmare, and would make anybody that’s remotely ‘house-proud’ shudder. All boys’ houses have a reputation for being dirty, alcohol fuelled pits of lad-culture riddled depravity, and that’s not too far from the truth.

Nights out and pre-drinks

No matter how you feel, or if you just don’t fancy the night out, peer pressure is unavoidable in a house of just boys. As soon as you walk down from the sanctuary of your bedroom to the sitting room, it is inevitable that your boozed up housemates will be waiting on your excuse like a pack of baying hounds out for some blood.

No matter how legitimate your reason for ‘having a quiet one’ is, it won’t go down well and the likelihood is that you will be coerced into coming out… again.

Just stay in your bedroom and wait for it all to blow over

With a group of guys living in such close proximity, the pre-drinks and the night out can sometimes seem like a contest in which the house-members try to determine who is the alpha-male in the house, usually through their drinking ability and how loud they can shout “bombardier”.

My hero

If you do find yourself in the mood for a party, one of the best things about having a big all boys’ house is that the chances are someone else in the house will be keen too. And if not, you can just pressure them into coming out anyway.

Cleaning

Cleaning can be the main catalyst for conflict in the house. It’s an unnecessary evil that seemingly a lot of people think falls into the, “if you ignore it long enough, it will go away” category – like your mountain of dirty clothes, or Donald Trump.

One day you’ll brave it. If under 5 pictures of the newly cleaned kitchen don’t end up on the group chat, it hasn’t received enough coverage. There will certainly be a guy that believes that picking up a few cans in Freshers’ Week justifies cleaning immunity for the rest of the year, and will go missing on the by-weekly house clean that is carried out with about as much interest as a Methodist at Octoberfest.

‘I came to uni to the lead the life of a squalor’

A lot of cleaning gets put down as anonymous mess that was caused by no one. Usually the best way to avoid having to do your washing up, or unblocking the toilet post social, is channeling Shaggy’s mantra and “say it wasn’t you”. Absolute denial usually works a treat in an all boys’ houses because no one cares enough to hold a full profile trial.

Kitchen

The best way to understand the kitchen dynamics in an all boys’ house is to compare it to the African Savannah. Housemates often hunt alone to avoid the inevitable re-surfacing of food stealing evidence at the next house meeting, and so the best pickings are not brought to the attention of other hunters and your pilfering may go unnoticed.

Whats yours is mine, and whats mine is also mine

At the start of the year, the huntsmen of the house decide what is to be shared, and what is to be off limits to other hunters. This means nothing. Nothing and nobody is safe from the merciless thievery of their so called housemates.

Because so much is eaten, stolen and it’s often so sparse, it can sometimes feel like there has been a return to the feudal age. Cooked food becomes valuable and you’ll end up charging your housemate £1.50 for a nicely seasoned sweet potato chip.

Bathroom

Hair gets everywhere. Often, the sink looks like it’s been the scene of a nighttime encounter between Chewbacca, big foot and a shag pile carpet. There is certainly enough hair left uncaringly around the room to make Wayne Rooney regret shelling out thousands on his transplant.

A truly grizzly sink

Like the kitchen, it seems as though nothing is safe from theft. Toothpaste runs out remarkably quickly, and it’s not rare that you will be the second person to use your toothbrush to scrub the snakebite stains off your rotting teeth on a Thursday morning.

Purchasing loo roll seldom happens in an all boys’ house. This is a problem that has brought forth innovative techniques, and even stealing toilet paper from uni buildings and local pubs.

Girlfriends

Pay up or get out. In an environment in which any penny spent on utility bills can’t be spent on pints or parties, use of house hold appliances is avoided at all costs. For this reason, girlfriends illicit a real problem for the non-hosting housemates.

She’s got it right

Who’s paying for the heating they’re absorbing? Have they brought their own toilet roll? Have they got any mates?

The house Alpha

Establishing a house Alpha is something that may upset the the group dynamic. With no diplomatic forum to elect the leader, it is left to each house member to subtly influence the decision through various conspiratorial subtleties.

You could become the house liaison with the landlord. The voluntary acquisition of challenging roles of responsibility such as this resonate among the remaining housemates as a bid for house supremacy. Any admin task undertaken by a member of the cohort is very much celebrated by the others as it is usually the norm to avoid any act of maturity.

‘This is my swamp!’

The team

The general success of a boys’ house is not however based on it having a leader, but rather the team as a whole.

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