Why I decided to live alone

Most people spend three years of their degree living with others.

You spend your first year in student accommodation, and your second and third in a house with your mates.

Well, after two years of shambolic accommodation experiences at university, I decided for my third year that the best option for me was to live on my own.

Whilst I like my own space I was still apprehensive. I am very sociable and I wasn’t about buying a football and naming it Wilson to keep me company. Despite this, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how well everything has worked out.

We call this room “Party Central”

In order for people to see why living alone doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing here is my definitive list of why you should do it.

If you’re very particular about décor, living alone means you don’t have to deal with lots of other people’s tastes, and so you can fashion your place to your own stylistic preferences which means no more ugly IKEA canvases or generic posters hanging half on and half off the walls with blue tack – hurray!

Chances are if you look for property that hasn’t previously been lived in by student, you’ll be less likely to find mould and salmonella farms harvesting in cupboards and drawers, broken furniture strewn throughout the house or questionable stains on the carpets…

It’s a lot less hassle to not share things like hot water with several other people. Living alone means you can spend as long as you want in the bathroom without having to rush in and out of the shower before the boiler runs out of steam or having someone hammer on the door to tell you to hurry up when you’ve only just stepped in the bath.

In the evening, you can actually relax and wash the day off yourself. Living on your own means living on your own schedule. Before, when it was all about when your house mates wanted things done, you can now do chores like the vacuuming or washing the dishes when you want to not when you’re forced to.

Also, you don’t have to hand over the TV remote to anyone else or worry about confusing your bottles of milk with your housemates’ bottles – even if you were the unintentional milk thief…

You can bring guests over whenever you want without having to inform anyone else. There is nothing more frustrating when you want to have a fiesta but your house mate(s) have a ton of deadlines to complete and a 9AM the next morning. Living alone = party central.

When you live on your own, you start to notice things, like all the letters that come through the letterbox will be addressed to you – that never happens, you feel like such an adult.

But on a serious note, living alone gives you a real sense of responsibility. At home my parents dealt with everything, in halls the residential services dealt with everything, and in second year my house mate dealt mostly with everything.

This year I have to deal with the maintenance, the bills, the heating, the electrics and more often than not I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m learning and that’s all part of growing up and becoming independent.

Some advice to freshers or second years who are considering living alone: its not as bad as it seems. If you really feel like you can’t live without at least one other human then make sure you choose wisely. Find someone that you can see yourself living and getting along with for the whole academic year, because living with just one other person can be risky as you’re always going to be in each other’s space if you live in accommodation just suited for two. You’ll feel like you’re married. Trust.