Everything that will go wrong with your student house

Appliances will not work

You discover that your fridge/ freezer is actually a fridge or freezer, never both. The temperature dial is apparently only for decoration. No matter how many times you fiddle with it, both parts stay the same temperature as each other. You are forced to choose between having icy milk or mushy ice cream (Interestingly, both products come out the same consistency). A similar problem will be had with the oven. It will either cremate your pizza to within an inch of its life or fail to penetrate your frozen fish fillets. There is no middle ground. Suggested cooking times on packaging become irrelevant. You now live in a house of extremes.

Your oven will break

Even better, your oven will break altogether. You send an email to the landlord but receive no reply. When you ring, you are told that it won’t be fixed for 2 weeks because it is ‘not an emergency’. You will be forced to live off pasta and toast for the foreseeable future.

Rats

Ahhh rats. The mascot of all student houses. Southampton is particularly riddled with them. You best get comfortable with these furry friends, because soon they will be living in the walls of your house. You can pretend that the scratching in the ceiling is just the plumbing until one day you see it scupper across the living before your very eyes. You will set traps but there will be no sign of ratty. However some of the poison will be gone and the landlord informs you that they have become resistant to it. Goody!

Your toilet will break

The toilet is so old that they no longer manufacture the spare parts you need. You will be forced to live with the drip-drop noise for the rest of the year.

You flatmates will never wash up

It starts with one plate left on the side whilst in a rush to leave the house. Before you know it, pots and pans will be left on the side with flagrant disregard for how messy the kitchen becomes. Even after they’ve just watched you clean it. You will never be able to use your sink because people think its acceptable to leave plates in there. With food on them. With no intention to wash them. Even though there’s a perfectly good dishwasher. The pots of long-congealed pasta, remnants of salmon and takeaway boxes make the kitchen smell eternally like a landfill. Plastic ready meal trays will be deposited in the bin, but the cardboard sleeve mysteriously will not (Is this some sort of ritual to the Chicken Jalfrazi Gods we are unaware of?). Jars of sauce will also be left discarded on the side for someone else to deal with. No one told you when you signed the house contract you were also agreeing to being their maid.

Your plumbing will be fucked

Say goodbye to water pressure and temperature control. The hot water will take 5 million years to come on. Like the oven and fridge/freezer, the temperature dial in your shower is irrelevant. One shower will scald your skin whilst the other remains tepid at best. No one will ever use the downstairs shower so you are forced to engage in a Hunger Games style fight for cleanliness every morning. The radiators are located in the most inconvenient places so even when the heating is allowed on, it makes no difference to anything except your heating bill. Between this and the single glazing, you will be forced to live in sub zero temperatures for the rest of the year. We advise you invest in a warm winter coat now.

Your washing machine will break

You get the picture. Everything will break.