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Petty 101: How to seek revenge on your housemates

Someone’s gotta do it


Being a student is tough. You have no money, no one to cook you dinner, and deadlines that you're never quite prepared to meet. But hardest of all, is having to live with other students (and their mess). When things get a little bit tense, why not turn to some of these ideas to satisfy your anger.

Toilet paper tactics

There is nothing worse than finding yourself out of loo roll. But buying toilet paper is never really fair at university – there’s always one person who does it more than anyone else. If that’s you, then maybe consider just keeping it all to yourself. One student did just that, and hid a secret stash in his bedroom; leaving everyone else to buy their own.

Climate Change

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Thermostats are a point of tension anywhere. Some like it warm, while some like it cold. But when your heating bill is eating away at your student loan, things get to be a little bit more fraught. In a house where the thermostat was set at a very specific 25.5°, one resident had enough. Waiting until everyone was gone to crank the temperature up to a toasty 30°, just for fun. Needless to say, things got a little heated after that.

The taxman

If you’re living in a student house, your food is going to get stolen at some point. It’s inevitable and heart breaking. So why not cushion the blow by making your housemates pay for exactly what they’ve taken? That’s what one fresher did – calculating the exact cost of all of the food that her flatmates took from her and demanding it from them. (We don’t know if they actually paid her back, though).

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Speedy eating

If doing all the calculations isn’t something you’re down for, why not do what this second year did and employ the ‘eat it before anyone else can’ technique. Upon finding that their cheese had a big ol’ chunk taken out of it, they proceeded to eat the rest of the block as quickly as possible to prevent further thefts. They did say it made them feel a bit sick, but you've got to do whatever you can to stop crime.

The shampoo steal

The shower can be an angry place. Lots of time to think, lots of time to get into a fake argument about the massive pile of recycling that no one's taken out yet. So no wonder that multiple students admit to have stolen their housemates toiletries to satisfy their need for revenge. It’s only fair.

The washing up warrior

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A washing up fiend. Every house has one. Every house hates one. They come out in the dead of night and use every plate, bowl and spoon that they can find, and leave them festering in the sink for the nice, tidy people to find weeks later. It’s frustrating and relentless, but what can you do? Well, one student decided to take action into her own hands, and moved all of the washing up from the kitchen, and out into the garden. That’s one way to send a message.