Uni Secret Santa gift ideas for the housemate you don’t like that much

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The time of year where you have to waste £10 of your own cash buying a crappy gift for someone you've been living with for three months but don't really know that well. All you know is that they use your plates without permission, they go to Shoosh way too often, and they leave their Primark underwear in the bathroom every day.

Flat Secret Santas seem like a great idea in November but in reality are the worst. This guide will give you some ideas of what to get your flat mate without having to spend much money at all – bonus!

Wow so Christmassy Sussex

1. Kitchen utensils

If your flatmate regularly steals your plate, cheese grater, cutlery or saucepan so it's time to buy them their own! Not only is this a great gift because you know it's something they don't already have but it's also a gift that benefits yourself. No longer will you be cleaning the remnants of their microwave mac and cheese off your favourite Ikea plate.

Estimated Price: £5

Feels like Christmas!

2. Deodorant

What on the surface may appear to be an entirely thoughtless gift, deodorant is actually fantastic. Cheap yet practical! Who doesn't need deodorant in their life? It's a gift that gives back. If you don't like the person you're gifting to, giving deodorant as a gift will fill you with a warm Christmassy glow, knowing they'll forever be plagued with the lingering thought "do I smell that bad?" (Bonus: If they do actually smell, a subtle, inoffensive way to give them a hint!)

Estimated Price: £2

Name a more perfect gift. I'll wait!

3. Stress ball

If you are buying for the kind of housemate who messages the group chat with a passive aggressive message every single time a crumb is left in the microwave, then a stress ball is the perfect gift! Washing up hasn't been done? Grab the stress ball. House mates being noisy? Give the stress ball a little squeeze. Pressure of the deadlines getting to you and you feel like taking it out on your housemates? You know what to do!

Estimated price: £3

Squeeze them stresses away!

4. Cheap wine

For the housemate who goes to Pryzm Wednesday's every single week without fail. She'll bloody love it! Lambrini? Blossom Hill? Co-op own brand white wine? Who gives a shit? When she's out with her gals she'll get slaughtered off literally anything.

Estimated Price: £4

Wonderful Christmas wine!

5. Literally anything from the Aldi Christmas aisle

I cannot stress this enough! Aldi will provide you with the perfect Christmas gift that looks pretty pricey, but will only cost you max £2. Plus, you can do your weekly shop at the same time!

Estimated cost: £2

6. Contraception

The perfect Secret Santa gift should be either useful to the receiver, or a good laugh. These tick both of these boxes. Condoms can either be given out of genuine fear for the amount of times your flat mate has had to get a chlamydia testing kit this term, or as an ironic gift because they've not had any action since coming to uni. Novelty JLS condoms? Even better. And if you're really broke, go to the health centre on campus to save your pennies – they're literally giving them away at no cost at all!

Estimated price: FREE

Christmas wrapping…

7. Loo roll

Needing to lay a big one and not having any toilet paper to hand is undoubtedly one of the worst feelings that you'll ever experience during you're time at Uni. So wrap up some bog roll, pop a ribbon on it and VOILA! The perfect Secret Santa gift.

Estimated cost: £2

"It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving" -Mother Theresa

8. The Co-op offers aisle

It's 20 minutes before you are due to exchange gifts and you still haven't bought anything. You've felt kinda bad for the last two days about it, but not bad enough to leave your bed to go and get something. This is your last resort. Get up! Run to Co-op! Literally just grab anything in the reduced aisle. Mixed fruit pot that goes off today? Fruit is healthy for you! A £1 bag of Doritos? Who doesn't love cool original? Some wafer thin chicken? Going vegetarian was ultimately their choice. Just go now! Go!

Walking in a reduced aisle Wonderland!