This is a Guest Post by Tom Gatzen from Ideal Flatmate
If you don’t already do this, you can consider it more of a ‘9 Life Hacks to Live Cheaper in London’ kind of article. You are welcome.
1. You get seriously hyped when you spy an open, but full, pack of food in someone’s cupboard.
Cereal, biscuits, etc. Because let’s face it, when the pack’s open and it’s basically full anyway—who’s going to notice the weeny(ish) bit you’ve had? Unless you have flatmates who count their hobnobs. Ha. Yeah. Weirdos. Maybe do make a mental note to start counting yours, though.
2. Jars/containers of stuff are very good.
Hair wax, makeup, moisturiser: all particularly hard for one to keep track of the contents. No one can tell—or prove, at least—that you’re gradually depleting their peanut butter. Butter, of course, is another key one, and if someone’s bought Lurpak then quite frankly they’re asking for it!
3. You never take a significant amount of food from one person’s cupboard.
What are you, some kind of idiot? Only ever take a little bit from each.
4. If you’re a real pro, you’ll make sure to reposition all condiments exactly as they were, at the same angle, on the same co-ordinate to the nth degree.
But let’s face it, we’re all lowlifes, none of us are real pros, so naturally we forget. We leave stuff out on the side, and lo the pass-agg Whatsapp doth cometh in the group chat: ‘Guys, not being funny but this is the 4th time this week I’ve found my vegetable stock out of its place and I don’t really want to have to get my boyfriend involved again x’. Oh lay off, Gabby!
5. You keep your empty shampoo/conditioner bottles in the bathroom to make it look as though you have your own and you are in fact not using other peoples in abundance.
This was only ever a temporary solution—just to tide you over until you find a minute to run to Boots—except it’s been 3 weeks now, and you can only afford the 99p stuff that makes your hair horrible and Gabby is on £25k now anyway and she still owes you £3.20 from that sink bleach you bought that one time so really, what’s a bit of John Frieda between friends?
6. Admit it—you’ve stolen pants before.
Get it all out in the open. Sometimes you just haven’t had a chance to do your washing, man, and you’re emphatically at odds with the idea of having coarse denim rubbing up against a bare crotch like those commando animals. Commanimals, if you will.
Whatever you do, though, don’t get caught. Panty stealers are the worst. Lowest of the low. If you’re even so much as accused, you’re finished.
7. Sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night—
Because you’ve even used your flatmate’s razor. Their razor. Where the hell has that razor been? You literally walked past Boots twice today, why didn’t you go in and buy a razor that hasn’t been in someone’s…?!?!
But it’s too late now; there’s only one razor in the shower, and it’s not yours but you proceed to rub it up and down your body because that is just who you are.
8. You definitely don’t bother replacing your phone charger when it breaks.
Why bother when you literally have the pick of, like, 2 to 4 others that exist in your flat?
You are hated, loathed, perpetually because no one’s charger is ever in their room when they need it. Sometimes, you will take your flatmate’s charger out of the house with you without asking. No one likes you.
9. It’s not uncommon for you to borrow things and then lose them.
Your flatmates’ clothes seem to evaporate into thin air in the hellhole that is your bedroom, which is precisely why you’re not allowed to borrow them. You then, obviously, have to pretend you never took them—until they show up down the side of your bed six weeks later, and you can’t give them back lest you topple your web of lies.
Naturally, you proceed to stuff them down the side of their owner’s bed, as though they were there all along, thus framing the victim for your own slovenly negligence in what is the perfect crime. You were never here.
So yeah, in hindsight, this article could also be titled, ‘9 Ways to be the Flatmate who Steals’ or ‘9 Ways You Know You’re Going to Die Alone’. You’re just the worst, ever, basically. Your mum probably still loves you, though. So there’s that.