Share house of horrors: how I survived

Uni is starting up again soon, and by this point you may be growing tired of living with your parents. No privacy makes you feel like you’re living in some kind of real-life 1984, and the various conditions you have make you wish you were an orphan… almost. So you decide to look at moving out. At this point, you have two options: the smart, sensible option of renting (often with one or two other roommates to unburden your wallet a little); or the cheaper, more memorable option of living in a dodgy share house with ten other people. Having lived in the latter option, I am here to share with you an average day in the life of a share house student so you can have a firsthand account of life as an adult who cannot afford to live like one.

Share houses aren’t glorious; no one willingly wishes to live in one if they can afford a better option. They’re crowded, often don’t meet basic safety standards, and the people living with you make you reconsider your views on legalising murder. Yet there’s also a quaint, charming aspect to them. You grow to appreciate your housemates and their quirks, as well as the building housing you. And when you leave, you begin to miss the memories of everyone trying to catch a bird that had flown inside, and forget the experience of walking in on your roommate washing dishes in the bathtub.

[quote]You wake up one morning, and if you’re lucky, it will be in a bed.[/quote]

You wake up one morning, and if you’re lucky, it will be in a bed. The house I lived in was in the southeast suburbs of Melbourne, a large, two-story building that was at least a hundred years old. There were enough beds for eight people, so we needed to come up with creative solutions for having ten people living at the one address. Being creative university students, we decided to make a roster of when you could sleep in a bed.

So you wake up, usually to the sound of the daily morning disagreement. Today, one of the female housemates is yelling at a male one about his diet choices. The guy, who we’ll call Michael, made two-minute noodles and chose not to use the flavouring, instead thrown them out. “You idiot,” says the girl, reminding you of your parents’ reactions when they found out you didn’t get in to Med. “We save the flavourings for the soup we have at the end of the week.”

You get up and have breakfast. Before moving in, you had no idea there was a Chinese knockoff of Weet-Bix. You suspect you may be eating sawdust, but push through – at least you’re getting fibre. The chair is wonky and you think you guys should get a new one, but it’s a shame IKEA furniture is so expensive. So you resign yourself to folding a piece of paper and sliding it under a chair leg. You briefly wonder if this is what life was like in the Dark Ages.

[quote]Dinner is pizza, which is in the shape of the food pyramid. That’s got to somewhat count as a balanced meal, right?[/quote]

Lunch has been sorted. The Arts Students Society is having a BBQ to sell tickets for something. Sausages are free, and luckily there’s no limit on how many you can have. Today, you’re using public transport: petrol prices aren’t in your favour, and although you’re saving only $10, Dan Murphy’s has the finest goon you can buy for $4.95 on sale. “Sweet,” you think, “I probably won’t even have to share.”

You come home with an assignment. Curiously, the only thing that is high quality at home is the internet, and although Netflix and Chill is out of your collective price range, you’re more than happy to Torrent and Self-Loathe. However, you don’t even need to worry about the project; so many people have passed through these hallowed halls, there’s got to be at least one person who had to do a similar assignment. The communal hard drive was an excellent idea, and you hope the creator of it is living someplace warm with a leak-proof roof over their head. Dinner is pizza, which is in the shape of the food pyramid. That’s got to somewhat count as a balanced meal, right?

Tonight, you’re up to sleep on the couch. You hope the spider that was last seen in the living room has saved up and finally moved out of this place – something you hope to do one day. As you head off to bed, it begins to rain. “At least we won’t have to bother filling the pot up with water for the soup,” you think to yourself as you place it underneath the roof above the entryway.

Ross Lomazov

Ross Lomazov is a student of Biomedical Sciences at Monash with no idea where he's heading in life.

Image: Michael Mandiberg, Flickr Creative Commons license