How to Be a Good Housemate

Nobody teaches you how to be a good housemate. School teaches you Pythagoras. University teaches you that three-day-old pasta is technically still edible if you microwave it with enough conviction. Your parents teach you to make your bed, allegedly, though the evidence is mixed.

But nobody sits you down and says: here is how to share 60 square metres with another human being without one of you ending up on a true crime podcast. Here’s what we’ve learned — from personal experience and from everyone we know who’s lived with housemates — about being someone people don’t secretly want to push down the stairs.

Do your washing up

This gets its own section because it is, statistically speaking, the number one cause of housemate resentment in the United Kingdom. I don’t have a source for that statistic. I don’t need one. Everyone knows.

If you use a plate, wash the plate. If you use a pan, wash the pan. Not “in a bit.” Not “after this episode.” Not “once it’s finished soaking” — a process that has never, in the history of shared kitchens, led to anyone actually coming back and washing the thing. Do it now. Two minutes. That is all it takes. Two minutes between you and being the kind of person your housemate privately rants about to their group chat.

Replace what you finish

Finished the milk? Buy more milk. Used the last of the loo roll? Replace the loo roll.Finished someone else’s peanut butter at 1am because you were hungry and it was right there? Replace the peanut butter and never speak of it again.

This isn’t really about the milk. It’s about demonstrating that you are aware other people exist in the same space. That you understand cause and effect. That you have moved beyond the emotional development of a golden retriever. Small gestures, massive impact.

Keep it down after 10pm

You do not need to become a ghost. But after 10pm, operate on the assumption that someone nearby is either sleeping or trying to. Headphones exist. Soft-close doors exist. The ability to not have a phone call on speaker in the kitchen at 11:45pm also exists, and I would strongly recommend discovering it.

Special mentions: do not start a Joe Wicks workout in the living room at midnight. Do not decide that 11pm is the right time to reorganise your wardrobe. Do not — and I genuinely cannot stress this enough — blend a smoothie after dark. The sound of a blender at midnight is an act of psychological violence.

Clean the bathroom

Here is something nobody tells you until it’s too late: every time you use the bathroom, you leave evidence. Hair in the drain. Toothpaste in the sink. A general aura of “someone was here.” None of this disappears on its own. The cleaning fairy is not real. I’ve waited. She’s not coming.

A thirty-second wipe of the sink after you use it. A quick check of the shower drain. An occasional deep clean of the toilet that you don’t announce to the group chat as though you’ve just completed a charity marathon. Just do it quietly, regularly, and without keeping score.

Communicate like a human being

If something bothers you, say it. Out loud. With words. To the person. Not via a passive-aggressive Post-it note stuck to the fridge. Not via a “subtle” meme in the house group chat. Not via six months of bottled-up silence followed by a disproportionate explosion over a teaspoon left on the counter.

“Hey, would you mind not leaving your stuff on the kitchen table?” is a perfectly reasonable sentence that takes five seconds. Most people are not deliberately being annoying. They just don’t know it bothers you. Tell them. Early. While it’s still small. Before it calcifies into genuine hatred.

Respect shared spaces

The living room is not your office, your gym, or your extended wardrobe. If you’ve been camped on the sofa since lunchtime surrounded by mugs, snack wrappers, a laptop, two chargers, and a blanket that now counts as a territorial claim, maybe pack up occasionally. Other people live here too. They might want to sit down. On their own sofa. In their own home. Without navigating your stuff like an obstacle course.

Pay bills on time

Set up a standing order. Use a bill-splitting app. Automate the whole thing so nobody ever has to send a “Hey, just a reminder about the gas bill” text. Because that text is never just a reminder. That text is a contained scream. Pay your share. On time. Every time. This is the single easiest way to be a good housemate, and it requires no effort beyond the initial setup.

Warn people about guests

Having friends over is fine. Nobody is saying you need to submit a guest list 48 hours in advance. But a quick “heads up, having a couple of people round on Saturday” means your housemate doesn’t walk out of their bedroom at 11pm in their pants to find six strangers in the kitchen eating their crisps.

Also: if your partner is staying over more than three nights a week, that’s not “staying over.” That’s a tenancy. Have the conversation.

Thermostat etiquette

Before touching the thermostat, try a jumper. Before turning the heating off entirely, check that nobody else is home and shivering in their room wondering why the radiator has gone cold. The thermostat is shared infrastructure. Treat it like a democracy, not a dictatorship. Agree on a range. Stick to it. If you run hot, open your own window with your own door shut. Don’t heat the street with everyone else’s money.

Take the bins out

The bin is full. You can see it’s full. The lid no longer closes. There is a small tower of rubbish balanced on top in a way that defies engineering. Do not carefully place one more thing on the pile and walk away like nothing happened. Take the bin out. Without being asked. Without sending a message about it. Without expecting a round of applause. Just take it out. This is the housemate equivalent of holding a door open for someone — minimum effort, maximum goodwill.

Pick the right place

Being a good housemate starts before you even move in. Half the friction in shared living comes from the flat itself — rubbish insulation, slow broadband, a boiler that sounds like a helicopter taking off every time someone runs a bath. If the flat is working against you, even the best housemates will struggle. Here’s what to research before committing to a rental.

A Viven rental report tells you the things the letting agent won’t: broadband speeds, energy performance, council tax band, transport links, crime data, and local amenities. Everything you need to know about whether a place is actually worth living in, before you sign 12 months of your life away. Because the thermostat wars are bad enough without discovering that your new flat has the insulation rating of a garden shed.