How to choose which friends to live with next year

We’re approaching that horrendous time of year: house-viewing-season. If you’ve already been living off campus for the last year, you know how annoying it is having to clean and tidy (two words not in many students’ vocabularies) your house at least once a week for viewings, on top of being forced to make small-talk with a bunch of dazed first years about bill prices and central heating.

However, if this is your first rodeo, there’s no doubt that you’re very excited at the prospect of choosing your very own digs and your very own housemates. I bet you’re all so certain that you’re all going to get on so much better than you do with your current flatmates because you actually chose to live together. Oh sweet innocence. Oh blind, blind youth.

Choosing the right housemates is a lot harder than you’d initially think, and there are many key factors that you probably haven’t even considered. Here are just a few of the qualities you should and shouldn’t be looking for when picking which friends you should live with next year.

I just hope for your sake that you haven’t already started going to viewings with Liability-Liam.

Do: Find someone with a part-time job that might benefit you in some way

Whether it’s bringing home free food from a restaurant, getting you free entry to the club, or giving you discounts at lazer quest, your friends are your greatest strengths: take advantage of them.

Don’t: Take the room next to the messy drunk

I don’t care if it’s the biggest room – if Liability-Liam is going to be in the room next to you then you must quickly abort and find someone that’s willing to swap. Scooping Liam’s sick out of the sink first thing on a Sunday morning isn’t how you want to be spending your second year of uni. The same goes for the room next to the bathroom. It seems like a good idea at the time, but hearing your dearest friends take a shit mere inches from your head whilst you’re lying in bed is an immediate path towards resentment.

This is NOT the person you want to be living with

Do: Live with someone with the same clothes size as you

Double the wardrobe means double the period between laundry days, after all. This one’s pretty self-explanatory – living with someone that’s the same size as you (and with similar style) means you’ve got more outfit choices for nights’ out and it will also mean you’re less tempted to spend your dwindling student loan on ASOS if you’ve got more clothes to choose from in the first place.

Don’t: Choose people you doubt will even get into second year

Trust me, you don’t want to spend the first couple of weeks of the new semester frantically posting on the UEA Facebook groups to find someone to fill your spare room. God knows who’ll you’ll end up with. Also, if someone’s struggling to get 40 per cent in first year, that’s not the kind of person you need in your life. I’m telling you.

By week five any dead-weight housemates are phased out. Peak for Katie

Do: Find someone that has a car (and is willing to bring it up to uni)

Food shops, aldi runs, house trips into town, lifts to the station, lifts to campus — the list is endless. This person, if they aren’t already, needs to become your best friend. Try and do them as many favours as you physically can, so that you know you can always count on them for a lift when the time comes.

Don’t: Live with entirely messy people

It’s different in halls. You don’t actually like 60 per cent of the people on your corridor so you don’t mind posting pass-agg messages on the flat Whatsapp three times a week asking people to do their fucking washing up because it’s festering and you’re pretty sure you saw a little white tail under the cupboards the other day.

But in second and third year houses, the group is smaller, you actually like the people and you don’t want to be the person who’s constantly harrassing everyone to tidy up after themselves. Thus, by living with (reasonably) tidy people, you minimise your chances of becoming the house snob.

Don’t be the house snob. Nobody likes the house snob.

Everyone hates the post-it prude

Do: Find an organised one

There are so many things you have to worry about that don’t even cross your mind in halls: bin day, bills, rent, and maintaining a healthy relationship with your landlord. The person which you will thank endlessly for seeing to all of the above takes on the motherly role in the house. You know, the kind of person that gently knocks on your door at 10am on a Wednesday when you’ve been to the LCR the night before and they know you’ve got a lecture at 11. They’ve probably already put the kettle on for you to coax you out of bed and into your coat. You thought that coming to uni would be all about independence, but we all need a mum really.

Without the ‘mum’ figure you will be entirely lost. Or homeless.

Don’t: Live with anyone on the committee of a big society or sports team

Unless, of course, you don’t mind your entire downstairs being trashed any time it’s their turn to host a pre-drinks. And I mean trashed.

Do: Find someone with a TV that they don’t mind putting in the living room

How else are you going to have your house viewings of Planet Earth II and The Apprentice, all snuggled up together on the sofa? You definitely aren’t all going to fit on Sam’s single bed, all crowded around his falling-to-pieces Lenovo. (And for the record, TV licenses are for wimps.)

The same goes for someone who’s got good speakers that they’re willing to keep in the communal areas. This is just as necessary, if not more so, than the communal television. For starters, speakers in the kitchen make cooking at least twice as enjoyable. Secondly, think of all the pre-drinks potential. Second year is all about the house parties, and everyone knows that every good house party needs at least one decent set of speakers.

Who’s going to come round for pres if there’s no music?

Don’t: Live with anyone that’s stingy when it comes to money

At any opportunity when your wallet or purse makes an appearance, whether it’s for a taxi, at the pub, or even when they follow you along to do your weekly shop, they will pounce. “Oh hey, since you’ve got your wallet out, is there any chance I could grab that £2.39 I leant you like six weeks ago for that coffee?”

You’d think that living together would mean that as long as you both remain basically even on the owing front, it’s not too much of a big deal. But oh, it sure is to them. The scroungy sod will complain all semester about how shit their student loan is, only to blow £150 on ASOS in week 10. They always seem to conveniently forget any time they owe you money, too.

See that full stop? That full stop is the physical embodiment of pent-up resentment