Can 11 people survive in one student house?

The ups and downs of life when 11 students live together

Student living has its ups and downs – its chaotic, annoying, stressful at times. But most of all its where you will form your best memories of university. For the purpose of this blog post, I will be drawing on my experience of living in a student house with 10 (yes, 10) other flatmates.

Living in such a large group exaggerates everything. But you’ll probably experience some of these ups and downs of communal living at university, too.

Hopefully this blog will let you know that everyone has similar experiences – and how to handle them!

The downs

You’re going to fall out

Communal living is not always so lovely. It means living with people who are often on a completely different schedule (everyone has a housemate who can’t get up before 2pm).

People always have different moods and different stressful periods with their course. This means that falling out and having disagreements is inevitable and even healthy. It is often through disagreements that you make changes that benefit you all.

For example, all of our disagreements have come down to cleaning. The kitchen can get very, very dirty and it all reached a head during exam time when everybody was stressed out with revision and didn’t want to have to come home to a dirty kitchen. Half of the house wanted to pay for a cleaner to come and clean, so we didn’t have to worry about it while we were revising. The other half wanted to clean it ourselves. This caused a massive rift in the house as we couldn’t agree.

Luckily, one night a housemate came home from the pub slightly intoxicated – claimed they had had enough of the arguing – whacked a Mamma Mia playlist on full volume and scrubbed everything– it had never looked so sparkly and clean.

Arguments are always going to be stressful – but sometimes it’s necessary to disagree so that things can get sorted out – but try not to take these petty arguments about trivial things such as cleaning too personally as they really don’t need to be.

You’re going to be kept awake

Whether someone’s deciding to have friends back after a night out, hosting pre-drinks in the kitchen, or are just deciding to clean their room at 3am – there are going to be nights where the noise will get too much.

Earplugs are a solid investment or just telling yourself that it’s all part of the university experience. Communal living can be a good character-building experience. Where else can you learn to cope with people on different time schedules to you?

If you do it nicely, there’s nothing wrong with asking someone to be a bit quieter.

Illness spreads like wildfire

If one person is ill – you’re all going to be.

Having so many people sharing one kitchen and all using the same bathroom, it goes without saying that in terms of germs, what’s yours is mine in an 11-person house.

All you can do to prepare is have cleaning products ready to disinfect every surface when the stomach bugs and flu arrive. On the bright side of things, your immune system will quickly toughen up. After you graduate, you might never be ill again.

You won’t be close to everyone

Living in such a large group often feels like a weird social experiment.

Part of the university experience is learning the types of people you get along with and those you don’t. For me, living in an 11-person house has really made me realise not everyone you spend time with will become one of your best friends.

The best thing to do is to figure out who you get along with the most and not stress about trying to be close friends with everyone – it just isn’t possible.

The ups

The views

As you can probably imagine, in a house with 11 people there are five floors to fit all the bedrooms. This means that, at the top of the house you get some pretty spectacular views. We’re lucky enough to have a balcony that offers a cracking view of the sunset. When the stress of the cleaning arguments get too much it is nice to sit on the balcony and watch the sunset.

I realise having an amazing view is pretty specific to this house, but you’ll quickly find something about your student accommodation that makes it worthwhile. Whether it’s got a great garden or it’s close to a park, pub or it’s got a power shower, you’ll quickly find there’s something you’ll cherish about where you live.

There is always someone around

The thing about life in an 11-person student house was that it is busy. The house rarely sleeps because there are so many people living their own lives and doing their own thing but with one common base – your house. This has both positives and negatives. One is that whatever time of day there will always be someone in to talk to.

One particular good memory was getting locked out on a particularly cold night and forgetting my key. I had rung my housemate who said they were going to stay awake to let me in but by the time I got home they had fallen asleep and weren’t picking up the phone.  I was frantically ringing the door-bell for around 15 minutes before, finally, one of my flatmates got up to let me in at 3am. I was really grateful for my many housemates at this stage.

Uni work

Part of my course means that I have to prepare presentations on certain modules which were graded. There is nothing quite like having a full 10-person audience to practise to. Also, the night before essays are due, there’s always someone available to proofread or offer a sounding-board.

With so many different degree disciplines in one house this can prove really helpful when you need a second opinion on a piece of work.

A shared experience

So that was an overview of my experience in a drastically large student house. This decision resulted from the well-known stress after first year. You need to find a house for second year but don’t want to leave anyone out.

My advice now: don’t rush and don’t feel bad if you can’t live with everyone – you’ll still be friends even if you don’t live with someone and see them every day. Despite some pretty tense periods in the house, I’m grateful for the experience it has given me. I realise it’s unlikely I’ll ever repeat it.

On the whole it’s been a positive experience. Even though I will probably never be able to look at a tea towel again without remembering the states that they’ve ended up in our kitchen!