The Joys of Living in a Share House

The kitchen’s ceramic tiles were sticky, caked with grit and oil from past students. The door to my kitchen cupboard hung on for dear life by a single rusted hinge. No one ever changed the garbage and it always over flowed, a festering playground of rubbish for mice, insects and God knows what other kind of vermin. No one ever wiped up their crumbs, swept the floor, or cleaned out the microwave. On a good day it smelled like fresh fruit, fried rice or some exotic curry. But on a bad day, the smells ranged from curdled milk, to mysterious fridge leftovers.


I’d always dreamed about the day I could move out: live on my own, set my own rules, clean my room when I wanted to, eat what ever the hell I wanted, and sleep in late without waking up to the responsibility of Saturday morning chores. The only difference between that dream and reality was I never realized how challenging it would be initially be.

When you’re a student on a tight budget: surviving from day to day, coping with your studies and trying to make it in the ‘real world,’ your accommodation options are well, limited. Unless you’re the son or daughter of some wealthy upper-class business tycoon, you might as well rule out buying your own private flat facing the Brisbane River, or living on the top floor of some high rise city apartment building, your next option: a share house.

Now living in a share house isn’t always good mates, good food, and good times. It’s more along the lines of: noise, two minute noodles for lunch and dinner, cold showers and backed up toilets.

With the house comes responsibilities, from paying your rent on time, to making sure you’re eating a healthy balanced diet that doesn’t always include dehydrated meals that claim, ‘easy eats, just add hot water.’ When you’re on your own and away from family, you realize you’ve only got yourself to depend on, and that can be exciting or scary depending on which way you look at it.

One of the most disappointing aspects about living in a share house is you really don’t have much of a say of as to who you want to live with. The minute you pick up the phone and answer the ad that reads: “Cheap, affordable and clean student share house,” you automatically forfeit your rights to picking the perfect housemates. So in many ways it’s fair to say that with a share house comes strangers, and with those strangers come personal baggage that can delight you, or push every one of your buttons in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.

I moved into my first share house at the start of my degree. It was old, the color scheme was brown, I lived in the garage, and our dining room table stood propped up on folded Coles and Woolies advertisements. There was nothing remotely classy about the house, it was quite dirty, no one every cleaned the place, and if one tried, no one took notice of it anyway. The only time one could expect our place to be picked up was when our landlord would come downstairs on a whim: scrub a few pots and pans, put away the dishes, sweep a pile of crumbs, dirt and hair into the corner, give us the odd wave and then leave without saying a word. Yeah so the place was a dump, but it was cheap and economically charming.

The first day I moved in I was nervous. I’d never lived with strangers before; I was scared and uncertain of as to who would be receiving me on the other side. I pulled up to my new home and met my five housemates who spanned from different corners of the globe. They helped me bring my things to my bedroom, saw to it that I was comfortable and then left me to settle in. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed that afternoon thinking, “Hey, this isn’t going to be that bad after all.”

My first month in the house I found myself soon longing to go home: I missed my bedroom, I missed my mom’s cooking, my dogs, my friends and my family. Every week I’d call home and every week I’d put up a front,

‘Yeah mom, yeah dad, things are peachy keen at the new place.’

Honestly, I didn’t think I could withstand my whole academic career living in a house with strangers who’d helped to unearth every pet peeve of mine. I wanted my parents to come fix everything for me: make my housemate take out the garbage, tell my landlord to fix the shower that had been spurting out ice cold water, make my house mate chew her food with her mouth closed, and to get rid of the mouse that’d been living in my room for the past week.

As the days melted into weeks, and the weeks rolled into months, I soon found that with the pace of my studies, there was little if nothing I could do to change my current circumstances. So with that, I decided to make the best of my situation. After all, these are supposed to be some of the best years of ones young adult life.

I made it a point to get to know my new ‘family’ and in the process discovered things about them I’d probably turned a blind eye to when I first moved in. I realized we shared common goals and interests: we liked the same music, movies, TV shows and celebrities. I found the more I made a point to get to know them, the more I realized what good friends these people were really turning out to be.


My housemates and I put up with our shamble of a home and lived together for two years. Not only did my stay in my first share house force me to find the confidence and strength from within to accept responsibility for my life, but when I finally left in search of something nicer, I not only left with fond memories from the past two years, but I left with some of the best friends I’d ever made and will probably keep for life.