Flatsharing vs Living With Parents In Your 20s: 8 Big Fat Reasons (For Flatsharing)
Ahhhhh, millennials. We’re a catch all right, don’t you worry about that. Income? Low. Hygiene? Poor. Unemployment looms over us like the crapstorm of pollution that plagues the earth and our tastes change every 7.63 seconds depending on which decade we fancy recycling next (who cares that our degrees are useless when we can make a living conning one another endlessly into buying unsightly 90s hand-me-downs for extortionate amounts on Depop! #business).
1. Living with your parents isn’t that cool
I do. I need them. Mummy. No, they’re lovely, the best, but they kinda grate a little when they’re berating you daily for leaving the goddamn toothpaste on top of the goddamn sink instead of putting it back in the goddamn toothpaste cup. And don’t even get me started on the cheddar. Why aren’t you Sellotaping the bag shut after you’ve used it? I don’t care if you couldn’t find the Sellotape, you know where the sewing box is. Why didn’t you sew it shut? Do you think your father and I work all day to come home to stale cheddar? Would the Obamas eat stale cheddar?
2. Please welcome special guest Captain Obvious for this one:
Captain Obvious: ‘Unless you’ve won the lottery thrice or you run a very successful meth empire, you sure as hell aren’t affording a studio flat in London in your twenties. An ambitious cupboard, maybe. Flat? Nope.’
3. Soothe your burgeoning sense of self-loathing and general despair at life with enjoyable social gatherings, e.g. flat dinners
Get cosy with a film and a takeaway or cook up a storm and eat it at the table like actual grown-ups. El vino shall flow, the conversation likewise, and you’ll start to feel warm and fuzzy inside. And if things get weird and Neil starts to tell you about how he once killed a man with his bare hands, I don’t know, just smile and nod. Everyone has their quirks, man. Chill.
4. Sharing is caring, baby
Clothes, utensils, cooking ingredients, Nicolas Cage DVD box sets, you name it. ALL the human life essentials, multiplied under your roof, there to borrow if you misplace your own. You’ll forego the last minute supermarket dash when you realise you’re out of cumin, and never again will you have to go to work without any trousers on because yours are in the wash.
5. If a mad axe-murderer breaks in, you can use your flatmate as a human shield
Generally this will be considered wrong and bad, though. So maybe think of it as, like, a last resort.
6. After a hectic day of work, you’ll have likeminded people you can moan with
Horrible bosses, irritating colleagues and undervalued overtime, amiright?!?!?! In a flatshare, at least you’re coming home to people who relate, friends you can drown your sorrows with. Beats screaming into your Union J pillow, alone. Not that I have one of those. Bye.
7. Makes for way better first Tinder date conversation
Picture it: you’ve travelled an hour and twenty minutes to meet Lucy, absolute sort, obviously, on the edgiest edges of Bethnal Green. Brand new 90s get-up on, yours from Depop for a cheeky £176738. Love is in the air, you’re feeling good, but here’s the thing: there’s only so long you can mask the fact that not only are you in no way charming or charismatic generally, at all, but you’re still living in your childhood bedroom in Croydon. And what are you supposed to say about that? ‘Sometimes, Lucy, when Mum’s feeling a little fruity, she’ll give me cornflakes and shreddies in the same bowl. Like, mixed’. Or if you live alone, what then? ‘In a studio flat, Lucy, no one can hear you scream’.What you need is banter, my friend. Flatmate banter stories. The latest mischief Greggers has gotten himself into, the time he prank called the local Chinese. That kind of stuff is gold.
8. You’ll grow as a person… Or something
Imagine the furthest thing from a life coach, and that’s me, but seriously: living with new people from different backgrounds and cultures can only be beneficial. You can LEARN stuff. COOL stuff. Opportunities will arise, like travel and business and maybe even lurrrrve. When you open the door to your new flatshare, you’re opening a thousand other doors with it, and that is outrageously bad writing/ I sound like I’m on MDMA, but just go with it, man, because maybe this is me now. PARENTS, HUH. WHO NEEDS THEM?
Old people hate us – literally hate us, and as a result we’re leaving the EU, by the way – but no sir we give not one rat’s ass because in the words of Taylor Swift we’re miserable and magical and we’re, like, feeling twenty-two. We’re a goddamn delight, is what we are, and at this pinnacle time, in the prime of our lives, we have to stick together. Enter flatsharing, and a smorgasbord of reasons why the lot of us should absolutely be cohabiting homes not with our parents, not on our own, but together, as one, as we navigate the sort of exciting but also really, very terrifying future that lies ahead.
Let’s face it, finding a place of your own to rent is no dream job…but we’ve got you covered. Spare rooms to rent in London, and all over the place. Deep breaths guys. You got this.
