The Housemate Saga
This is my favourite of all my stories of sharehouse living with strangers from Gumtree.*
It is long and anyone who knows me in real life has heard it ten million times before, so, my apologies.
* Except maybe this one.
JULY 2010 - JANUARY 2011
I was living with a couple I’d found on Gumtree; Male Housemate and Female Housemate. Things had started off well, though perhaps stiffly, as I was at least six years younger than Male Housemate and eleven years younger than Female Housemate. It was probably a mistake that when I moved in I’d only met Male Housemate.
The three of us had moved into a rented house at the same time, and all signed the same lease.
I suppose the first warning sign was when they told me they were trying for a baby… two weeks after I’d moved in. Male Housemate was only 25 and had three years of a Masters degree to go so this came as a huge shock.
The next warning sign was more subtle. At first they told me to make myself more at home around the house than I had been, so amongst their many items of furniture and decorations I placed one glass vase and a framed photo of my dog (the one who lives with my parents) on the mantelpiece. Female Housemate had photos of herself and her friends and family all over the house, so I felt that was appropriate.
A few days later I found the photo and vase back in my room.
I asked Female Housemate why they’d been moved and she said she thought I’d prefer them in there. I replied that I found that strange since I’d deliberately put them on the mantelpiece after she’d told me to make myself more at home. We agreed that I’d put them back.
The next time I left the house, they were back in my room.
Though we were always civil to each others’ faces, and I made sure to have the moral high ground by never touching their things or attempting any sort of tit-for-tat behaviour, this passive aggression snowballed. I became paranoid every time something of mine was moved; were they angry at me? Was it deliberate?
Another warning sign was when I told Female Housemate in October that I’d be having a birthday party in December. She said that was fine, especially since she and her boyfriend were having their own party on the same night of my take home exam, and I had said I’d stay at my then-boyfriend’s house to accommodate them. Then, two days before my party, she told me she didn’t want anybody to come over in case they touched her things. I told her that was unreasonable, especially since she’d known for months about that party, and it was only 15-20 people. I suggested that if she was worried she could put her things in her bedroom. Begrudgingly, she did. As I’d predicted, it was the world’s tamest party.
Then I went to Europe for three weeks and on my return, everything was awful.
FEBRUARY 2011
The Saturday before I was to leave for Europe, the real estate agent was going to come over to inspect the property. Male Housemate asked me to get a cleaner I knew to come before the inspection.
A day before the inspection, Female Housemate sent me a text to tell me that Male Housemate had gardened and she’d “cleaned the carport” (swept a bit of concrete, I’d done it before and it takes all of 3 minutes) so they wanted me to pay for the cleaner.
I was pretty pissed off.
a) They have cancelled the cleaner at very short notice the last two times. The cleaner is a lovely woman and a friend of mine. I couldn’t cancel her again.
b) Who are they to decide I couldn’t do my own cleaning?
c) I couldn’t afford to pay for a cleaner to clean a house I wouldn’t even be living in for three weeks after she came.
I told Female Housemate that wasn’t fair, she argued back via text.
Instead of cancelling, Mum paid for the cleaner to clean her house at the same time instead.
I went home and cleaned the house. The real estate agent doesn’t know we have dogs, so I’d made sure my dog was at my parents’ house. My housemates’ Rottweiler, however, was still around, and it was very unusual that I hadn’t seen my housemates for a couple of days.
I messaged them to find out what I was supposed to do with their enormous dog while the agent was here.
No response.
An hour or two after the agent should have arrived, I finally got a response. Male Housemate told me they’d moved the inspection to the following week.
THANKS FOR TELLING ME.
I went to Europe on Wednesday (four days later). I’d hardly been home, I’d been crazy busy with work, packing and appointments. When I left I had clothes drying on a clotheshorse in my room, my bed wasn’t made and there was a normal assortment of things on my dresser.
I came home feeling immense dread at what I’d find in the house.
Every trace of me was gone. There wasn’t much to begin with, but what was there? Gone.
My tea canisters (which Female Housemate had told me she liked) and vase were hidden in the back of a cupboard.
My housemates had gone into my bedroom and taken everything – EVERYTHING – in sight that wasn’t fixed down, and put it in washing baskets stacked in the corner of my room.
My still damp (three weeks later!) clothes had been bundled together, many now ruined.
I eventually found my clock radio hidden in a box.
My bathroom scales I found not in the bathroom but under my bed.
My brand new, expensive bicycle, which I had explained to Male Housemate I keep in my bedroom or study so that it doesn’t get stolen (and which nobody had ever said they had a problem with), I found in the shed.
Worse than that, the shed normally has a lock on it. The lock had been removed.
I confronted Male Housemate the next time I saw him. I asked him why he’d removed everything of mine from the house and moved everything in my bedroom. He said it was because of the inspection. He then said that he felt the house was really his and his girlfriend’s, and couldn’t understand why I would think otherwise. It was mostly furnished by them, after all.
He didn’t seem to understand when I reminded him that we all moved in at the same time, and signed the same lease, and pay equal amounts. So I told him that if it’s furniture that makes the difference, I would buy my own fridge and washing machine.
Female Housemate confronted me. She was far nastier and told me that I was not to touch a single thing of theirs and that I was to get my stuff out of the fridge by the end of the day. I told her that was completely unreasonable, and said I would have a new fridge by the end of the week.
I had a new fridge by the end of the week. And a washing machine. However, they wouldn’t move their washing machine, so I couldn’t plug it into the pipes anywhere. I went about a month without being able to wash any clothes at home.
After a week or so of antipathy and silence, in which I started looking for new places to live (without saying anything, of course) my housemates announced that they’d be leaving, and that they’d give me 28 days notice before they went anywhere.
I was very happy.
I spent a few weeks looking for new housemates, but couldn’t lock anyone in because I didn’t know when the rooms would be available.
On the 31st of March, they said they’d be moving out on the 15th of April.
That is not 28 days.
Nevertheless, I found housemates. They agreed to move in on the 15th of April.
I called the real estate agent to ask about a sub-let arrangement.
The agent said: “You know the landlord is moving back into the property when the lease ends on the 24th of July, though, don’t you?”
“Um, no. I didn’t know that.”
“I told Male and Female Housemates…”
They’d known the entire time we’d been living there that the lease would permanently expire after one year, but never told me. Even when I told them that I was hoping not to have to move again any time soon (I had already moved three times in the preceding 18 months, by no fault of my own).
I had to tell my replacement housemates that if they moved in with me, we’d all have to move again in three months anyway. I was scared they’d back out and I’d have to break the lease and move back in with my parents, but thankfully they were very nice about it and said they’d move in anyway.
I was livid at Male and Female Housemate.
I’d not had any guests over in the time I’d lived with Male and Female Housemate, except for that one tame birthday party.
Since then, my housemates had complained that the sound of me turning the front doorknob to let my then-boyfriend in at 10.15pm on a weeknight, and the way he walks, was too noisy for them. (I had been upfront about him and when he’d be visiting before we moved in together, and they had originally said it was fine.) I’d tried to be quiet as a sort of compromise, but they didn’t seem happy unless I was in bed and silent by 9.30pm.
The final straw, though, was when I was trying to study one evening and the two of them left the house - taking or hiding the modem for the time they were gone. I paid the same proportion of the bills that they did, and was never a day late, so I can only assume this was an extension of their demand that I not touch one thing of “theirs”.
I never confronted them about it, but I did arrange a big, bad scheme for revenge.
I invited friends over… on a Monday night.
My friends came over. They told me they were receiving death glares at 8.30pm. By 9pm my housemates had gone into the living room and removed all of their furniture, including a couch and a table, out from under my guests. They nearly dropped their couch on my dog.
Just before 11pm Female Housemate stuck her head in the room where I was sitting with about five guests.
“When are your friends leaving?” she asked, right in front of them.
I shrugged.
“Male Housemate and I can’t sleep because of the noise.”
I smiled and nodded.
“Can you move to your bedroom?”
I looked around the room. “… All of us?”
“Well you’re making too much noise.”
I smiled and nodded again.
“… You don’t care?”
I shrugged. She left.
One of my friends exploded “It’s not even MIDNIGHT!” and everybody proceeded to bang their feet and laugh loudly until at least 12.15am.
I was scared to go home for the rest of the week. It’s hard to explain but living with people who had no respect for me, my property nor my privacy made me terrified of what I’d find each time I opened the front door. It was horrible. I always made a beeline for my bedroom and wouldn’t emerge to eat or shower until I was sure they were gone.
The old housemates were supposed to move into their new house on Friday, but officially be taken off the lease on Sunday.
When I came home from work on Friday night, the old housemates had packed away most of their things but they were still there. I flicked a switch. Nothing happened.
“Female Housemate, did you cut off the power?”
“Well, yeah. We had to transfer it to the new house.”
I stood in the backyard and cried and made phone calls. My family had gone to the beach but Mum told me to catch a cab to their house and stay there anyway. I managed to get someone to reconnect the electricity six minutes before the company would have closed for the whole weekend.
I went back to the house the next day. The power came back at about noon.
I was moving into my housemates’ old room, since it’s by far the biggest and nicest. They had left piles of random stuff in that room. They knew I was supposed to have moved into that room the night before.
So I moved their stuff about three metres, from that room to the front porch.
My New Housemates moved in that day.
All was well until I got in the shower that evening. While I was in there, Old Housemates returned. They saw their stuff on the front porch and called the police.
I cried as I told the policeman how horrible Old Housemates were and how putting their stuff on the front porch was nothing compared to finding my stuff moved every time I came home for the last six months, and everything cleared from my bedroom when I got home from Europe, and having my power cut off and my food ruined the night before.
The policeman was very nice. He chatted to me, and just supervised while my housemates took as much of their stuff as they could. They said it was a civil matter, not a criminal one, so they couldn’t do anything. I knew that anyway, and I felt better having the police there. They were just happy they didn’t have to be at the house with the meth lab and twelve abused children down the road.
After Male and Female Housemate left they sent letters demanding money they weren’t entitled to (I sought legal advice). Eventually the letters stopped.
A week or two before Male and Female Housemate moved out I found a fledgling bird in the backyard that had a cut on its wing. Since it seemed otherwise healthy I had decided to try to care for instead of taking it to a vet to be euthanised. When it died Male and Female Housemate moved it from the otherwise empty bungalow to the shed. It was hidden away on a back shelf so I didn’t find it again for a few weeks. They left a note - “THANKS FOR A LONG AND AGONISING DEATH” with a charming little drawing of a gravestone.
I had stress dreams about them and an inexplicable anxiety about being in that house for three months afterwards. The dreams didn’t really stop until I moved into the next house.
But perhaps that wasn’t helped by the fact that the housemates I had for those three months were a teenage painting student whose Dad paid her rent and a “film maker” (drug dealer/door to door salesman). They smoked a lot of pot and tobacco in the house when they’d said they weren’t into that and never in the house. Then the “film maker” invited a dole bludger to live with us who “film maker” told me was a drug dealer, then told Dole Bludger that I thought he was a drug dealer, who got very offended because he only picked magic mushrooms and sold them, and he was sensitive because his dad was a murderer. Also Dole Bludger never paid rent to me - only to “film maker” - and the two of them never paid any bills. They were left for me. They owe me $450.
To sum up:
Everyone told me that Male and Female Housemate would be great, because they seemed tidy and mature. Then I thought the next two housemates would be great, because they were more relaxed and we had great conversations.
This story hopefully demonstrates that while living with friends might be risky to your friendship, picking housemates from Gumtree is the hardest thing in the world.
Especially when you get it wrong.
