Sharing A Bedroom With Roommate

Sharing A Bedroom With Roommate

As part of Cosmopolitan's latest campaign Home, Made tackling the housing crisis, I spent 10 days undercover investigating the worrying trend of 'hutching up' – A.K.A. sharing a room with a complete stranger, to save money on rent. Here's what I learnt along the way:

1. Waking up in silence is weird and REALLY hard. Usually I need to blast bass-heavy R&B  in the mornings to get going, but you can't really do that when you have a 30-something waitress sleeping off her night shift in the same room. Yeah, that.

2. All kinds of people are hutching right now.You'd expect it to be mainly skint students, but I viewed rooms across the whole of London shared by everyone from teachers, to film producers. And the term hutching also includes converting your living room/dining room into an extra bedroom, like a third of all adverts on SpareRoom currently have.

3. Hutching up can lead to the most awkward hangover ever.Literally, imagine eating pizza, trying not to vom, snoozing every half hour and smashing back to back episodes of Gogglebox in bed... with a stranger sat on another bed a stone's throw away. Awkward times infinity. This flat had no living room by the way, I honestly couldn't have gone anywhere else.

4. Napping under your desk becomes the norm.Turns out sleeping a metre away from a stranger doesn't make for the easiest night's kip. In the beginning, I woke up every half hour and hadso many bags under my eyes my face looked like an airport luggage carousel.

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5. Watching TV on your laptop while a complete stranger does the same thing on her laptop is awkward AF.Seriously, it's never really got comfortable. I felt like I had to make conversation all the time otherwise I'd come across as being rude, but then thought 'OMG I can't keep making small talk, it's really annoying when you're trying to concentrate on a film and a stranger keeps asking you what you're going to make for dinner'.

6. I spend way more time lounging around in my underwear than I realised.Having to be appropriately clothed at all times is a pain in the arse, as is getting changed in the bathroom because you roommate is a TOTAL STRANGER.

7. You can't always judge people on their footwear.On the day I moved in my roommate was out at work, so I had the bedroom to myself for a few hours... and went snooping. Based on her rank shoe collection I decided she must be a hench Miss Trunchbull lookalike – she was actually the total opposite.

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8. I f you ever think your bedroom feels small…Spending 10 days sharing an even smaller one with another fully-grown person will soon fix that. When you get back to your own room you'll feel like it has trebled in size. Maybe even quadrupled.

9. Even when your roommate goes out, you never properly relax. When are they coming back? Hopefully never? Will they bring people back with them? Can I hide somewhere if that happens? WE WON'T ALL FIT. I HATE THIS.

10. It made me feel kinda glad to be an only child.Yeah, turns out I'm not really down for this whole sharing rooms business. SO glad I never had to do that as a kid. High five to my parents. Seriously, when me and my (now ex-)boyfriend were discussing moving in together, I said I didn't want to until we could afford separate bedrooms because I LOVE HAVING MY OWN SPACE SO MUCH. Obviously that was a massive pipe-dream because house/rent prices are mental right now, especially in London (PLS FILL IN OUR SURVEY IF YOU FANCY RANTING ABOUT IT TOO, THANKS. LUV U).

Read the full feature in this month's issue of Cosmopolitan, on sale now.

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Jennifer Savin Features Editor Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's features writer (for both print and digital), specialising in investigative reports, news, women's issues and all things health.

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Sharing A Bedroom With Roommate

Source: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a42557/hutching-sharing-room-stranger/