9 things you know to be true if you’re constantly stealing your housemates’ stuff*

Published on Ideal Flatmate

1. You get seriously hyped when you spy an open, but full, pack of food in someone’s cupboard.

Cereal, biscuits, etc. Because let’s face it, when the pack’s open and it’s basically full anyway—who’s going to notice the weeny(ish) bit you’ve had? Unless you have weird flatmates who count their hobnobs. Ha. Yeah. Weirdos. Maybe do make a mental note to start counting yours, though.

2. Jars/containers of stuff are very good.

Hair wax, makeup, moisturiser: all particularly hard for one to keep track of the contents. No one can tell—or prove, at least—that you’re gradually depleting their peanut butter. Butter, of course, is another key one, and Jesus wept if someone’s bought Lurpak then quite frankly the jammy bastard’s asking for it.

3. You never take a significant amount of food from one person’s cupboard.

What are you, some kind of idiot? Only ever take a little bit from each.

4. If you’re a real pro, you’ll make sure to reposition all condiments exactly as they were, at the same angle, on the same co-ordinate to the nth degree.

But let’s face it, we’re all sad lowlifes, none of us are real pros, so naturally we forget. We leave stuff out on the side, and lo the pass-agg Whatsapp doth cometh in the group chat: ‘Guys, not being funny but this is the 4th time this week I’ve found my vegetable stock out if its place and I don’t really want to have to get my boyfriend involved again x’.

5. You keep your empty shampoo/conditioner bottles in the bathroom to make it look as though you have your own and you are certainly not using other people’s in abundance.

This was only ever a temporary solution — just to tide you over until you find a minute to run to Boots — except it’s been 3 weeks now, and you can only afford the 99p stuff that makes your hair feel like pubes and Gabby is on £25k now anyway and she still owes you £3.20 from that sink bleach you bought that one time so really, when there’s, like, Brexit going on and stuff, what’s a bit of John Frieda between friends?

6. Admit it — you’ve stolen pants before.

Get it all out in the open. You know, like your flatmate’s genitals were, after you stole all their pants.

Sometimes you just haven’t had a chance to do your washing, man, and you’re emphatically at odds with the idea of having coarse denim rubbing up against a bare crotch like those commando animals.

Whatever you do, though, don’t get caught. Panty stealers are the lowest of the low. Scum of the flat. If you’re even so much as accused, you’re finished.

7. Sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night—

Because you’re such a bag of garbage that you’ve even used your flatmate’s razor. Their razor. Where the hell has that razor been? Has it been in their arse crack? You literally walked past Boots twice today, why didn’t you go in and buy a razor that hasn’t been in someone’s arse crack?

8. You definitely don’t bother replacing your phone charger when it breaks.

Why bother when you literally have the pick of, like, two to four others that exist in your flat? Unless you live with those curious alien folk who own androids, in which case probably just move out anyway.

You are hated, loathed, perpetually because no one’s charger is ever in their room when they need it.

9. It’s not uncommon for you to borrow things and then lose them.

Your flatmates’ clothes seem to evaporate into thin air in the abyss that is your bedroom, which is precisely why you’re not allowed to borrow them. You then, obviously, have to pretend you never took them—until they show up down the side of your bed six weeks later, and you can’t give them back lest you topple your web of lies.

Naturally, you proceed to stuff them down the side of their owner’s bed, as though they were there all along, thus framing the victim for your own slovenly negligence in what is the perfect crime. You were never here.