Diary of a Gen Z Student: Learning to simmer down over spills and messes in shared accommodation

Jane Cowan: 'In a flat shared by eight girls, the incessant lack of hygiene greets me every time I enter the kitchen. The light dusting of instant noodles that coats the floor. The constant dirt of our presses. The remnants of what appears to be a chicken curry splattered across the hob. I tend to close my eyes as I near the sink. To my dismay, it’s never not full of the soggy leftovers of someone’s breakfast.'

Every surface sticks with sources unknown. The hoover gathers dust in the corner of the kitchen. The pile of unloved, unwashed dishes on the windowsill is ever increasing in size and biological matter. It’s student accommodation, baby!

My bedroom is swelteringly hot. And all I’ve got to counteract that is a single window that cracks open just about two inches. I cannot decide when the heating in the building is turned on and off, and the dial on my radiator seems to be for decoration more than anything.

You see, when you move into accommodation such as this, you must surrender control of certain things. I’ve developed the false impression that Dublin in winter is not too far from a tropical climate. I am sweating as I watch heavy rain fall outside.

But control of the temperature of my room has actually turned out to be the least of my worries since moving into a flat shared by eight students. For one thing, I am writing this column at 2am.

Why so late, you ask? Because one of my flatmates is watching a movie right now. And the walls, it seems to me, are no better than the papier mâché I produced in primary school. That means, if my flatmate insists on watching movies late into the night (and refuses to experiment with the apparently foreign concept of headphones), we must all endure her Netflix film of choice. I wouldn’t mind so much, if I didn’t have a 9am seminar to look forward to in a few hours’ time.

The other obstacle that I am faced with, in a flat shared by eight girls, is the incessant lack of hygiene that greets me every time I enter the kitchen. The light dusting of instant noodles that coats the floor. The constant dirt of our presses. The remnants of what appears to be a chicken curry splattered across the hob. I tend to close my eyes as I near the sink. To my dismay, it’s never not full of the soggy leftovers of someone’s breakfast.

Jane Cowan: 'My bedroom is swelteringly hot. And all I’ve got to counteract that is a single window that cracks open just about two inches. I cannot decide when the heating in the building is turned on and off, and the dial on my radiator seems to be for decoration more than anything.' Picture: Moya Nolan

What happens in the fridge is an entirely different problem. For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to figure out whose groceries are decomposing and contaminating the rest of the place. But to no avail. All I know is I would happily never open the fridge again, and would live off the box of crackers sitting in my room and develop scurvy, if it meant not experiencing the odour that whacks me in the face every time I build up the courage to put milk in my tea.

More issues in my kitchen include: the mysterious pool of water that lives beside the kettle; the pot of cooked pasta soaking in water that has lived on the infamous windowsill for well over four days, as I write this; the puddle of pasta sauce on the floor by the microwave; the collection of about 20 tea towels, all variously stained, that exist in small piles around the kitchen.

Last week, I was blow-drying my hair in my bedroom, when a knock on the door from campus staff alerted me to the fact I was activating some sort of heat sensor, and I needed to turn the hair dryer off to let my room cool down before the building is set alight.

Maybe if I could adjust the radiator keeping my room heated to 30C I could blow-dry my hair in peace. Alas, that would be too straightforward. Instead, I have been forced to retire my hair dryer for the time being. And let me tell you, I truly do not have the hair texture for this kind of frivolity.

All of this luxury for the low, low price of more than €1,000 in rent every month. It would be a great practical joke, if it wasn’t my life. When I think of the shameless pleading in my emails to Trinity Student Accommodation, explaining I’m such a fantastic student, and why they should find a room for me on campus… Oh, how naive I was.

I get it — you can’t have it all. And really, the freedom of living away from home is so fun, that I don’t particularly mind the fact I’m working in the middle of the night. But if people begin to develop concern over the increasing puffiness of my undereye bags, or the increasing puffiness of my hair, you know why.

Is squalor the price of independent living in your early 20s? It would appear so. You certainly wouldn’t want to be squeamish to enter my kitchen right now.