How to get along with your first year flatmates

Being friendly/neighbourly with your flatmates and neighbours

By simply being nice and open to making new friends with your flatmates and people in nearby flats you’re already taking steps to get along with others! 

I brought a tub of celebration chocolates and put them out in the communal kitchen area with a note to try and break the ice which it did!

By also offering to help out my new flatmates by lending them things they forgot or didn’t think to buy for themselves, this also helped to make friendships quickly and start conversations! 

Respect everyone’s different ways of socialising 

Not everyone enjoys going out and getting drunk, but there are multiple ways to spend time with your flatmates in other ways, like going out for dinner, ordering pizzas to the flat, or visiting the cinema!

It’s important to not force anyone to go out or spend time in a flat in a way they’re not comfortable with, so make sure to respect everyone’s wishes if someone wants to go out but not drink.

In my first year, a few people didn’t want to drink but were happy to come clubbing with us anyway, which was nice as we all got to enjoy freshers together despite our different drinking preferences! 

As freshers week can be very tiring with lots of late nights and feeling hungover, if like me, you enjoy going out clubbing or to the pub, having a day off drinking really helps! My flat attended a non-drinking freshers event during our freshers week where we attended an open-air cinema event which was a nice way for us all to spend time together! 

Play icebreaker games to get to know each other quickly! 

My flat enjoyed playing drinking games together before we went out which was an easy way to begin to form friendships and break the ice! 

Once we found things in common it was easy to feel that I had made friends and didn’t feel that I was living with strangers despite only knowing them for a short while!

Keeping communal areas clean!

As you begin to live with new people it can take a few days to understand people’s cleaning habits, or how long people are comfortable leaving a cleaning task to be completed.

My advice is to keep your share of any communal areas clean and tidy as it is very easy for arguments or resentments to begin if some people aren’t doing their share of cleaning tasks.