Motivating The Move – Your Guaranteed Six-Step Programme For Removing Unwanted Flatmates

My flatmates broke up last month. 

That means I’m now living with a former couple. 

Despite a very uncordial break up, they’re still sharing a bed. Understandably, the situation’s getting nasty. 

It’s getting increasingly nasty because two weeks ago, the female half of the couple secured a new room in south London. She’s been able to leave since last Monday (24 February). As she has a new place, she’s stopped paying rent, buying soya milk and keeps breaking china on the sly.

But most concerning of all, she’s just not moving out

She’s even said that she doesn’t want to. 

The only packing she’s done has been filling one suitcases with her barbies. Yes, she literally filled a suitcase with barbies. And no, she’s not a fifteen year old loser.

Whenever I, or the male flatmate try talking to her about moving out, she starts screaming or decides that she really needs to walk around Victoria Park to play Pokemon Go. Strange, isn’t it? 

I don’t even understand why she wants to stay. She’s the one who broke up with him and her new place is way closer to work. Also, she’s definitely old enough to know that she needs to move out.

Anyway, it’s concerning because if this continues, the male half will find a new place, and then I’ll have to find a new place

I have no intention of finding a new place, so I’ve hatched an ingenious plan to get rid of her.  

Why We Can’t Kick Her Out

Unfortunately, changing the locks isn’t an option. That’s because we don’t own the flat, and she knows most of my friends. 

If we kick her out, she’ll tell everyone that I’m a beast and used to really like Korn (I didn’t, who told you that?).

Also, I hate confrontation.

That’s why we’re going to piss her off so much that she leaves. 

As an expert in passive aggression, I’m quite confident this six-step displacement programme’s going to work.

Maybe it’ll help you get rid of your least favourite flatmate too!

Here’s exactly what you need to do to get rid of your least favourite flatmate.

1. Stop Being An Enabler (Remove The Cardboard Packets From All Your Rizlas)

I think she wants to stay because we accept her less attractive habits. To make her uncomfortable, we need to stop enabling those habits. 

By that, I’ve deduced that we need to sabotage her weed smoking.

Now, as someone who doesn’t smoke weed, it took me a while to figure out exactly how to achieve this. But the solution’s simple. I just need to rip off and bin all of the cardboard packets my rizlas come in.

It’s genius because to roll a joint, you need a roach. As far as I can tell, the roach is what makes the drug potent. You make a roach by ripping a strip of card off the little cardboard box your rizlas come in.

If she has no rizla packets to make roaches, she won’t be able to smoke weed!

Ah, but you’re thinking that she could just go to the shops and buy her own rizla packets, or use the covers of paperback books? 

Well, she’s someone who wakes and bakes and loves books. So I’m sure you’ll understand that she’s too lazy to go to the cornershop to buy her own rizlas, and would never dream of destroying a book cover. 

That means when she’s smoking weed, she’ll have to resort to making roaches out of her passport and birth certificate.

As soon as she’s completely destroyed her passport and birth certificate, she’ll no longer have any evidence of her British citizenship, and we can call the Home Office and get her deported to Jamaica!

I mean, if she’s in Jamaica, there’s no way she can tell everyone that I’m a beast!

2. Use Subliminal Messaging (Rewrite Their Horoscope)

The next step in my diabolical plan involves subliminal messaging. 

That’s right, the best way to get your flatmate to move out is tricking them into thinking that fate’s instructed them to.

The obvious way to do this is with their horoscope. You just have to replace all the  less important words with ‘move out now’.

Look at the one I edited. It’s from the UK’s most trusted paper and medium, the Daily Express and Russell Grant.

https://www.express.co.uk/horoscope/Gemini/daily-forecast/2020-03-07 

3. Ruin Their Things (Go For Their Sims 4 Saved Game)

Now you should never break someone’s physical things. That’s not cool. 

But you’ve totally got a licence to ruin their non-physical things, if said non-physical things are played on their ex-boyfriend’s Xbox.

In the case of my flatmate, I was inspired by a strange sound. 

Can you hear it? 

Sul Sul, Badeesh! Nooboo, Oh feebee lay.

I’m sure your female flatmate makes those noises too. 

Not sure what it is? I think it’s someone’s character in the Sims 4 saying they just put a spoon in your peanut butter (they like to taunt).

Yes, you may have guessed it, my flatmate spends the majority of her time playing the Sims 4.

It’s a strange, but impressive passion. 

She’s spent years recreating her life in the Sims. I’m even featured in her real Sims universe, and her alternative Sims universe (yes, there are two timelines in which everyone’s gender preferences are switched). 

In both universes, my character is fat, stupid and thinks soul patches are cool. I think that’s the only thing that’s actually consistent.

She loves her Sims 4 saved game so much, I figured that a sure-fire way to piss her off, and to get her to move out as quickly as possible is to fire it up, and make all the characters that resemble her really, really ugly.

Yeah, don’t feed them to a cow plant. Don’t make them into a baker. Just make them ugly.

Then she’ll think her Sims characters are ruined, and she’ll have no motivation to stay.

4. Start An Infestation (Make Them Think You Have Mice)

Wait, does your flatmate really hate mice too? 

Do they also not understand that getting rid of mice requires them to not get really stoned every evening and always put the bread away? 

What really? That’s a complete revelation to me too.

So, my flatmate hates mice. She’s so upset by the idea of mice, she doesn’t even need to see them to go mental. 

She just needs to see mouse droppings.

That’s why I’m going to buy some chocolate raisins, cut them up a bit, and then sprinkle them next to the toaster.

As soon as they think that the new place is going to be nicer than the old one, they’ll start wondering why they’re staying.

5. Change the Wifi Password

People don’t like using their mobile data at home, especially when they play five hours of Pokemon Go daily. 

Hence, to make someone really uncomfortable, be really passive aggressive and change the wifi access code, and fail to share it on your group chat.

If you don’t want them to realise that it’s been changed, just paint the light on the router black, and say it’s broken and that you’re waiting until next month to fix it.

6. Contaminate Their Food (Write Love Letters From Your Marmite To Their Greek Yoghurt)

Everyone’s a little precious about their food. Now, I’m not suggesting that you should actually do something horrible to their food, just maybe make them think that their food is doing something horrible to itself.

Do greek yoghurt and marmite go together? While we’ll never know, congratulations, my flatmate is about to find out. 

That’s because her greek yoghurt and my marmite are about to start a not-so secret relationship.

This one’s easy to pull off. Just spoon some marmite into their yoghurt.

Then write a love note on a post-it, and stick it on the pot.

This is a great idea because first they’ll think that you’re being passive aggressive, labelling their stuff. However, when they actually read the note, they’ll discover that actually, you’re not to blame and it’s actually their own food that’s been getting at it. 

They’ll know that they can’t shout at their greek yoghurt, and will need to take it away before it elopes with your marmite.

The letters are easy. 

For instance, the Greek Yoghurt would probably write to the marmite:

“Hey You Inky Syrup Stallion. 

You’ve got my Greek going freak. 

Love You. Hate You. 

I Can’t Spread Enough Of You.

Meet me on the counter Marmite, 

I’ll be your creamy delight, 

Your-yoghurt”

A Love Letter your Greek Yoghurt to my Marmite

This will let her know that they need to take their yoghurt out of the house, of they’re going to end up being responsible for a child with the consistency of molasses, encouraging their immediate departure.

If All Else Fails

While this is a totally foolproof campaign of encouragement, sometimes, it might not go to plan.

When that happens, just get their parents’ telephone number, call them up and tell them everything that’s going on.

If their parents are dead, why the fuck are you being so evil?

I’d Rather Live Alone

Today’s special. Why? Because it’s a Leap Year and it’s February 29th.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times (or my age), but this year, my Instagram feed’s been jammed with stories about women deconstructing traditional gender roles, and proposing to their partners. Surprising as I only follow 65 people.

I’m writing about it because today, my friend’s girlfriend proposed to him. 

It’s sweet. Empowering. Different. 

Yes, it’s a proposal.

They’ve been together for years, and as far as I can tell, enjoy a sturdy relationship. Like those two obscurely shaped bricks in Tetris, or two non-integers that you can mash together into an integer. It’s like she’s 8.56874125486342, he’s 21.4312587451, and together they make 30 (I had to give him the bigger number because he’s my friend, not because I’m sexist).

I’m trying to express my emotions with maths, because right now, I’m not wearing any socks and I’m afraid I’m going to get stuck in all the sentiment

Anyway, immediately after seeing the hint of a proposal in the Instagram story, rather than wishing my friends good luck (?), I started thinking about myself.

Actually, I started thinking about a question everyone’s started asking me. 


When are you going to move in with your girlfriend?

Well, When’s It Going To Happen?

Mum and Dad, are you reading this? Great.

Probably never.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to happen unless the following three points are satisfied:

  1. We continue going out 
  2. My girlfriend’s deported (it might happen)
  3. I get a proper job, stop living like a bum and have a magic aneurysm that reforms my behaviour

It’s not because I don’t like her. No, I tolerate her completely. 

If I didn’t, right now instead of writing this, I’d be spending my time making up wild new excuses about how I really like her, but there’s no way that I can see her. Not because I’m a coward, but because I’m a pragmatist. Finding a new girlfriend’s a total hassle.

I mean, I can think of some excuses already, but if I started using them it’d be clear that there was no trust in our relationship, and it’s definitely the most trusting relationship I’ve ever been in. Also, I’d need to have something else to do instead of hanging out with her, and I don’t like the idea of climbing or croquet classes.

Oh, you want to know what the excuses are because you’ve been dreaming of going out with me? Just this once, I’ll pretend you’re not joking. Go on, read away:

  1. My flatmate’s overdosed. I’m sitting at his bed in the hospital. No, sorry, you can’t come. You know that they charge Europeans every time they enter an English hospital, right?
  2. I had a really mad dream about that pirate slide at the playground. You know, the one that whispers, “Shiver me timbers!” Wait, you don’t remember? Well you’re one beastly buccaneer. I need to get it all down before I forget the second act’s epic sea shanty. It was pretty long. Pirates of the Caribbean long. So it’s probably going to take me at least six months.
  3. I can’t find my keys.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, we both tolerate each other, but don’t feel compelled to move in together.

But that probably isn’t a very clear expression of that.

Imagined Cohabiting Calamities

I have a lot of preconceptions about living with people. It’s easiest to explain them with a Bobblehead. So just imagine I’m holding one in front of you now.

Ok, let’s begin.

How often do you take out your favourite Bobblehead and admire it? (I’m waving the bobblehead at you). What was that, only once or twice a week? Exactly. That’s no time at all. 

Now imagine your favourite Bobblehead wobbling over and staring at you all the time. 

Offensive, isn’t it? 

Already you can probably hear it chastising you for not washing your clothes, hanging towels on wardrobe doors, watching Adventure Time, writing trash that you never publish, waking up earlier than you should (on occasion), and using mouthwash.

Maybe this doesn’t happen when you live with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or whatever. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never really lived with one.

I don’t know what my apprehension is, but ultimately, it seems like living with another person requires you to sacrifice some independence, and I guess it’s all about what that independence means to you.

Most likely, the value I put on my own independence is ill conceived.

But I just don’t understand why I’d want to give up the freedom of living on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, spending all my time listening to three Death Grips songs on repeat, and staying up way, way past my bedtime writing nonsense. Isn’t being able to do those things the definition of being an adult?

Is it a selfish perspective? Probably. But maybe, in certain situations, it can be zero-sum. I don’t know, it’s hard to know exactly what other people think.

What About Her Feelings?

Empathy isn’t my forte, but as far as I can tell, our feelings are aligned. 

She’s been pretty blunt and said that if we moved in together I’d annoy her. She also seems to value time alone. The only cohabitation advantage she’s conceded is that her bed would be warmer.

A condition of cold is more of an issue to her than you’d believe, so given she’s so frosty about the idea of us moving in together, there must be something to it. 

But it’s cool. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I tolerate her. It’s nice that she tells me what she thinks.

Disasters All Around

The sudden appearance of the question also seems to coincide with a few of my friends experiencing harrowing breakups. The type of breakups where they’ve found themselves sharing the same bed as their former spouse for months, because they’re renting somewhere together and aren’t loaded enough to move out immediately.

I’ve also spent the last month watching my sister’s relationship breakdown with her significant other. And before that, watched her vegetate for over a year, and use him as an excuse for her self-inflicted inactivity.

It’s totally risk averse, but I don’t want that for myself, or someone that I tolerate.

Were Franz Ferdinand Ever Cool?

Definitely.

Also, there’s that song on their third album in which Alex Kapranos espouses the benefits of Living Alone.

I like that song, and that seems as good a reason as any to stand by something.

So yes, right now, I’d rather live alone.

In addition to liking that song, I also respect it. So, instead of ruining it by listening to it too much, it seems better to only play it like twice a week. You know, if not the second guitar might start to annoy me, or the song might not be as enthused with whatever I was doing that day. 

It’s the type of thing that you don’t want to wear the magic out of.

But You’re Engaged

Wait, no, I’m not engaged.

My friends are engaged. 

The header’s an expression of that. 

They’re different to me, and that’s why I like them. 

It’s probably why living together has worked for them. But I guess it seems like maybe now, if your goals aren’t necessarily nuclear, then the convention of living with your boyfriend or girlfriend shouldn’t be as big a deal, or a necessary step in a relationship.

I don’t think it detracts from what other people have. It’s just different.

So anyway, congrats on the engagement guys. I’m pretty sure you don’t read my blog, but at least I can now point to something and pretend it was full of heartfelt sentiment.