Great, you’re trying to cook dinner after a 5pm lecture but none of your flatmates have taken out the bins. You wake up early to go to the gym and can’t see through the dirty dishes in the sink to fill your water bottle. And why has no one bought more toilet paper?!
Approaching a hectic time of year, it can be difficult to keep on top of the housekeeping alongside your studies, health, and society commitments. It is easy to forget that your flatmates aren’t just there to pick up your slack, but to spend time with as friends too.
Often, having a catch up past a surface-level, ‘What lectures have you had today?’, can help with all of the above. It’s important to find ways to facilitate this kind of conversation in order to reconnect with the people you live with. Below are some ways to do so that can be slotted into busy schedules:
Study dates
Take your flatmates to the library or a coffee shop for a study date. This is the perfect option for deadline season as it can easily fit between tutorials, lectures, and labs. Although, it should be noted that locking in is not guaranteed.
Joint gym session
Why sacrifice hanging out with your friends for some time on the stairmaster when you could do both? As well as providing some impetus to go to the gym, having someone to chat to between reps will leave you feeling better than two minutes of reels-scrolling.
Weekly flat dinner
Not only does this ensure that you are all in the kitchen at the same time – something which rarely happens – but it shares the responsibility of cooking and cleaning. Dedicating a specific night each week to a flat dinner and catch up helps prevent the days from slipping by without real conversation.
Pub quiz
There are a whole host of pub quizzes in Edinburgh, wherever your flat is. During deadline season, it can feel as though you move between the same three locations, staring at your laptop at each one. So, this is a great way to go somewhere different and have human connection rather than referencing abjection.
It’s important to remember that your flatmates are also dealing with hectic timetables and mountains of work, so have some leniency if they don’t always do their washing up! Finding ways to spend more time together can help reduce any tensions in the flat, as well as providing a good laugh to take everyone away from deadline stress.