Noticed a funky smell floating through your flat?

Or maybe you have gone nose blind (It's an actual thing) ... either way it's probably a decent idea to give your kitchen and communal areas a good clean once in a while. Below are some tips on how to do this, that are easy to follow and implent into your daily life.

Communication is key!

When living away from home for the first time, it's easy to get distracted by all of the cool adult stuff you can now do with friends that maybe you have forgotten to talk about other important stuff - such as cleaning!

Ground rules:

When many people come together from a range of different backgrounds, it can be hard to see eye-to-eye on everything. This is why I suggest setting ground rules. These can include:

• Being respectful to eachother, their space and their belongings
• Taking the time to listen to eachother if there is a problem - try to see it from their point of view.
• To leave spaces and shared facilities in the way that you found them

and any other things that you think could apply to your flat.

General cleaning:

It's always a good thing to have awareness of your surroundings, especially when you are living with a lot of other people. There are a few options to consider here when doing a general clean or tidy. The first is by applying ground rules that you may have previously made, which is for everybody to clean or tidy what they use after using it, by leaving it the way they found it and making sure there own personal belongings are taken care of.

Cleaning rota:

However you could also take a moment to set up a meeting with your flatmates and set up a cleaning rota for the deeper cleans. This should be fair and evenly spread out over a week (every week) or a month (every month). Resulting in every flat member contibuting with chores- yes this means even taking the bins out!

Cleaning products and extras

As you may have worked out, living in a flat involves a small amount of give and take - just as it is not one persons responsiblity to clean the entire flat, it is also not one persons responsibilty to buy everything you need to clean to the flat. This includes buying bin bags, washing up liquid and sponges (unless you like using your own) or any other essential cleaning solutions. You need to respect eachother and be mindful of who buys what.

In conclusion... I think we can all agree that nobody comes to university to clean up after other people. So even if you gain nothing much from this article, the only thing that I ask is that you show your flatmates respect and do try to help each other. It will make life so much easier and much more peaceful.