How To Share A Bathroom With 10 People

View from bathroom

I currently share a bathroom with 10 people (and a house with 15 people). This is not a joke or an exaggeration.


This is due to the lack of reasonable housing in Queenstown. If you read my I Moved!! post about when I was looking for a house a couple months ago you probably have a better picture of what housing in Queenstown is like. The problem with the housing in Queenstown is there isn't enough. Everyone and their cousin wants to live in Queenstown so people settle for living in really awful places because the alternative is living in hostels or sleeping in tents or cars. (Seriously I met a guy at work who plans to sleep in a tent all winter and another guy who is sleeping in his car till he can find a room). Also most of the houses were built as summer homes in the 70's so they don't have insulation or double paned windows. Needless to say there are a lot of really COLD houses in this winter ski town. Also its not cheap.

There is always a draw back with housing in Queenstown. It's just a matter of picking your poison, would you prefer a freezing house, or living too far away from town, or paying way too much, or to have a million housemates? You can guess what I picked....I live with 15 people and its a little too expensive. But hey, at least I don't live in a tent in the winter.

Alright now to the point, a (hopefully) completely useless guide on
How To Share a Bathroom With 10 People (because I really hope none of you have to share a bathroom with 10 people.)
First, carpet the floor. Yes you read right, put carpet on the floor of the bathroom so that when your 10 flatmates shower water soaks into the carpet around the shower and never dries.

Yum, soggy carpet

Second, don't have proper ventilation or an extraction fan. This combined with the carpet makes for a very humid and moldy room.

Ah the genius who put carpet in a bathroom

Third, don't have a lock on the door. This will allow for people to walk in on others when they are in the shower or going to bathroom.
Fourth make sure the water heater doesn't work that well. This way the water may suddenly turn freezing in the middle of a shower.

The mixture of the soggy carpet, the moldy ceiling, the cold showers and fear of being walked in on really does that trick so no one wants to spend too much time in the bathroom.
Also most of the flatmates have different schedules so not everyone is home at the same time. Thank goodness we never all have to get ready at the same time. 

At least its an amazing view

In all seriousness its not a bad as it might seem and it's important to keep a sense of humor. Laugh or cry people. LAUGH OR CRY.