How do I organise storage in a shared house?

Almost every shared house argument about mess is really an argument about fairness, and it becomes intractable because there is no agreed line to point at. Allocating physical space converts an argument about somebody's character into an observation about a shelf, which is a much smaller and much more solvable thing. Do it in the first week, when nobody is annoyed with anybody.

Step by step

1. Divide the shared storage by person, visibly.A named shelf each in the fridge, a named drawer or basket in the freezer, a named shelf in the food cupboard, a named box or shelf in the bathroom. Label them. It takes an hour and it prevents most of the friction that follows.
2. Agree what is genuinely communal and how it is paid for.Usually cleaning products, bin bags, foil and cling film, washing-up liquid, loo roll, salt and cooking oil. Either a kitty, or a rota where each person buys the lot in turn. Vagueness here is where resentment starts.
3. Give bulky personal items a defined home.Bikes, suitcases, sports kit, boxes from a previous flat. Agree who gets what part of the hall, the understairs cupboard, the shed or the garden, and write it down. This is the category that quietly annexes shared space.
4. Set a rule for unnamed items in shared areas.Anything left in a communal space goes into a named box in the hall, and after a stated period it goes to a charity shop. Agreed in advance it is a system; imposed later it is an act of aggression.
5. Use individual containers in the shared fridge.A stacking crate each, pulled out in one movement. It stops the migration to the back, it makes each person's space obvious, and it means one spill is one person's crate rather than the whole shelf.
6. Deal with the bathroom with a caddy each.A carried caddy per person removes the entire argument about shelf space, and works even in a bathroom with almost no storage. Only shared things — loo roll, cleaner — stay in the room.
7. Label the freezer and date everything.The freezer is the single worst offender in a shared house because unlabelled frozen food is unidentifiable and nobody will throw away something that might be someone's. A named, dated label fixes it entirely.
8. Write it down and put it where people see it.One side of paper inside a kitchen cupboard door: whose shelf is whose, what is communal, how it is replaced, what happens to abandoned items, bin day. It is the reference that stops every disagreement being relitigated.
9. Handle the departure of a housemate properly.Agree on arrival what happens to things left behind. Legally you cannot simply dispose of someone else's property, so the agreement should say you will contact them and give a reasonable period before it goes.
10. Revisit it when someone moves in.The allocation was made for a different set of people. Ten minutes at the start of a new tenancy is far easier than a conversation in month four.

Tips

• Bin day and who takes the bins out is the most argued-about thing in a shared house. Put it on a rota on the fridge in week one.
• A shared house with no communal storage agreement fills its hallway with bikes. Decide about bikes specifically, and check the tenancy on where they may be kept.
• If a landlord provides a locked storage area or an outbuilding, find out in week one whether you may use it and who has keys.
• Do not throw away a housemate's food to make a point. It escalates instantly and it is the origin of most long-running house feuds.
• In a house of five, buy a second kettle or toaster rather than arguing about worktop space. Some problems are cheaper to solve with objects than with discussion.

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