Nine house-share rules that actually keep the peace

Every shared house has rules. The only question is whether they are written down, or whether they live in one person's head and come out as a sigh at the sink.

Written rules are kinder. They are the same for everyone, they were agreed on a calm evening rather than a tense one, and nobody has to be the person who says them out loud. The trick is keeping them few enough to remember and gentle enough that a new housemate reads them and nods.

These are the nine that come up in almost every house, with wording that has been tested on real fridges.

1. Keep it tidy

"Shared spaces are left as you would like to find them." Not spotless — found. The kitchen counter clear enough to cook on; the sofa clear enough to sit on. This one rule covers most of what people argue about, which is why it goes first.

2. Be considerate

"Headphones after 10pm, and let the house know before guests stay over." Consideration is hard to legislate; the two concrete halves — noise at night, a heads-up about guests — are the two places it tends to fail.

3. Keep noise down

"Quiet hours are 10pm to 7am on weeknights." Give the hours. "Keep noise down" means a different thing to a nurse on earlies and a student with a deadline; a clock settles it.

4. Recycle

"Rinse, squash, and use the right bin — the council's leaflet is on the fridge." The rule nobody minds and everybody forgets. Put the collection day on the same sheet.

5. Clean up after cooking

"Pans washed, hob wiped, before you sit down to eat." The timing matters more than the standard. A pan left "to soak" is a pan someone else washes.

6. Share fairly

"Loo roll, washing-up liquid and bin bags are bought on a rota; the rota is on the fridge." Whatever the house shares, name it and say how it is paid for. Most house arguments about money are arguments about £3 items nobody agreed to split.

7. Bin day

"Bins go out Tuesday night; whoever is in puts them out, whoever is in first brings them back." It is a rule about one evening a week, and it keeps the neighbours on side.

8. Pets

"No pets without everyone's yes." Including the goldfish. The rule is less about animals than about the principle that the house decides together.

9. Be kind

"If something is bothering you, say it in the kitchen, not in the group chat." The last rule is the one that makes the other eight unnecessary most of the time.

How to word them

• Say what to do, not what not to do. "Pans washed before you eat" lands softer than "Don't leave pans in the sink", and it is clearer.
• Give the number where there is one: the hour, the day, the amount.
• Say why, once, when the reason isn't obvious. "Shoes off — the floors are new" gets more compliance than the rule alone.
• Sign off warmly. A line at the bottom — "Thank you for being a great housemate" — changes the whole sheet from a notice into a note.

Where to put them

Somewhere everyone passes and nobody has to go looking: the fridge door, the inside of the front door, the wall by the kettle. A single printed sheet, in a frame if you want it to last, beats a laminated A4 with eleven bullet points in Comic Sans. The House Share Rules wall print is the nine rules above, laid out in soft blush cards under a hand-lettered heading, as print-ready PDFs in A4 and A3 — print it at home or at any print shop, and it fits a standard frame.

And the thing the rules sit on top of

Rules on a fridge are the friendly layer. Underneath them, if you are the one letting the rooms, there is usually a written agreement — who rents which room, from when, for how much, with what notice. The room rental agreement is a one-page template for that; the post on lodgers and tenants in England explains, from gov.uk's own guidance, why the arrangement in your own home is treated differently from a let elsewhere.

Nine rules. One sheet. Kindly worded. That is the whole system.