My Daughters student accommodation

My 19 year old daughter is in now in her second year of university. She lives approximately 200 miles away from her hometown of Cardiff.

There are many worries I have for her being so far away from home. In her first year she was in very secure accommodation. There was a security guard on duty 24/7, which definitely eased my worries. 

The accommodation she lived in was on floors, and on her floor there were eight flats. All of these flats had a shared kitchen, and one of my worries was that she would do her weekly food shop and store it in the shared kitchen.

The thing is nothing has locks on, so I always worried that other people would help themselves to her food. It may sound silly, but knowing her, she can be quite shy and doesn’t like to confront people thefore I worry that she would most likely would go without and then not have enough money to replace it. 

Thankfully her room was very secure so her valuables were safe. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about this.

My daughter has now entered her second year of university and has had to move out of her student accommodation into a shared student house. OMG ! This has put my worry beads in overdrive!

Living in a student house means that trust is something that you must have with your room mates. The chances are that the people you have decided to share a house with, you have become friends with over the last 12 months and hopefully you all get on together really well. 

The worry I have is that 12 months is not that long to get to know somebody that well. In truth you’re just scratching the surface of friendship. 

There is no security when it comes to living in a student house. On the couple of occasions that I visited I was astounded at how many of them left their doors open and unlocked, and when you think of the cost of today’s technology that is a worry. 

My wife and I give my daughter a weekly allowance which is for a food shop because I like to think that she is eating healthy and not living off fast food. 

My problem is that the kitchen is also shared by all of them and once her food goes in the fridge if anybody is tempted to help themselves, because if we are being honest if you haven’t brought food for yourself then you might be. Sad as it is, people do help themselves to a bowl of cereal or some toast and use somebody’s milk. 

This is totally unacceptable because it’s a lack of respect that somebody else has made the effort to buy their own food, but other people think that it is ok to take it. 

My daughter has assured me that the other students or herself don’t do that, but I will always worry and knowing her she won’t say anything and of course there comes a time where they are too old for me to put things like this right for her.

Data Label have been doing some research into student and communal fridges. They created an infographic all about how to create the perfect passive aggressive note, and it turned out that a lot of people found offices, in particular the communal office fridge, to be a point of contention with stolen food. 

They’ve since run a survey that’s found that nearly one third of people have had food stolen from their communal fridge, with a high number of those being students living in shared accommodation. You can read more about it here.