16 things you know if you rent your home.

This evening Collette and I were discussing our separate rental properties and the landlord convention that they must have every year to keep up their huge cliches when I decided to start writing this post. I haven't had #inspiration to write a post so quickly in a while so I'm a bit excited about this. (I know, bit geeky).
I've rented a few places over the last couple of years and have definitely noticed some similarities. Here we go!

1. For some reason all of the walls will definitely be magnolia.

2. If you're lucky there might even be some kind of odd textured wallpaper that has had magnolia painted over the top of it.

3. You probably wouldn't actually dare paint over any part of it no matter how bland it may be because that deposit is a lot of money to not get back just for a slightly more aesthetically pleasing wall.

4. You've probably had a bit of a tiff with a landlord/ letting agency about not getting part of your deposit back. It is soul destroying when you've been a decent tenant and spent a whole day deep cleaning before you move out. So fuck you and your cleaner who charges £50 to get some limescale off a shower screen Janice. (Any resemblance to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.)

5. The carpets are usually some kind of shit brown/taupe/tan colour.

6. If they're not and you have cream carpets you spend all of your time on edge about spills.

7. At some point you will have looked at a house for sale on your street and worked out how much less per month you'd be paying for a mortgage. If only the rental market were less extortionate and you could save for a deposit. #millenialproblems

8. Your landlord probably has a 'handyman' that they use instead of getting actual work people in. It's probably their dad.

9. If your landlord is local, you may have lived with a problem for a while instead of having the stress of them coming to inspect it themselves and seeing how you live in their house.

10. You will never want to do anything major to the house to make it feel like your own. Usually because you're not allowed but also no matter how long you may be thinking of staying somewhere it always feels a bit temporary.

11. Every so often you get itchy feet and spend every spare minute on Zoopla or Right Move lusting after other places to rent near you. (Look this one has exposed brick, think of the Instagrams!)

12. You will look on in awe at people 5+ (I'm 24) years younger than you buying their own houses and wondering if they sold their soul to do so.

13. There will always be someone who looks down on you for renting "it's dead money!". Fuck off, mate.

14. If you decide to get married or have a child before buying a house you will probably find yourself justifying it to everyone and yourself, constantly.

15. Sometimes when you're pretending you don't actually want to own your own house you can bring out the old "You know mortgage basically translates as death contract, right? I just don't want to be tied down!"

16. No (or hardly any) rental places in the UK allow pets and it's basically the most upsetting thing in my life at any given time.

Hope you liked my little listicle (isn't that what the cool cats over at Buzzfeed call them?) good bye for now from me and my patterned magnolia walls and shit brown carpet in my little rented terraced house that I love.