Room for Rent!!!

Do you own your property or rent? 

I have always rented..my work life has meant I've often had to move so as yet I've not managed to get onto the property ladder. My story isn't dissimilar to other 30 something's I know, although more and more friends are buying and I just have to swallow my slight envy. My hubby and I dream of building our own whilst watching Grand Designs, we paw through the Home sections of Sunday papers and check Rightmove on a regular basis. The truth is right now we can't really afford the type of house we'd like to buy, where we'd like to live. 

Where we live at the moment is in a gorgeous part of St Albans and we've been really happy for the last couple of years. Our neighbours are generally friendly. Yes a few months back one of them was shagging too loudly, but it soon stopped once I mentioned it on my radio show and the a notice was posted up in the communal hallway! 

'Communal' being the operative word and when you choose to live in a shared building you HAVE to take on board that there are compromises you have to make. One being neighbours who might now always acting how you'd hope (see earlier comment) or cooking smells from next door, parking spaces being occupied when you have a massive shop and end up carrying it from the end of the drive. 

At the moment we have work being done on our block of flats, which to the delight of some of the more senior members means they have something to do with their day. Other than enjoy their retirement going for long walks, playing golf, eating afternoon tea or having a picnic somewhere lovely they can leave notes for the rest of us. Certain members of our block are in their element telling the rest of us mere residents exactly what and how the work is panning out on a daily basis even when there aren't new developments to share. Over the bank holiday weekend we were told by our lovely next door neighbour that a complaint had been made about the small shoe rack outside our front door. Apparently the smell of our shoes was going upstairs to another flat. The neighbour who told us is our ally and we loved she grassed on the more pedantic upstairs neighbour. The amusing truth being is the 'smell' in discussion isn't our shoes it's our lovely neighbour's smoked fish that she cooks on a regular basis. 

So, after dutifully emailing the bossman in our block to tell him a mistake had been made, yesterday we received a very lengthy email telling us that regardless of the odor issue our small shoe rack was actually a health and safety issue! I kid you not. Apparently in a state of emergency a member of the the emergency services might hurt themselves on a trainer whilst rescuing us! 

Ridiculous eh, so I'm thinking of purchasing this attractive item below to see what the neighbors think of this bad boy!

The Dilemma of taking your shoes off

So you have your carpets shampooed (albeit it's a rented flat), we've just moved in and having lived somewhere previously where we had wooden floors, we decided (well the hubby lead the decision) to take shoes off when in the flat. I'm fine with this, we have cream carpets - and so we have a little shoe rack outside the front door, in our quaint little hallway, where you can put your shoes when you come in. I do also have stolen slippers from various hotel stays, if you feel you need something to wear!

A visit from a plummer the other day, a big friendly chap called Steve, saw him stride into my flat with his shoes and I felt a bit precious saying anything about our shoes off policy, so I stayed quiet, and just hoped his size 11's weren't mucky! They weren't.

Then yesterday, Steve returned, with his young colleague, accompanied by the landlord's father and his wife (the landlord is overseas) and the four of them had come to fix some stuff, as well as have a look at a few things in the flat, won't bore you with the details but all four of them walked past our little shoe rack and strolled into the flat, wearing their shoes. Now I didn't have the heart to ask all four of them to take their shoes off, but it got me to thinking... is it wrong to ask people to do this? I've been to houses where it's made very clear that they have a shoes off policy. Often people are apologetic about it.. I've also been to houses where people say, 'It's up to you'.. which I find confusing.. sometimes I'm wearing an outfit that is finished off by the shoes so I don't want to take them off, but I don't want to do the wrong thing in your house.

My co-presenter Stuart, told me you can't ask people to take their shoes off when they come in your house, so now I'm confused have I raised my expectations too high? Am I turning into Hyacinth Bucket? Do we need to make it more obvious, it's not even my carpet, so like I said at the start I'm not that precious but we did have our carpets shampooed so it seems like a nice idea to try and keep them clean.. I can't help but feel like this is a #middleclassproblem!