What are your households most annoying habits?
No matter the strength of your family bond, love for your partner or admiration for your friends, the annoying habits of those who live under the same roof as you will test the strength of those ties.
We surveyed members of UK households to find out just how annoying they find the habits of their fellow inhabitants and asked illustrator Son of Alan to bring some of the more extraordinary, disgusting, or just downright hilarious ones to life.
Annoying household habits survey
45% of the people we asked said they were annoyed by the habits of the people they live with every single day. Just 3% told us that they live in eternal household bliss, and are never annoyed by the people they share a house with.
Of the types of households we surveyed (families, partners, partners with children, and friends or lodgers), those who live with a partner and their children are the most regularly annoyed by household habits. At 55%, more than half are annoyed every day, and only 2% are never annoyed.
Those living with partners came bottom, with just 28% annoyed daily and 7% living in a household of paradise in which they are never annoyed.
We also asked respondents which typical household annoyances occur in their household, giving the following top 5:
Leaving dirty dishes in the sink
Leaving the lights on when not in the room
Not cleaning hairs from the sink after shaving
Not replacing the toilet roll
Being loud whilst someone is trying to sleep
Despite the high levels of irritation, we found amongst the people we surveyed, they aren’t so regularly forthcoming when expressing when they’re annoyed.
Just 1 in 4 people are willing to speak up every day and let household members know they’re annoyed, with as many as 1 in 10 preferring to button up and never say anything.
Again, partners with children have the highest likelihood of expressing annoyance every day (39%), whereas friends or lodgers have the greatest disparity between being annoyed and actually speaking up about it. 45% of those we asked are annoyed every day by household habits, but in an effort to maintain a tranquil home, only 14% break their silence every day – a gap of 31%.
Partners (14% difference between those annoyed every day and those willing to say something every day) and families (17%) brought the smallest gaps, displaying how comfortable we are with letting our partners and family members know when they’ve annoyed us.
