Am I Over-Reacting?

chutzpahTue 05/07/11 14:09

I thought about putting this in support, but I'm not that fragile about it....

The housemate has had a friend up for the weekend, who I quite like. He's also had his boyfriend staying over, who I'm less than keen on. It's "his" flat (in that he's the named person on the lease" but I pay rent, 1/2 of the bills etc.

Yesterday the housemate and I had to go to work, leaving his boyfriend and friend in the house. I got home from work around five, our IT systems having crashed and me losing the will to live. I got home and the front door was unlocked. I assumed they'd popped out the back for a cigarette, but couldn't find them. They got back around six, saying they were "sick with worry" about us being burgled, because housemate hadn't left them a key, so they just went out without locking the door. I tried not to let on I was extremely fucked off about it (my contents insurance is obviously invalidated if we were burgled and someone hadn't locked the door) plus I didn't want to make a scene.

So today, housemate and I are off to work again. On the assumption he's even more scatterbrained than I am, I assumed housemate wouldn't leave his housekey, so left mine with a note telling them how to lock the door (it's a bit temperamental), and my phone number so they could drop my key off. I get a text at one o'clock saying they were both going home, they couldn't lock the door so they'd left it open, and my key under a plant pot in our front garden (our front garden is about 30cm wide - calling it a garden is pushing it....). So I have to leave work early as I'm not happy about our flat being unlocked (we live in studentville, so burglaries are relatively common).

When I get home the back gate is also wide open. I'm at a loss to explain why if they weren't locking the front door they decided to leave the key outside, when they could have put it back in the house. Now friend was on fixed tickets as she had a hell of a long journey, so couldn't hang around - but boyfriend lives locally, so could have stayed until I got home (he's a student with no summer job, so doesn't have anything else to do at the moment).

I'm really angry about this - the fact they think it's ok to leave someone else's house unlocked and laugh about it really riles me up. It just seems so unbelieveably thoughtless.

So - trying not to just explode when housemate gets back, I'm thinking about popping out to get a spare key cut, and saying either no guests in the house when neither of us are in (including his boyfriend) or they lock up using the spare key, and then post it through the letter box.

Am I over-reacting, or would you also be pissed off? And does the key plan sound sensible?