April 27, 2016, by Amy Hawthorne

Self catered halls – the pros and cons

Self Catered halls at the University of Nottingham are an option for your future accommodation. There are two types of halls, catered and self catered. It’s up to you where you live in your first year, you can apply for accommodation through the University when you have firmed your choice (first choice Nottingham, of course!) The Undergraduate self catered halls that you can choose to live in include: Albion House, Broadgate Park, Raleigh Park, St Peter’s Court (all near University Park main campus) and  Bonington Hall (Sutton Bonington Campus) and Lonsdale Hall (Derby Campus).

Here’s some useful information to help you choose which type would be best for you!

Pros and Cons of Self Catered 

Pros:

“I want to eat what I want, when I want!”

If this is you then self catered halls are probably a good idea. You have a small kitchen in catered halls but it is shared with your corridor and only has things like a microwave and a kettle… so no cooking feasts in the middle of the night. Your own kitchen will be a great communal area for you to meet your flatmates. Self catered halls feels like you have your own flat! It’s great for special occasions too, here’s what my flat looked like at Christmas!

self catered happy christmas!

More Pros:

  • Early practice at adulting, cooking and cleaning
    your own space.
  • You’ve truly got your own independence when it
    comes to your schedule and diet.
  • You don’t have to move out all year like catered
    halls do. If you feel homesick having a room and
    kitchen space that you don’t have to vacate every
    term really helps you feel settled in.
  • Great for special occasions!
  • Study space with new course mates who are not
    ready for the state of your room yet.

 

Cons:

“Food shopping”

If this phrase makes you shiver with terror than self catered halls may not be for you. However you can get what you want and when you want it then…and have your own kitchen to put it in!

Cleaning the oven is the worst. There is no way to avoid this either, although your kitchen does get cleaned once a week by a professional scrubber they only really tend to agree to do it if it’s already clean. But if the’re coping with this:

self catered dirty dishes

then fair enough…

Self catering means you have to cater for yourself, if this is the only meal you can think of…

Self catered sad bread meals

you may want to consider catered halls instead of sad bread.

The last con I can think of and probably the worst is that it can get pretty noisy. This can be a positive too as you have your own space, but make sure you get to know your flatmates so they understand if you ever want them to turn it down in there!

BONUS TIPS:

If you order delivery online you don’t have to carry it all back with you! (Asda delivery is £1 between 8-10pm for example).
The self catered halls are slightly off campus, but some supermarkets are a short walk away.
Take that small travel suitcase that’s been under your bed to put your shopping in so you don’t end up like this!

Another thing to bear in mind is taking out the rubbish!
As you’ll be sharing the kitchen with your flatmates you need to consider doing the bins at some point (sorry).
A bin rota is also really useful for sharing out all the tasks fairly.

Self catered bins removal

There are pros and  cons to both of the options but I hope the information in this post was helpful enough to aid your choice. Here’s a video to sum up this blog post!

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