Hostels Versus Private Room

I've stayed in hostels and private rooms, and even the odd whole apartment while travelling. I think there can be advantages and disadvantages to all of these options. I find renting the whole place like an apartment or similar is freer in the sense that you can have the use of pretty much everything unless otherwise stated. So I was able to cook better as well as spread out a bit if I felt like it. Because they're whole places though, they do tend to be understandably more expensive. Having said that, the little studio apartment I stayed at in Rymattyla in the southwest off Finland was super cheap. Most of the places I've stayed in (especially since booking through air bnb rather than hotels.com or other sites) is that most places tend to be private rooms in shared houses. I like both of these options, because even if you only get your own room, you can normally still cook in the kitchen of the shared house. I also find most of the hosts are really nice too, which is a bonus. Some hosts do keep themselves to themselves, but others will take the time to get to talk to and know their guests a bit. The private rooms in shared houses tend to be a fair bit cheaper than whole places, but more expensive than hostels. They're also normally good quality. I've stayed in a couple of hostels. I would say 3, but the room that could sleep 5 I rented in Germany I actually had to myself, so don't know whether to include that one or not. I'll therefore go by the 2 hostels I've stayedd at in Brighton and Hove, England. I find that they're super cheap, but the owners or people working there seem in no hurry to fix things if you report them as broken or not fixed properly. I also find they seem to want to cram as massas many people into each room as possible, so the place I stayed at before this one had sleeping pods, which felt rather like boxes as you had a little curtain to pull across. This one has bunk-beds, so you still can't sit straight without bumping your head on the bed above. Apparently some places also have sets of 3 rather than just 2 bunk beds. I'm told this place also has rooms of 12 people and other hostels have rooms advertized for up to 20 people! Here there is only 1 kitchen for guests to use and the staff helping with breakfast and cleaning speak little to no meaningful English. I thought they had to do some kind of test when moving to the UK for work in order to test their English or Welsh etc, but apparently not. The kitchen here has a 4ring hob (only 2 rings of which work), a microwave, a washing machine and tumble dryer, a kettle and it did have a toaster, but when I reported it as broken they took it away and we're still waiting for a new one. We also have no oven or freezer as far as I know, although we do have a fridge. I have to keep checking the fridge, because there's no guarentee things will stay there. In my last hostel place, no one told me there was a section for free food and that you could take a box and put your name on it. If I had known that in the first place it sounds kind of cool, because if you have food you can't finish before you check out or food that's going to expire, you can leave it in the free food area for everyone else, or if someone has left something there you can use it. The issue I had with that place though, was that half the dials on both cookers were broken, so you couldn't use them properly. The toaster was interesting, because you would turn the dial round to dial to what you wanted and move the leaver to put the toast down, then when it was done cooking you could put the leaver back to make the toast go up so you could take it out. The thing I don't know if I like or not is the fact that they don't always tell you if rooms are mixed gender or separate in hostels. If I know the room is mixed I don't mind so much. The thing that I surprised myself the most about, is the fact that I don't find sharing all that awkward. I thought I would because you don't know the people, but most of the people are either nice enough and/or keep to themselves anyway. The thing I don't like about hostels is the fact that there's so many people in the building trying to use the same facilities. Also you never know if anything is really clean or not in the kitchen.