Living with roommates is something that the average person in their 20s has done at least once in their life. It starts in college if you live in a dorm, then you move to an apartment with roommates, and then when you graduate and get a full time job, you move into a nicer apartment with at least one roommate. This trend seems to be very common at least among the people that I know.
I never got to experience that until I bought my first investment property. I lived at home throughout college and drove the 45 min – 1 hr to school each way. Not the ideal situation but I couldn’t afford to move out at this time. After graduation I moved over seas and didn’t have a roommate. This was because I lived in a room the size of a closet. There was no kitchen and the shower was right on top of the toilet. It was definitely not big enough for two people. Hearing all the good and bad roommate stories only made me more curious about it. I knew that at some point I wanted to see what it’s like to live with your friends. I was definitely not comfortable yet to live with complete strangers.
I was lucky to have two friend roommates. We all got along pretty well, we were all clean and tried to not cross anyone’s boundaries. There was never any fighting but there was definitely times that we didn’t get along. Times where someone got annoyed, upset, mad at one another and nothing was really said or fixed, until everything just blew up in our faces. I lived with roommates for about a year and a half and here is what I learned.
Designate food storage areas for everyone that lives in the house. When we first moved in, there was no rules about where to keep our food. The fridge was a mess of expired products and leftovers. It got to a point where we couldn’t fit anything in the fridge, no one knew what they had, there was food that went missing etc. Once we got fed up with the situation, we decided to split the fridge 3 ways and everyone got their own pantry section. After this, the fridge was never a mess again and there was no missing food. It also helped with keeping fresh food since everything was visible.
Set visitor rules. Everyone has visitors, however letting your roommates know that people are going to be coming over is advised. No one wants to come home from a hard day to find their place of relaxation packed with a bunch of people. Communicate when there is issues. Communication is a huge part of living with someone. Doesn’t matter if it’s your parents, siblings, boyfriend, husband, total stranger, you have to be able to communicate with them when something bothers you. We learned this a bit late. We were never good at talking about things that bothered us about each other. We only discussed it when things had blown up and there was no other solution other than to talk about the issues. So many things could have been avoided if we had communicated better. It doesn’t matter how small an issue is, if something is bothering you, make sure you speak up. Don’t wait until you blow up to bring it up as this can cause tension in the relationship.
last but not least, roommate night. Having a roommate night was both fun and distressing. We use to have wine nights or movie nights or just random talk nights. This helped us bond. We didn’t have a set schedule for this, it was mostly just random. But every time we did this, it helped us understand what everyone was going through. We all love wine so most of the time we would end up drinking and talking. Cooking dinner together was also something we did. Can never go wrong with food and wine.
Overall I had a great time living with my roommates. We no longer live together but still keep in touch. I will definitely apply all this lessons the next time I have roommates.
