I have had a total of eight roommates in my time in Bowling Green; typically two bedroom, with a current three bedroom. Some have been perfect and blissful, others outright nightmares; all with conflict sprinkled in here and there.
I never looked into roommate advice, and honestly, I still haven’t. At this point, I have merely devised my own plan of action should I seek roommates again in the future, after college.
I would recommend knowing your roommate. Some people have disagreed with me on this point before, but I genuinely believe that across the board you should at least have a feeling for the person or people with whom you will be splitting all living costs.
When it comes to the smaller conflicts of shared living, it is much easier to have a casual conversation with someone you know and have experienced that with before. Coming into a roommate situation blind can make everything feel like a business interaction and really takes everyone’s humanity out of the equation.
For those conflicts, the best thing you can ever do is get everyone to agree to monthly roommate meetings. You may scoff, but the best of friends and the most distant strangers all need a place to air any grievance or need that is specifically structured for that purpose. I promise. Otherwise, you may wonder aimlessly for a week when a good time to tell your roommates the electric is due, or that one person needs to pick up the slack on the dishes.
In these meetings, or perhaps just the first one, discuss a method of group or individual communication that everyone can rely upon. I hear Facebook chat is a good option for all. I will leave little notes regarding my things, when I need them or do not want them used, or a general bill reminder. One of my current roommates, who I did not know before we came to live together, reads this as passive aggressive. If we had had an opportunity to discuss how we convey information, I could have explained my methods in a way that may have eased her feelings on them, or come to some other compromise.
If you are a tidy person, just as a statement of fact you have to be prepared for people not to be as tidy as you, and that is nothing against them as humans. After a year of living alone, I got pretty set in my ways and just assumed that people saw how seemingly easy and beneficial is was to keep a tidy home. First you must know, you will not change those people, and you shouldn’t have to. There are just ways that you learn to live in a shared space.
When it comes to dishes, I like the sink to be clear, so dirty dishes are piled next to it. I would recommend this as a course of action for all roommates; no one likes to clean other people’s dirty dishes, especially once they pile up. The best thing you can do is have dishes as a running topic at roommate meetings and set ground rules, like dishes cannot set dirty for longer than three days.
I wish you well in your roommate endeavors and simply write today as a warning that you should not under-think your living situations. I wouldn’t recommend neurotically overthinking them, either, but considering the basic differences in how people tend to dwell in their habitats can go a long way in maintaining a peaceful and comfortable home atmosphere for all.
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