Living with Roommates

I've had some of the best times of my life with roommates, and some of the worst.

Make sure none of them are card carrying Deadhead hippies. No taste. Everything they want to hang up or adorn the living areas with will with all probability stink to high heaven and be fucking tie dyed. And they'll steal from you.

Just remember, no matter how good of friends you are, there will be times when you'll want to kill each other.

Well, I think I've offended the hippie readership of CHUD, but seriously, fuck 'em.

It goes without saying, but your experience will totally depend upon who you decide to live with. I lived with a friend for 2 years before I moved in with my girlfriend (now wife), and we did just fine. Before we signed a lease, we made sure that:

- We decided how bills would be split
- We committed to a cleaning agenda and schedule
- We made sure that we were both on the same schedules (we were both night owls).

If you get those areas covered, you're fine. The money issue is obvious, but if you're not compatible in the cleanliness area, you're fucked. Make sure that you're on the same sleep cycle or you will also get pissed at each other...if you're trying to sleep and he's rocking out on Rock Band, things will go badly.

My $.02

For the most part, its works and is 100x better than living with parents. I've been friends with my 3 other roommates since high school though, so it wasn't like living with strangers or anything and I know I can trust them. Sure, there are plenty of fights and days when no one is talking to each other, but for the most part it works out pretty well. And yea, having a system where we rotate certain chores and payments for little things like light bulbs, toilet paper etc. helps a lot.

We also implemented rotating payments on the keg. Everyone pays for the refill once a month.

Try not to live with someone who is the opposite of you when it comes to politics. Having those arguments night after night was not fun. That was a pain in the ass in my book. But otherwise the ideas posted above me are all good ones.

Also: Get the food situation lined up right away. Are you both on your own for food, or will you split the tab on groceries and say that all of the food is communal. I'd recommend saying that you each buy your own groceries, because nothing will piss you off more than to come home and find your roommate laying on the couch with your half-empty bag of Fritos by his side.

I've found it's a crap shoot. It helps if you two are already friends (and share common interests & ethics), because uniformly every office-selected pairing I've ever had ended up being anti-social, and even more of a slob than I'm comfortable with. It does have its advantages, especially if you're working in a field where income can flux like crazy.

As long as you're sure its not someone who will wear on your nerves too much, its not bad. Having a roommate for the last four years has helped keep me social when I don't much feel like it (60+ hour job takes its toll on you).

Be aware about the girlfriend situation as well. Does your roommate have a girlfriend that will be sleeping over every night? Will she be eating YOUR FOOD and getting in your way? Are they going to be fucking loudly EVERY NIGHT while you're trying to sleep?

It can work if you have communal food, you just have to trust the other person to be straight up about it. But then again, you don't really have to worry about that when the food in your kitchen/fridge consists of a 12 pack of Ramen, a 4 day old pizza, Kraft Mac n' Cheese, and a Slushy Machine.

I had a situation where a guy I was living with, there were three of us, but his aunt owned the house we were renting. So the utilities were technically in his aunt's name. Every month, we would give the bill money to him, not thinking much about it. We were in our early twenties, and I hadn't learned yet to trust no one. For about a year, everything was fine. Then he kept asking for higher, and higher amounts of money. This made no sense, as it was summertime, and we really didn't run the AC, we were more of open the windows and doors kinds of people. Then he made the mistake of asking for money TWICE in one month, trying to get angry at us, telling us bills were do, whatever.

I decided to check on it and made a call to the power and light company. Turns out that he hadn't paid the utilities in months, and they were about to be turned off. A little more digging, and observation, it turned out that he was using our utitlity money to feed a coke habit. He was pretty good at hiding it, I suppose, our schedules were fairly opposite.

Anyway, that's an extreme case, and I cut ties with that asshole immediately. Just be careful.

make sure your roommate flushes the toilet (if you share a bathroom).

that was the worst part of living with 2 girls.

All but one of my roommates have been people I've known prior to living with them, so they were a known commodity. The one exception was a duplex where I knew the people living on the other side from the side I lived on, so I could always retreat over there if things got loopy on my side.

I will say that no matter how well you know someone or how good a friend they are, live with them and they will do at least one thing that will drive you up the wall. The degree of that one thing and how you choose to deal with it is where the difference comes in.

As with most things in life, it all depends on who you're living with. I've been living with the same friend since we both got out of college. Hell, moved to the city together and everything. There are batshit annoying times, but it's well worth it in the long run. Plus, if they make a lot more money than you (like mine), they often have cool shit, like a flatscreen HDTV and Rock Band and a PS3 for Blu Ray.

So it certainly has its advantages.

That's actually the best thing about living with more than one other roommate, because they kind of cancel each other out and if one of them is acting like a fag the others can put them in their place. It's different when it's just you and someone else, because then its just your word against theirs. Keeping a couple pairs of boxing gloves around the house can also help ease tensions if things get out of control. We've resorted to that a few times.

Hide your pot. Good.

Keith F. brings up a good point about the bills. The duplex I lived in, they asked for first and last months rent, but said I could take my time getting them the last months rent, no big deal. Then it turns out the guy paying the bills was way behind on the electric bill, to the point where paying the actual monthly bill wasn't enough for the power company and they kept shutting our power down. I finally got fed up and paid the off the overdue amount on my credit card just so we'd have electricity on a regular basis. When I finally decided to move out, he had the nerve to try to get my unpaid last month's rent out of me. I turned the light in my room off and on and said, "It's right here."

I had another roommate who was just forgetful and kept forgetting to pay the bill, so he finally set up automatic debit so he wouldn't have to worry about it.

Hide your alcohol.

Outside of the boxing glove part, this has been my experience as well. For about 2 years I lived in a house with about 4 other guys who were all friends. It was nice to have an open door policy between the upstairs and downstairs. Always having someone around to get drunk, and watch movies and sports with is nice.

Make it abundantly clear to your roommate that nobody is staying overnight unless you're cool with it.

- Girlfriend is OK unless they stay over every night. If that happens, charge her rent.
- Girlfriend is OK as long as they don't fuck loudly ALL NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT.
- Friend who has had too much to drink is OK as long as it's a rare occasion.

Same applies for spouses BTW.
And then make sure they're under the proper names.
Sometimes opposite work schedules can be a blessing though if you like your "privacy".
And hopefully he brings enough over to share.

Yea, one time things got out of hand because one of my roommates slept with this girl who a different roommate was trying to get with, so the boxing gloves solved that problem.

But really, I can only remember a few other instances where we all didn't get along pretty well. And, like I said, we've known each other since HS and we all have similar tastes, so that helps.

It's one regret of mine that I never actually lived by myself. I went from parents to roommates to the wife.

I spent my 20s sharing brownstones with 2 other roommates (at a time -the who of the two changed quite a few).

One roommate and I decided to see how long it would take before roommate 3 did his damn dishes. After ten days we couldn't see the faucet anymore.

No matter what, if a bill has YOUR NAME ON IT AT ALL, make sure that it's paid on time. Don't rely on the roommate to pay bills that you're on...you run the risk of him fucking up your credit. When I was a banker, I saw that happen to people all of the time.

Make sure they have a similar taste in movies! Paramount importance, I tell you!

My favorite roommate game is trash can Jenga. See how high you can stack trash in the can before it falls over, loser has to change the bag out.

Man, bad memories about this roommate keep flooding back.

*He used to bring home pets without asking us first. Including several dogs, iguanas, a fucking sugar glider, etc.

*He claimed his room was too cold in winter, and too hot in summer, so he slept on a futon in the front room with his girlfriend, and tried to keep me and the other roommate from watching TV late at night. Late at night is the only time I usually watch TV. But he still demanded we pay our equal amounts of the cable bill.

*He hid my records that he didn't like, making me think I was going crazy. I got him back good for this.

*He kept his dogs in a cage, and I guess the cage door was broke or something, so he used my vintage Fender tube amp to prop the door close. The bastard mutt of his chewed through the cable. Easily fixable, but guess who refused to pay for it?

I could go on. Thanks a lot Hocken.

My last roommate had schizophrenia.

I live alone now.

Do not have sex with your roommate.

My last roommate had a schizophrenic aunt with boundary issues.

I live with my husband now.

I have a great roommate, but then again we're so alike most people mistake us for brothers, and some people who've known us for years will call one of us by the other's name.

Man, hearing some of this makes me feel lucky. Me and my roommate are extremely cool, but we were good friends before hand so that's to be expected. We both agree on the "if you use a dish, you clean it" policy, and not the "let the dirty dishes stack up until one poor slob has to clean everybody's dishes". I have the better TV, as well as a reclining couch, so he's over in my room a lot, but luckily we have the same tastes in movies so it's all good.


That's really what I can stress more than anything is make sure you're really good friends. I've had some disastrous roommate relationships before, and the worst part isn't the loud screaming fights, it's the awkwardness afterwards.

Oh, and never, ever, EVER do the passive-aggressive post-it note shit. Ever. You have a problem? Talk to the person.

Yup, exactly. If you can't do that, live alone. If you can't work it out, go to the fisticuffs if you have to. That solves most male problems that can't be solved by talking. Passive-aggressiveness solves nothing and really only gets people even more pissed off.

All male problems can be solved by fisticuffs, 'American Ninja' taught me this well.

You don't have multiple personality disorder do you?

Speaking of...
But they never will.

A roommate? Unless you'll be out on the street financially, they generally are way more trouble than they're worth. No matter how much planning goes into it, you're still sharing way too much personal space, and incurring way too many potential headaches (bad credit, accidents, etc.) to make the reduced living expenses worthwhile.

The proof is in the pudding. Sure, I have great memories of times with my roommates, but on the other hand, would I ever want to do it again? Hell, even have a housemate? Fuck no. And just about everyone I ask has the exact same opinion.

Yeah, but you're a lawyer. Nobody wants to live with you.

And yeah, I have a "housemate" as opposed to a "roommate". Minor distinction, true, but having a decent-sized house and a yard and decks certainly helps.

Damn right, Queensberry Rules apply. None of this UFC, two-seconds-standing-up-then-it-becomes-a-gay-wrestle-a-thon until some taps out. You hit each other til the other goes down.

Fights in movies are way better because they don't go to the ground...

You're better off getting a housemate. Look at Singer! Prickly and grizzled he may be, but he's making it work (thanks to a deck and a yard, and presumably at least 300 square feet of personal space and a bathroom).

Minimum you'll need to be happy: your own bathroom, your own bedroom with a locking door, and a communal space where you, or your housemate, can go to that won't bother someone trying to sleep.

And it still would be worse than living on your own (if you leave the financial aspect out for a moment).

Oh, I couldn't live in an apartment with other people. Fuck that.

THIS.

Fixed.

I have schizophrenia but I am on meds.

I live alone now too.

I went from living at home, to living with two good friends, then one good friend (for 8 years) and now with my girlfriend and our son, so I've never really had the official living alone experience, which I'm pretty ok with, because I'm a fairly social person. Plus during a good chunk of the 8 years with my friend, we had fairly opposing schedules, which actually worked out great. For about 5 days a week, we essentially had the place to ourselves, as one would be at work or asleep while the other was home. The drawback, however, was that we were both slobs and both fairly irresponsible with paying bills on time (we'd pay them, just usually late), plus heavy smokers (I quit two years ago). As a result, our apartment was filthy, it reeked, and we have terrible credit. I'm at the point in my life where I wouldn't want to go back to that, and I'm very happy in my current situation, but I don't look bad at the bachelor pad years as bad, just another part of my life. I would say everyone should get the chance to do it at least once.