Five Tips To Help You Navigate Living With Roommates
Whether you live in a dorm room, an apartment, a townhome, or a shared home, cohabiting with a roommate can be a delicate process. How you share space with friends, family, or schoolmates can significantly impact your daily experience for better or worse.
Our blog will offer five easy and effective tips for living with a roommate, covering behavioral recommendations to keep the peace for long-time and first-time apartment renters and college students.
Tips for Living With Roommates
It’s not uncommon for best friends or family members to conflict while living in the same household and then have a fallout. Close quarters can lead to frustration and cause arguments, so here are our recommended tips for maintaining a harmonious home:
1. Communicate
Communication is always key. Usually, you are the only one who knows you’re using the silent treatment, and passive-aggressive comments or small actions can cause an issue to explode.
Is your roommate wearing your clothes without your permission? These are the times when you should approach them calmly, express how you’re feeling, and clarify what you expect them to do—and not do—with your belongings. It’s important to understand that neither of you can read each other’s minds, so talking is a much more effective way to communicate your point.
2. Set Boundaries
Everyone has their personal boundaries, but your roommate won’t know them until—you guessed it—you communicate with them. Give your thoughts about sharing food, clothes, cleaning supplies, and kitchenware with them, and going into each other’s rooms! It’s important to give them enough time to express their boundaries and expectations.
3. Keep an Open Mind and Compromise
Compromising and keeping an open mind often go hand-in-hand. Does your roommate want to host a Halloween costume party? If you remain flexible and open to their ideas, they are likely to reciprocate when you want to throw a birthday bash in the future. This also goes for sharing chores—you clean the kitchen while your roommate cleans the bathroom.
4. Get To Know Them and Their Schedule
Not everyone can live in a dorm with a close friend or strangers. Often, students share their living spaces with complete strangers, but showing interest in your roommate’s likes and dislikes can quickly help build a friendship.
Plus, by getting to know their schedule, you can better plan when to have friends over, have a study sesh, or sneak in a quick nap while they attend class or work.
5. Clean Up After Yourself
Are you frustrated with your roommate for having their dishes all over the kitchen? Now, take a look at your behaviors. If you have clean laundry, dirty clothes, and pairs of shoes strewn across the shared space, how can you expect them to do their part if you aren’t doing yours?
Keeping your space clean and picking up after yourself shows respect toward your shared space. If your roommate still doesn’t deal with their dishes, it’s time to communicate and—possibly even—compromise!
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