Most people will have roommates at some point in their life.
Whether your roomies are friends or some-random-guy-from-craigslist, sharing a home can be challenging.
This is part 2 of my series on roommates, including strategies for dealing with, the major drivers of conflict :
- Rent
- Schedules
- Cleanliness
- Boundaries
A couple days ago, I discussed #1. Rent.
Today, lets get into the last three points:
2. Schedules
Especially as a new college student, unless you and your roommates purposefully register for the same classes, you are going to have different schedules.
Why does this create tension?
All of us want to carry out daily activities on our schedule, without having someone in the way. Sharing a bathroom? you'll need to coordinate time that works for everyone.
Having a roommate who wakes up too early or stays up too late can be annoyance.
Sharing a calendar on google or other service can help to dissipate tensions before they ever happen
3. Cleanliness
Again, everyone is different, and communication is key. Some people like everything to be immaculate. Personally, I've noticed I create clutter around myself, which might be, and has been in the past ;), extremely annoying to roommates.
Most interestingly, people usually find very specific rules acceptable, and there is no way to know unless we communicate our desires. For example, I recently discussed getting a maid or using another service for cleaning chores with my two roommates, and one of them said they only cared that the floor didn't have little chunks of stuff to step on, whereas the other two of us wear our shoes in the house and don't worry about that. My second roommate said that he was most concerned about keeping the counter tops clean so he had space to prepare food, something we already do very well. Finally, I stated that my only concern was that our bathrooms and toilets were nasty, but I said I would clean them as I felt was needed, so we decided not to get help.
On another occasion, my roommate and I watched our third roommate continue to pile dirty dishes in the sink until there was no room left, until I finally got the nerve to make a joke with him about cleaning his dishes, at which point he remarked, "sure, are you going to clean yours too?!" He had assumed that everyone was contributing to the pile, but in fact we were both watching attentively and managing our dishes as we created them. He had no idea they were all his, or that we noticed... so people have very different ideas that wont come out unless you're willing to open up a little.
4. Boundaries
The fourth and final point that can really cause tension are boundaries.
Do we keep our bedroom doors open? and if so, is it OK for us to walk in unannounced? what if the room-owner isn't home and we want to use their xbox controller?
Many of these social norms are generally agreed upon, such as no harm, no foul for using someones shared blender or sitting in their chair while they are away, but again everyone has very different upbringing that leads to very different sets of boundaries.
Can we walk around naked? or just in our underwear? or do we enter and exit the bathroom fully clothed surrounding our pre-allotted shower time?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these things need to be communicated, especially if you feel very strongly about them.
Setup a roommate dinner night to facilitate conversation if you are all on opposite schedules. Other tools like whatsapp groups or slack channels can also be great sounding boards for announcing issues before they become so huge someone wants to stab you!
As a final piece of advice, honor that your roommate most likely is not trying to annoy you, but rather just being them-self, and they just don't realize that you always get up early on the first Thursday of the month to wash your socks in the bathtub, so having their pet iguana bathe there overnight wasn't convenient for your schedule.
Other tips and resources for keeping everyone happy, or at least preventing what can be prevented:
Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow me on twitter @sci_j_my and here on steemit!
Room mates are such an odd thing. Here in New Zealand we almost never share a single room past childhood. We would rather put up a dividing wall than have a shared larger room. It just makes so much more sense.
This is the type of places we have here for our first years (In fact I stayed in a room exactly like this)
Source
I am enjoying the series, keep it going.
I suppose I should've used the word housemates instead of roommate. If I ever had to share my bedroom I would go crazy!
In the United States Colleges, it is common for new students to share little rooms like that and share a bathroom with many rooms. I think it's a nice transition to immerse kids in their new peer group.
Great post! Thankfully these days are now behind me, but working in HE these issues are very real for my students!
Thank you for reading and commenting!! The post is useless if no one reads it :)