Living with roommates might not be as glorious as you think it would be. While it’s probably a lot better than dealing with nagging parents who limit you with curfews and other restrictions, living with another person who is essentially a stranger is just as hard. There are a few things you can do that make living with your roommates in University Off-Campus Housing a little bit easier from the get-go.
Establish Some Boundaries
Before you both move in, you need to decide who sleeps where. Dividing up the bedrooms and bathrooms might be easy enough, but who gets the bottom shelves in the bathroom and hallway closet? How will you divide up pantry space? And if the bedrooms are small, will you set up a shared office in the living room?
Purchasing Common Use Items
If you happen to share bathrooms, then you might both need to buy toilet paper and hand soap every so often. But you probably also share some food items that don’t need to be bought in bulk, for example, ketchup and mustard. If there is little communication, then it’s easy to get frustrated, especially if you feel like you’re being taken advantage of. Therefore, talk about this problem beforehand.
Dividing Up Chores
Cleaning is probably one thing that is really low on your priority list, whether you live at home with your parents or in University Off-Campus Housing. But it has to be done. It’s better to divide up the chores early on, because one of you is inevitably going to be more inclined to notice and do the work than the other.
