How To Cope With House Sharing
| Education : University Living with other people can be great fun, especially if you were friends beforehand, but it can also be hell at times. Sharing a house or flat is a learning experience, but one which can go horribly wrong if you do not establish a few ground rules right from the very beginning. 1. You have to take into consideration the habits of other people. You can be good friends but have a completely different attitude to many things, such as playing loud music, not washing up immediately after a meal, and then there's the issue of "morning" and "night" people. If you are a neat freak, there is no point in losing your temper everytime the others don't clear up after them. Don't get into the habit of cleaning up after them either. Either voice your irritation when you are all together and try and reach a compromise, or just relax and learn to live with the untidiness of others. 2. Having people to stay can also be a bone of contention. Overnight guests such as friends and boy/girlfriends are usually fine, but resentment can brew when said guest takes over the TV remote, eats all the communal food etc. To avoid such arguments, it might be polite to say to the others if you are having someone to stay, or simply make sure that your guest respects the other members of the household and how they feel. Discuss it and come up with a policy between yourselves if this becomes an issue. 3. The phonebill is bound to be the cause of most major arguments in the house, but you can avoid this. One option is to have a coin box fitted, another is to allow incoming calls only. However, these suggestions may not always be practical, so another idea is to invest in a cheap mobile phone and use that - if you shop around, you can get a good deal with lots of free minutes so practically all you are paying is line rental. Failing that and you are all using the landline, again you must be considerate. Don't hog it for huge conversations. Keep a notebook by the phone in which you note down all outgoing calls for each household member. Make sure you get an itemised bill so that when it arrives you can cross check the calls against the notebook. It can be time consuming, especially when you must divide the line rental and VAT charges between each housemate, but is the only way to avoid arguments. 4. It is generally a good idea to have a kitty and buy things like milk, bread, teabags, coffee, sugar, loo roll, bin liners etc as a house. Everybody puts in a set amount once a week, and ticks their name off when this has been done. It probably won't work to share everything though, as people inevitably end up arguing over who ate more pasta/chips/cheese and so on. Buy food and washing powder separately. It's fine to get together now and again and put all your ingredients together to make a joint meal, but as a rule buy your own produce. This way there will be no arguments over brand/cost either. 5. Establish some rules about the washing up. If you are sharing crockery and cutlery etc, you might find that you end up washing everybody else's if they have just left the dirty pan in the sink which you need to use. Try and wash up your own stuff, or work with someone else, but don't let it all fall to one household member. 6. Cleaning in general - it might be better to work out a rota system that changes weekly, so one week someone takes responsibility for the bathroom and so on. Or alternatively, you agree to clean the bath/shower, wipe the kitchen counters after you have used them. This also applies to emptying the bin and taking it out to be collected - everybody should take a turn at this job. 7. All bills like gas and electricity should be split equally. Start arguing about who used the stereo/washing machine more and it will never be paid. This is unfair for the person whose name it's in too. 8. When using communal rooms like the bathroom, kitchen and living room, you also have to show some consideration. Choose your times to have an hour long soak in the bath for when you are alone in the house, otherwise you are likely to have some very angry housemates on your hands! When watching TV you also need to compromise. If somebody has a TV in their own room and wants to watch something different, then sometimes it is fairer to go in there rather than argue with everybody else. 9. The main thing to remember when sharing a house or flat is that communication is the only way problems will be sorted out. If something is bothering you, get the others together and thrash the problem out. Don't just talk in little groups or to one person because it will only make the problem worse. You might want to think about having a meeting once a month or so, even just for a few minutes to check everything is going okay. House sharing can be a great experience, as long as you are considerate to the other household members and they do the same to you, things should run pretty smoothly!
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