Getting on with your housemates is imperative for an easy life. There are enough things to contend with every day without having to come home to squabbles, annoyances and company and a place you don’t feel relaxed or comfortable in. Everyone has to make an effort to get on and there are some easy ways to do foster a good house share relationship.
1 Cleaning Rota
One of the best ways to get on with your housemates is to create a cleaning rota to ensure that all of you are pulling equal weight and not making life harder for each other by ignoring your chores and duties. Of course, you should all be keeping your personal spaces clean on your own, but taking turns to clean the communal living areas will make everybody much happier and the atmosphere will be more harmonious.
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2 Date Nights
Commit to having regular ‘date nights’ with your housemates where you can go out and treat each other and just get away from the small stresses of keeping a household together. Having little arguments about raiding the fridge and using up all the toilet paper can be exhausting, so make sure you balance all of this out with some good old fashioned fun.
3 Respect Food!
And speaking of raiding the fridge, stealing tour housemates’ food is an absolute no no. This is probably one of the cardinal sins of sharing a house with people, and is really disrespectful. If you want to keep your relationships strong and friendly, stick to your shelf and your shelf only!
4 Share the Load
Maintaining a household is made up of several different little admin tasks that can start to get a person down if they don’t get any help, so make sure that you make yourself available to your housemates if they need help with any small thing from changing a bulb in their room to adding up some finances for them. Always be willing to lend a hand and you’ll never have a problem.
5 Don’t Internalize
If you have any annoyances or problems that you need to share with your housemates, don’t let that feeling sit and fester in your mind until it turns in to outright anger. It’s always much healthier to voice your feelings whilst they are still small and not twisted by internalizing them.
6 Wash Your Dishes
It’s always a good idea to wash any pots, pans and dishes that you use immediately after you are done, because one of the most annoying sights for a housemate to see is a pile of dirty dishes building up in the kitchen. It’s gross and it will start to smell. Be a good roommate and wash as you go!
7 Bathroom Schedule
To avoid a catastrophically bad argument every morning, make a bathroom schedule that can be clearly understood and that ensures that all of you get equal time to wash and dry before you have to leave for work or classes.
8 No Bedroom Liberties!
It goes without saying, but definitely do NOT have sex with your partner in one of your housemate’s beds! That is seriously not cool and is quite disrespectful. You really shouldn’t be in their room without them knowing - for any reason at all. You don’t want to have one of those environments where people have to put locks on their doors!
9 Booze Cupboard
Make an effort to soothe any small weekly problems by all contributing to a communal booze cupboard that you can share together at the end of the week; a nice glass of wine can soothe many different issues! If you're too young to drink, treat yourselves to a pizza or takeout.
It’s all about making concessions and accepting your differences as well as helping people overcome the things that really annoy their housemates. If you all give a little and take a little, the living is easy.
