When you go off to college, it seems as though everyone you know has a “dreaded roommate” story or had a difficult time finding a roommate. Your mother had a roommate who would come in drunk and try to use the closet instead of the bathroom. Your sister had a roommate who had a sleeping schedule precisely opposite hers: One of them slept until noon while the other one went to bed early and was up at the crack of dawn. Your brother shared a room with someone who, as far as he knew, refused to bathe for an entire semester. Choosing a roommate for your college apartment is a delicate task. Check out these tips for ensuring that you don’t end up with a nightmare:
Look for roommates among your friends first. Most of the time, you’ve got some warning before you start looking for a roommate. Before you put up an ad on a notice board somewhere, talk to your friends. You never know when you’ll discover someone who is in a bad roommate situation, doesn’t have a roommate at all and wants one or who is ready to move out of their parents’ house.
Be discerning. Yeah, you’re desperate for a roommate and that means that it’s tempting to jump on the first offer you get with both hands. Here’s the thing: You’re going to have to live with this person for at least a semester and possibly as much as a year. Be discerning. Ask some questions ahead of time. If you’re a quiet homebody who doesn’t really like strangers invading your space, a roommate who’s a real party-goer probably isn’t going to be your best choice. Equally, if you’re a fitness fanatic who wakes up at the crack of dawn to go running, you probably don’t want a roommate who is going to be watching loud movies on Netflix at 2 a.m. Remember that someone you get along with fine outside your apartment might not be someone that you want to wake up to every morning.
Take some extra time to get to know someone before you move in together. Sure, that girl from your econ class last semester was great. You enjoyed giggling about the guy in the front row who couldn’t let the professor get in two words without offering his own opinion. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to make the best possible roommates for each other. Even if you’ve already decided that you’re going to be roommates, take some extra time to get to know each other before you make that final jump and move in together. You might be surprised by what you learn.
Set some rules before you move in together. Who is responsible for cleaning the bathroom and washing the dishes? How are you going to handle the bills? What are you going to do when you have a disagreement? Take the time to hash out how you’re going to handle these situations before you actually move in together. When disagreements do pop up, you’ll be glad that you did.
Designate personal space. If you’re just sharing the apartment, with no shared bedrooms, designate each other’s bedrooms off limits. That’s a place you can go and have time to yourself. If you’re sharing the bedroom, then there needs to be space carved out for each roommate. That might be a simple half of the room and half of the closet or it could be that each of you gets a designated shelf or two that’s off-limits to the other. Everyone needs some things that are just “theirs,” and having a roommate doesn’t mean that you have to share everything. This can also apply to food in the fridge and freezer: Work out a labeling system so you know you’re not going to walk in and discover that your roommate has eaten the last cupcake that you’ve been saving for a special treat.
Living with another person is never easy, especially when it’s a person that you might not have known well when you moved in together. You can prepare for a lot of the worst-case scenarios ahead of time, though–and with luck, maybe you can avoid that nightmare roommate scenario altogether.
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