In less than three years at college, I have had seven different roommates. The three years doesn\u2019t mean I graduated in that amount of time, it means that it took me a while to figure out I preferred living by myself… Don\u2019t get me wrong, living with roommates can be a blast. In fact, most of my old roommates and I are still really close friends. However, no matter how much fun you have living with someone, eventually there are going to be some problems. Some will be small, like not doing the dishes or borrowing clothes without asking, and some will be bigger, like graffiti-ing the dorms and then hiding the spray paint under my bed to frame me, or getting rid of all my food in the freezer to make room for the dead squirrel you found in the street (I went to art school). Hopefully your stories aren’t as horrifying as mine, but either way keep reading for tips of how to get along with your roommate!<\/p>\n
The biggest rule for living with someone, from family, to friends, to lovers and so on, is to respect one another. Hands down. But here are some other tips to keep in mind\u00a0for how to get along with your roommate.<\/p>\n
Fun fact:<\/strong>\u00a0S<\/em>ome people like to be left alone.<\/p>\n Sounds crazy, I know, but I will admit that I happen to be one of those people! While I would love hanging out with my roommates, I also liked to camp out in my room by myself. Sometimes just for an hour and sometimes I didn\u2019t want to see anyone all day.<\/p>\n If your roommate does this, it doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re avoiding you or mad at you. I had one roommate who would constantly knock on my door, text me, and slip notes under my door saying things like \u2018Are you mad at me?\u2019 No, but if you continue bugging me I will be. <\/em><\/p>\n Just because a roommate had been by themselves for a while, doesn\u2019t mean anything other than \u2018I want to be by myself.\u2019 This is perfectly normal and totally okay. You need to understand that it\u2019s okay to leave your roommate be for a bit, and on the other side, you should know it\u2019s okay to say \u2018You know, I think I\u2019m going to spend the rest of the afternoon alone.\u2019<\/p>\n This one is so huge and pretty obvious, but is broken CONSTANTLY, and it\u2019s something I don\u2019t get. My fellow human beings, you do NOT go into your roommate’s room or into their stuff when you do not have permission. How would you like it if someone did that to you? If you argue this by saying, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t mind that much,\u2019 then you\u2019re a liar and get out of here.<\/p>\n This will create inevitable conflict that we all just want to do without. If your roomie has something you need and they\u2019re not around to get it for you, at least text or call first to see if it\u2019s okay. Otherwise, this is a big no no.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In dorms, gossip spreads like…well, gossip (there was a herpes joke in there, but I decided to delete it, and I regret it now). If you don\u2019t want to ruin relationships, keep the gossip to a minimum. This is something to practice everywhere in life, but dorms are even more important because this is where you go to relax after a long day of studying\/working.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t introduce unnecessary stress to where you want to sleep. There\u2019s already enough stress keeping up with your roommate’s sex schedule and dirty dishes piling.<\/p>\n (Let me clarify:<\/em><\/strong> a sex schedule is something one of my old roomies and I invented. Since the walls between our bedrooms were thin, we\u2019d let each other know when the other wanted to have a gentleman over to do cartwheels on the mattress. That way the other one could make plans at someone else’s place, or pick out a loud action movie with lots of bangs ahead of time. It was the only polite thing to do.)<\/p>\n One day, you might end up living with a spouse, and this, my lovely readers, will come in handy. Pick your effing battles. Don\u2019t nitpick. Don\u2019t nag. Don\u2019t get into an argument about something that you won\u2019t care about in an hour. Don\u2019t create a tense western movie style stand off about dishes. YES, THE DISHES! Why does this always seem to be an area of confrontation?<\/p>\n I lived with 3 other girls in one dorm and the dishes were never a problem, and then I lived with 3 entirely different girls the next year and the dish situation was to apocalyptic proportions! It was something I brought up politely and while nothing really changed and it did bug me, it just wasn\u2019t something I was going to let ruin my living situation. Two of my other roomies, however, let it ruin their 5 year long friendship. The snide remarks, evil glares, and then all out screaming matches hit a climax of uncomfortable unrest in the apartment. It was the reason I moved out. Isn\u2019t that ridiculous?<\/p>\n Pick your battles, and on another note, do your damn dishes.<\/p>\n One year, the girls down the hall from me had a terrible roommate, and every evening they would sit in my living room regaling me with tales from what the said roommate had done that day. She would use the living room that was supposed to be shared by four people as her own personal walk-in wardrobe, with clothes tossed everywhere and the arm chair as her designated craft box, where she would keep fake fur, beads, gems and all sorts of shit piled up (Don\u2019t forget…I went to art school.)<\/em><\/p>\n The worst offense that I still remember hearing about was that she used…wait for it…the living room garbage…hold on tight….that had no lid…get ready…to dispose of her USED TAMPONS. Are you kidding me? If you didn\u2019t just groan or squeal a little, let me just add in that she did<\/em> have a bathroom garbage can she could have been using, and that her roommates didn\u2019t know she was doing that until they one day investigated the smell…<\/p>\n Yeah. I just…do you…I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n Although that is an extreme case, if you have a communal area you need to treat it as such. It\u2019s a place for other people to gather too, so don\u2019t be selfish and just use it as if it\u2019s all yours. For most people, that just means using headphones instead of your computer speakers. For others, it means period blood. Potato, potato.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Okay, so what happens if there is a conflict, and it maybe isn\u2019t being settled among the roomies? This is where a mediator can come in. A lot of dorms have community assistants, and they have different names on different campuses but essentially their duties are the same; they maintain a part of the dorm and make sure people follow the rules.<\/p>\n If you have such a person assigned to you, use them! They can come in and go through the conflict with you, helping each side hash out their differences and eventually coming to some sort of resolution.<\/p>\n All in all, living with room mates can be trying times for many of us, but it can also reward us in lasting friendships, fond memories and hilarious stories to one day write about on a blog.<\/p>\n And just do your dishes.<\/em><\/p>\n In less than three years at college, I have had seven different roommates. The three years doesn\u2019t mean I graduated in that amount of time, it means that it took me a while to figure out I preferred living by myself… Don\u2019t get me wrong, living with roommates can be a blast. In fact, most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19672,"featured_media":93125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7598,7601,7893,7896,7661,7664,7655,6223,9630,9634,9633,7733,7736,9560,9563,9625,9628],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-93091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carleton","tag-carleton-tips-advice","tag-guelph","tag-guelph-tips-advice","tag-mcgill","tag-mcgill-tips-advice","tag-ryerson","tag-u-toronto","tag-u-waterloo","tag-u-waterloo-everything-else","tag-u-waterloo-tips-advice","tag-ubc","tag-ubc-tips-advice","tag-wlu","tag-wlu-tips-advice","tag-york-u","tag-york-u-tips-advice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/h3>\n
2. Don’t touch their stuff unless they say you can touch their stuff.<\/h3>\n
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3.\u00a0Don’t gossip, and treat your roommate the way you’d want to be treated.<\/h3>\n
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4. Learn to pick your battles.<\/h3>\n
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5. The communal area is COMMUNAL.<\/h3>\n
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6.\u00a0Use a third party’s help as a mediator.<\/h3>\n
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What are some other helpful tips for how to get along with your roommate? Comment below and share this article with friends!<\/h2>\n
Featured image source: favim.com\/image\/3983354, tumblr.com<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"