The bank and I own a house down the highway from here. I've been renting it for the last ten years when my current spousal unit yanked me out of my wonderful town to another town, and then one thing led to another. For a variety of reasons, I kept the house and rented it out.
In the fall there will be five new roommates - four of them are young women 22-26. One of the roomies wrote an ad with me and interviewed the applicants with me.
We asked them questions like - have you previously lived with non-family? How many? How did that work out? How did you organize the work in shared kitchen and shared bathrooms and common areas?
They are all moving in soon. If they get along and get organized, I won't have people emailing me wanting me to do something about so-and-so. For the first time, I'm letting go of my area in the house. The truth is, I wasn't there much in the last year for a variety of reasons. Changes.
My question for anyone who has roommates:
What tips do you have for the new roomies to make it work?
What rules do you break?
rule 0 of wage's house is be naked all the time rule 1 is can i borrow your car rule 2 is if you don't have work today, you get to clean the dishes rule 3 is i am allowed to blast music between noon and eight and i don't give a fuck if you work night shift cause so do i rule 4 is watch the pressure cooker, nobody wants to die in a hail of bean shrapnel rule 5 is wipe down the griddle when you're done rule 6 is don't turn off the blacklight or the lava lamp rule 7 is close the lid rule 8 is goddamn it peter stop doing the dishes you aren't any good at this i'll do it rule 9 is goddamn it peter edit: in practice i break rule 3 cause my headphones are pretty great
Nobody wants to die in a hail of bean shrapnel I will walk through my day imagining this as the first line of a novel called Curse of the Flatmates -- Is it a murder mystery -- a love story -- a Kiwi vampire story (a la briandmyers)? We shall see.
I saw a great movie about roommates (or flatmates, as we call 'em down here), just yesterday! Here's the trailer (it was awesome btw) :
My roommate and I have hardly seen each other since we moved in... He was gone all last week and I assume will also be gone when I get home today. I'm not the cleanest person, nor is he, but we have an understanding to clean shit up in common places. I was sick all weekend so I slacked a bit. Guessing it'll slide this time. Other rules consist of: 1. You can do dishes (I do most of the time), but odds are good my girlfriend will do them when she comes over anyway 2. No one in the house gives a shit if you blast music or anime at ridiculous hours of the night. Neither of us sleeps. 3. The whiteboard is used strictly for passing games of tic-tac-toe and riddles. Anything else is frivilous. 4. If you order pizza you are god for the night. 5. I hope you don't mind seeing me naked. If you do, keep your eyes shut at all times. 6. Anything else just bring it to my attention and we'll work it out.
Pick up after yourself. It's the golden rule, if you leave something out, you're the worst flat mate ever. No TV/Movies in Common Areas. This stops people from camping out in the living room all day watching Orange is the New Black. Clean the kitchen. Please, please, please... Don't just wash your hair down the bathroom sink/shower drains. No one likes clawing out long moldy, foreign hair pieces(because we all know no matter how hard we try we are going to have to do it eventually, let's just take some precautions) Rules I break? Taking out the trash. But if you Jenga the trash, that's messed up.
I am totally stealing "jenga the trash", holy shit. Not saying it happens around here or anything...