Back in Texas, a friend of mine answered a roommate ad on a bulletin board. A couple months later he called me and asked me to help him move. He didn’t have much to move, but I had a car. And besides, he wanted someone around for safety’s sake, because roomie was allegedly a huge weirdo. This was the first time I’d met the roommate, and he seemed okay to me. Sat quietly why we took my friend’s stuff out to my car. Looked normal. My car was small, so I think we did two trips. They said goodbye and good luck and that was that. Fast-forward maybe three years, and there’s the roommate in the news. He’d gotten married in the meantime, and they found his wife buried in the backyard of their home.
The moral is: It’s probably best to take on someone you know as a roommate.
I would not count on having a roommate lessening the cleaning load. Yeah, on average, you can each clean the shared spaces half as often and there’s a savings, but the difference between what one person thinks is clean enough and what the other does, and the annoyance of having to pester/wait for the other to clean, or redo something, or not being able to use the common space when you want is going to overwhelm that.
As far as having someone to hang out with at home, I agree that this is a great bonus of roommates. But the way to accomplish that is not to find a roommate and hope they become your friend, it’s to ask your friends who you already get along with to move in. Note that even then, this will not always work out the way you think. I’ve been lucky choosing friends to be roommates, but there’s a big difference between someone you’re happy to hang out with for a few hours a week and someone you’re happy to live with and have there all the damned time.
You will end up doing all of the cleaning that you are presently doing, plus the added burden of your roommate’s cleaning.
If your personality clicks with that person, their evil behavior will override that factor, and you will soon hate them.
They will be late with the rent.
They will hang around the household commons in their underwear.
They will steal from you.
Their ex-spouse will come over all the time for booty calls and fights.
Their kids will steal from you when the birth mother leaves them there. She will later accuse you of molesting them.
They will move in somebody else without properly sharing the rent burden.
They will need you to give them rides and lend them money and clothing. Probably use your computer.
When they use your computer, scatology and kiddie porn will be prominently left on your screen.
They will take your food from the fridge without replacing it.
They won’t bathe.
Their friends will come over to party, and damage your possessions, furniture, and walls. The friends will also steal your money and possessions, intimidate you, and be taking liquor enemas in the bathroom and kitchen.
Their friends will leave their drug-making paraphernalia, and illegal gun suppressors there, while taking the drugs, money, and weapon with them. Somebody will come over to your house looking for all of this stuff, and demand of you where the money, sawed-off shotgun, and ball peen(sp?) hammer are.
The friend will be blasting his music all night. When you mention that you need to sleep, they will turn on you with rage while telling you that they pay half the rent, and you should shog off, if not die.
They will have a sleep disorder, and walk around the house, naked, during the middle of the night with the lights off.
I think that I’m probably blocking out the really bad stuff, but, this should get you in the ballpark of what will happen.
I had two different roommates in the dorm during my freshman year of college; I didn’t know either of them beforehand, and while I didn’t hate either of them, I didn’t like them a lot, either. From sophomore year, on through grad school, my roommates were always people who were already my friends, and every single one of those living arrangements was positive.
When I got my first job, and relocated, I rented a house with a friend, along with two other people (friends of my friend; I did not know either of them before moving in). Got along great with my friend, but had a lot of conflicts with the other two guys.
Next month I’ll be moving to a tiny studio I can barely afford. But on my own. So worth it.
And my flatmates at the current place are lovely.
But there’s always someone in the kitchen cooking an elaborate meal when I’m starving. I feel I can’t ask my friends over. I want to walk around in my undies (it’s 33 C in the house today), I want to make a mess and not worry about cleaning it up. I want to clean up and not worry about someone making a mess. I don’t want to talk to anyone, no matter how nice, in the morning. And I want to make noisy love to whoever I feel like.
Only way I’m sharing is out of financial need. Otherwise not.
In my lifetime I have probably had 30 roommates - from dorms in college to apartments after college.
I can count on two fingers how many turned out well over the long term.
All the reasons have been mentioned.
Doesn’t make any difference if they are family, friends or strangers - sharing a space with someone always brings baggage and compromise. Unless you need to have a roommate to survive, I can think of no good reason to do so.
I would rather live alone in a tiny studio apartment than share a mansion with roommates.
Oh the horror stories of roommates - that alone could fill 100’s of threads, just by sub-categories of slobs/perverts/addicts/thieves/nutcases…pretty much an endless list.
Judging by the sheer size of the “roommates” category on Passive-Aggressive Notes, I think I’m fortunate that I’ve only lived with family. Never lived completely alone, don’t think I’d like it (too lonely to me).
They should change the name of this board from Straight Dope to Dream Shitters Anonymous. There go my dreams of easy (albeit relatively minor in the grand scheme of things) money.
My friend in college, when we lived together for 2 years we had some problems but we got along too. However we got on each others nerves at times. Living with my brother was good (although not so much for him, I was dirtier than he is).
Like I said, I’ve only lived with friends and family, never with strangers. Ah well.
Before you take on a flatmate, make sure you read He Died with a Felafel In His Hand and realise that although the anecdotes are exaggerated, they aren’t exaggerated all that much. Don’t watch the movie (it was awful), but read the book.
Having done the flatting thing at a number of places, I echo the sentiment that you can’t flat with a friend. As soon as you move in together, they stop being your friend.
The most successful shares I was in were the ones that were two separate households living under the same roof - separate everything (in one case that included everyone keeping their own loo roll in their bedroom) and one person doing the cleaning in exchange for a break on rent.
But there comes a time when most people want to stop doing the share house thing and there’s a VERY GOOD REASON for that. I saw an article a couple of years ago that said that the average amount of time that people stay in a single share house averaged less than a year. I’d believe it.
I’ve had my stuff stolen to pay for a flatmate’s drugs, I bought an entire beef rump and had my flatmate throw a barbecue with it and my entire wine collection, I’ve been stuck with bills for 12-hour international phone calls by flatmates moving out and I’ve lived in states of filth because everyone in the house had a different idea of what constituted ‘clean’ and the house settles to the lowest common denominator in every area. I haven’t had to clean up the third bedroom after an overdose, but I did have to help one of my friends do it in their shared house.
If all of that’s acceptable for the cash you’re getting back, go for it. If not, you’re probably over 30.
Put me down as get the small studio flat, one that you can manage to pay for alone. Go out for booty calls or invite someone back, but don’t try living with anybody until you find someone that you are interested in getting married to.
The whole:
*they are slobs or total neat freaks, whichever is the opposite of you
*they are anal about money, or totally crappy and never pay up anything on time - and if you have a landline, they run up huge bills/their sucky couch surfing buddies run up huge bills
*you get cable tv, and they run up huge porn bills/their couch surfing buddies run up huge porn bills
*they or their couch surfing buddies eat all your food and leave the kitchen a mess
*one of their buddies gets into your room and whacks off into your lingerie drawer while you are away for the weekend, and do the same to your bed [happened. We really need the barfy face back]
*couch surfing buddies - need I say more?
I have always had the best and most peaceful times living alone and going to meet my boyfriends at their place or having them over - I made it perfectly clear for 3 or 4 of them that they were never ever going to move in with me and if it got serious, we would consider getting a place together after I got the engagement ring. [I was more interested in friends with benefits at that point in my life and that kept the guys at bay.] I think my absolute favorite studio was one over inFairport NY - the town had its own electrical generation and my electric bill was dirt cheap - I actually got money back at the end from the deposit. It was quiet, I had a second floor studio with a balcony that backed on some woods, and it was mainly adults in my building so I didn’t have kids running around making noise. Other than the pale yellow/medium yellow/dark yellow shag of the late 70s it was pretty much perfect, and ran $300 a month. sigh I miss the early 80s.
That said above, I do agree it’s best not to have any roommate whatsoever, friend or otherwise. Maybe I’m just too old for roommates now, but I feel I would gladly pay more than 10% of my income for the privilege of living alone.
I’m wondering though about tenant situations. Rather than have a roommate per se, how does the practice of renting out a room in a landlord-tenant situation differ? Would that be better, or is it just a question of semantics?
Well, now that we’ve established that roommates can range from “maybe OK sometimes” to “born in the pits of hell”, I’ll leave this gem here as a warning for those hoping they’ll find an “OK” roommate.
I just moved into my first apartment where I am alone. No roommates. No husband. No family.
It is simply awesome.
If I am feeling slobby, I leave stuff around. I clean when I want to. I can sit on the couch and watch whatever I want on tv. I can leave the bathroom door open while I shit.