Sharing an apartment/house with other people. Thoughts, Experiences and Advice?

[Droopy]

Here's my current situation in brief and the reason for this thread:

A few months back my brother moved out of my parents house, where I currently live, to another town so that he could attend University. The town that he moved to is a considerable distance away, is costly to get to and train times going to there are awkward. He comes home some weekends but usually either sleeps, studies or sits on his laptop when back here. In the meantime, I am on my own with my parents and my dog. My dad works 9-5 and my mum usually sits about the house or sleeps due to her disability. So as you can probably guess I am most often alone. My friends are either in employment, education, have partners or sometimes all three - so I don't see them as often as I would like.

While I have experienced most of my life by myself due to not having many friends until a few years ago, I am getting sick of being in the current situation as described above. I can do it but it does get boring, I would rather be around people. Two friends of mine (one close and the other an associate) have a house which is about ten minutes around the corner from me. There is another person living in the house whom I also know. They have a spare room which is a bit smaller than what I would like but I have been considering moving in if they all are OK with that. If I move in then I will have company, be around friends and have my independence. It will train me for living away from parents and help improve my social skills if I am around other people. Sometimes they invite other people over to the house so I could potentially meet new people and make more friends too.

I want to gather experiences and thoughts about this. Have any of you shared a house or apartment with other people? Could you cope with it? Have you any advice? If you were in my current situation what would you do?

 

[. . .]

I'd probably be fine living with fellow introverts who I shared at least some things in common with. Extroverts? I'd probably have much difficulty living with them. I could put up living with one or perhaps two extroverts, but nothing more than that.

My advice is that if you choose to move in with your friends, try gaining employment before going through with it. You don't want your friends bitching at you for being lazy or, worse, kicking you out if you can't pay your share of rent.

 

[epath13]

It depends, you say that you want people around, that you miss your friends and things like that so maybe it would be a good idea for you. I've been sharing places since about 17.
Even when I got married 1st year we lived with my parents and then shared a house for a few months, so I got plenty of experience. Let's put it this way, I hated sharing one of the reasons (in my case), no bathroom schedule, you never know when people are going to get out of there. I didn't mind company but most of the time I would prefer people to warn me that they were going to storm into my room because they bought a pair of lacy underpants yeah, it happened to me quite a lot with one of my roommates... in addition to that, no cleaning schedule (no specific one, who does what exactly and when). I didn't like people feeding me and having the longest conversations about things I had absolutely no interest in... ok what else.... I lived in a dorm once, it was kinda fun, even though I hated it at 1st. But then I still dreamed of my own place. So most of my experiences with sharing places were annoying but that's just me If at that time I could afford living alone I would definitely do that unless it's living with partner kind of situation.

 

[HelloDizzy]

I can deal with one other person, who I trust.
That's it.
I need privacy and I need freedom.

 

[MrJelle]

Last year i shared my appartment with 4 other friends for 2 months. It was fun the first 2 weeks, but then i started to get annoyed about it.
Let me explain:

I want to have a clean place if i have people that will come and visit me, and my friends was very lazy, and they usually only helped cleaning the appartment 2 or 3 times (out of 20). It can be hard to live with others, especially if you want to get a bit privacy. I had a girlfriend during those 2 months, and we couldn't talk together alone, because of the my friends. Well, my friends also wanted to party a lot, and that's not a problem for me. But when they take a girl with them home, and they want to do bedfun, it's not very cool to hear it.

My best advice is, think about it, and make sure you can handle it. Or at least, make sure you can get some privacy or time alone if you need that. Otherwise, i think you should go for it, and try it.

 

[kasmanaft08]

I've had many roommates. Two in a dorm (one good experience, one bad). I shared a house with five other guys at one point, and I also had my own apartment with a single other roommate. Also shared an apartment with a boyfriend when I was younger. There was only a brief time that I lived alone. Currently I'm living with another family. So, I've lived in a lot of different situations I suppose...

About half of my experiences with living with another person is good. It really just depends who you're living with, obviously. To me, I find that my ideal situation is living with a boyfriend, to be honest. Even though I always want to think I'm happiest living alone, I found that the best situation, as in what was good for me, was always living with someone- to have that sort of vague company when you want it, and to keep you a bit more normal socially. If you have a good roommate(s) in my mind, then it's completely worth it.

But there's a lot of things that I didn't keep in mind when living with others, that I think are extremely important:

-Make sure you both are on the same privacy-level. This is obvious, but isn't always to everyone. I thought me being private or wanting alone time would be no issue- but it does actually weird some people out. There's also the issue of the roommate bringing people over. Make sure that you would generally like or tolerate the type of people they'd likely invite.

-Make sure they're financially stable and are considerate. Little things like eating each other's food is a massive fight/bitterness starter- more so than anything else I found. I had a roommate who seemed to forget that things like food and toilet paper actually cost me money. I had another roommate who had a habit of quitting jobs for no real reason. Just make sure they have maturity in those senses, basically...it will effect you. A close second is how much work you guys agree to do around the house. It sounds kinda cheesy, but it's good to establish some "duties" and "rules". Vague rules like "well just pick up after yourself" never work, and never feels fair somehow.

-Make sure they are on the same quiet level. Loud music vs. headphones...parties...I guess that's obvious.

I think it's less important that you're best-friends with a roommate so long as you both can respect your space, and generally not make each other uncomfortable about existing. A lot of what hinged on me enjoying living with someone is really based on respect and how much I was sort of "allowed" to be myself. Overall, with the right person, it's nice I think, and good for Aspies in a way. When I lived alone, even though I enjoyed it, I became noticeably out of touch socially and felt more lonely, neurotic and routine-driven.

If I were you, I'd go for it, so long as everything's settled.

 

[Droopy]

Thanks everyone for the input. At the moment I am still weighing up the pros, cons and assessing the overall situation.

 

[KinksFan]

I wouldn't be able to do it. I like my independence, privacy and freedom too much.

 

[Caspar]

I moved around a lot during college and had had many roommates. I find that sharing a room with someone is generally difficult unless that person is very similar to me. In that case, it would be someone who spends a lot of time in front of his computer and/or studies a lot. Sleeping schedules are also an issue. Also, some roommates tend to be more considerate than others. Introverts are usually better at this. But I will never go back to sharing a room with another person again.

I've also had apartment shares (my current situation) and those were generally much better. In college, I found like minded people and friends to live with and we had a great time. The trick is to find people who you can tolerate living with. Currently, I am living with random roommates and it sucks infinitely. So be cautious, be very cautious, when selecting roommates...

 

[Droopy]

For my situation it would be a house so everyone would have their separate rooms. I know everyone that I would be living with to some extent. One of them I know really well and is a close friend, the second as an associate, the third person not so much though. I am in two minds what to do about this. One part of me really wants to to move in to be around friends, be in the "social zone" and have my independence from my parents. Another part of me is thinking that maybe I should wait until after summer because I might be away most of summer (would need to actually add up how many weeks) and thus the rent I would pay for the house would be wasted if I'm not there. It would also be beneficial to have as much money as possible during summer for holidays and stuff. On the other hand, I could hold off moving for a few months and save up money now that I can use later for summer holidays. As far as paying for the rent goes, I currently get twice the amount each month that I would need to pay for rent. On top of that I get a smaller amount of money each week which is mainly used to go out with, shopping and paying bills such as TV subscriptions and my mobile phone. I also have a very small overdraft in case of emergencies.

 

[Caspar]

@Droopy:

Whenever I get stuck in a situation like this, I would approach things mathematically - is lost rent during summer (due to not being there) worth moving in early? How much are you willing to pay extra in order to spend a few months extra living independently with friends? What do you have to gain from that? Putting a price tag on subjective things such as experiences is always tough.

As for income vs. rent, I've been advised that no more than 1/2 your after tax income should go to rent. Ideally it would be around 1/3 or less, assuming that you also want to spend money on entertainment, electronics, and personal expenses.

Is subleasing your room to someone else an option during the summer months? That can potentially save lots of money.

 

[Spinning Compass]

I currently live alone but I have lived with other people before. I found that I prefer being by myself as it is less hassle. You really need to know the other person(s) before you agree to split rent. It's so easy to get burned.

There was one situation where I was living with a group of students and one of them was shall we say quite promiscuous and didn't give a damn about who she brought home or what they brought home. Shortly after I moved out and was back living with my parents, I got a call from my former roommates. Seems this chick had brought home a guy who brought BEDBUGS with him. They said, "we think this happened after you moved out, but we don't know for sure because we don't know which guy it was, that's why we are calling you." Now I don't know about anyone else on here, but going to my parents and breaking the news that I might have brought bedbugs in their house . . . not a good scene. Fortunately, it must have happened after I moved out.

Anyway, the only thing I would add to this is beware of any potential roommate who dresses well, looks like he or she lives well, but has no obvious legitimate source of income that you can tell. In my experience the reason these people can appear to live so well is that they are living off others. That was another one I found out the hard way. Ms Mooch ended up losing both her roommates in the same week after we discovered she'd been stealing from us. Oh, were there ever tears! "How am I going to afford this apartment?" she wailed (it was in her name and we were subletting). "Too bad," we told her, "should have thought about that before you started stealing." I mean she had a closet full of gorgeous, expensive clothes, but did not have a job or any other means of income that she was willing to disclose to us. Since then, I've run into others like her and I become extremely suspicious and watchful of my belongings when I am around such people.

 

[Cosmic Light]

I share, and have for years. So I thought I might contribute to this one too. My housemate a friend of mine, but of course doesn't always relate to me. Though we've know each other for a long time, it was obviously that trying to live with me was a bit, well, different of a situation. Anyway, over the past couple years it's become obvious to her like it has other's, that with me you cant just drop very subtle hints and hope I correct something. An honest answer won't offend me, it's actually useful, and if I try to fix a social mess I might have caused, it's not due to self esteem issues or anything. It's working well now.

I've never actually lived alone, not because I can't. Of course I could. I've only just found myself likely able to logically afford my own apartment recently. As much as I like sharing with a housemate, it does have it's problems of course. Because of circumstances that have nothing to do with me at all, I might find myself without a housemate within a year, If that happens, I don't think I'm going to look for a new one. I may well try living alone for a while and see what happens.

Sharing though is more than possible and if you are only and want people around at times it can work well. For myself though and I'm pretty sure this is the case with many of us, I need quite a bit of time by myself too, probably more than "average people." My sharing situation works well enough mostly because my housemate is not actually around much really. She's either sleeping odd hours, out of the house or gaming on her computer in her room. That or I'm out of the house. (I'm not often home most days because of work and other things, and gone some evenings too. She respects the fact that if do hide out in my room with the door shut, I'm not mad or anything. Just reading or watching a movie or whatever. I only have one housemate too. I'm not sure how easy it would be to live with say three others and their constantly visiting friends. I've never tried.