Living in a share house isn’t like it looks in the movies or on TV shows, it is often filled with mess, disagreements and missed obligations. There are many things that you will need to know before moving into a share house to help you avoid fights, constantly dirt dishes, household cost disagreement and the legal obligations of rental agreements. Here are six things that I wish I knew before moving into a share house.
The first golden rule of moving into a share house is to make sure you meet all of your housemates before committing to it. Sometimes when you inspect an already established share house you will meet one of your potential housemates and chances are you will hopefully get along with them. However, it is important to make sure you meet the rest of the occupants of the house, just because you get along with one of them does not mean you will get along with all of them.
You don’t have to be best friends with your housemates but having some commonalities, knowing they aren’t complete psychos (or at least clean up after themselves), and being able to pick them out of a crowd is super important.
Movies often glamorise share house living; however, it isn’t always slumber parties and cooking together. Share houses on television and in movies often have depictions of people living in share houses watching movies together, being best friends, cooking together and doing everything short of braiding each other’s hair.
In real share house situations, you might not see our housemates for five business days at a time, you will say you’ll cook together but that just means 2-minute noodles and watching movies together will only happen once in a blue moon.
Share house conflicts are inevitable and unavoidable so it is important to know how to handle them. The first step to share house conflicts is to pick your battles. For example, maybe the fight about whose turn it is to do the dishes should be avoided and you should just suck it up and do them.
Although, if someone isn’t paying their fair share of bills then that is definitely worth the confrontation. The next step is to keep it civil – conflict doesn’t equal fight. Avoid yelling, swearing and accusing and instead choose a more diplomatic approach (even if they don’t do the same). Sit down and have a discussion about the issue and let everyone’s side be heard.
A share house is bound to have a stream of people coming and going, and not always staying for the full length of the lease. Generally, if your housemates are on the lease and want to leave before it is up they are obligated to find someone to replace their spot on the lease. This means that you don’t have to worry about paying more rent when they decide to leave.
This is why it is important to make sure everyone is on the lease – because if they aren’t they don’t have any obligation to stay or find their own replacement, leaving it all up to you.
Another important thing to do when living in a share house is to keep a record of all of your household costs – and we mean ALL. Anything that you buy for communal use in the house and any household bills that you pay, you should keep a record of. This is helpful when things go wrong – if part of a bill isn’t paid on time and you can prove that you have paid your share then you can show that incurring a late fee wasn’t your fault.
Also if you find that you are constantly replenishing the dish soap and toilet paper but your housemates have a different version of reality than you can prove that you did it the last six times.
The last thing you need to know before moving into a share house is that not everyone will have the same standards of clean that you do. Remember that just because you like things spotless and your housemates take an extra day to do their dishes isn’t cause for an argument – it also doesn’t mean you should put up with living in a pig sty.
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