Here’s an article, published by the AARP on middle-aged single women choosing to live together. It was written in 2007. I wonder how many more people are discovering the pleasures of sharing housing?
Posts under ‘Keeping Good Housemates’
For Real
Local columnist, Joyce Marcel, writes a insightful column about the relationships between elderly white seniors in Florida living with caretakers coming from different cultures.
Cleanliness – the Kitchen
The kitchen is the most used common room in a home. When there are housemates, the kitchen is often the place for casual conversation, laughter, and sharing. It can also be a source of irritation and anger when members of a household don’t have the same standards of cleanliness and/or guidelines are not followed.
It happened [...]
The Kitchen – Independent or Communal?
In sharing housing, the kitchen is the center. Everyone has to eat. Few people have the money to eat all their meals out. So how do you share a kitchen?
The easiest is to have separate food. This avoids conflict around shopping, meals, cooking, meal times, tastes, guests, money, etc. The refrigerator can be divided so [...]
Golden Rule
The Golden Rule – “do unto others what you would have them do to you” is key to living well with your housemates. If you don’t like to walk into a kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink, don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink. If you want to be told when a housemate is [...]
Private space vs. Common space
For four years I had a housemate who was an incredible slob in his room. There was stuff all over the floor with barely a path to his bedroom. Did I ever say anything to him about that? No! That was his room to do with as he pleased. He was perfectly neat in the [...]
Sharing Food
There are house sharing arrangements in which sharing food is part of the package. One person shops, cooks, and/or cleans in exchange for rent.
However, for most other sharing housing arrangements, it is worth thinking carefully about whether or not you should try to share food. My bias is that each person should have their own [...]
Dutch House Rules
Here is some excellent advice. It’s good anytime you are sharing housing whether as a resident or as a house guest.
I read them on a tile in a wonderful house in Western Massachusetts. I gather from a little Web exploration that there are other versions. This one seems very good to me.
If you open it, [...]
Is taking the plunge with siblings a good idea?
My husband and I have let my parents know that we would like first right of refusal on their house when they feel they are ready to sell it. The house sits on a lake overlooking national forest. It post-dates us kids living at home, still, it has been a place for family gatherings these [...]
Managing the ‘Fridge
Oh yuck… you open the fridge and it’s full of nasty containers of dead stuff. Or is it? Who knows? You know they aren’t yours, so you can’t throw them out. Can you? No, you can’t.
Allotting Space in the Fridge
The refrigerator in most house-share situations is a communal appliance. And it is THE central appliance [...]