I’ve just posted a short video of me on The Housemate Advisor page. The idea, of course, is to give prospective clients a sense of me.

Which do you prefer? The modern condo with an open floor plan and cathedral ceilings? Or the pre-war rambling house with multiple rooms with doors, nooks and crannies.  If you are sharing housing with unrelated people, you should prefer the latter.

These spaces allow individuals to have privacy even when others are home. Think about it  – your housemate has a friend over and they are visiting in the living room. You have  a friend over and you are making tea in the kitchen.  In a house with doors you can close the doors and each of you have your own visit with your friend. In an open space – well the likelihood is that either the four of you visit together or one pair goes out or you simply don’t have friends visit you at home.

Older houses were built for bigger families.  Maybe intuitively they understood the value of separate spaces?

Here is a cautionary tale about a roommate scam. http://www.yiyu.us/im-stuck-in-the-middle-of-a-roommate-scam-please-help/

The description of the situation and the advice in the comments is worth reading.  Note that the person will be okay because he was alert and thought the setup was fishy.  When dealing with people on Craigslist it is worth being aware.  NEVER exchange money without having already gone through the entire selection process and checking references.

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Craigslist has a page on scams. The first rule is only deal with someone you meet in person!  Read the rest of the rules. There is also a list of organizations to contact if someone tries a scam on you.

Saving money in shared housing is not just saving on the cost of housing. You also save because you can share the basic housewares.  Below is list of some of the more common machines used.

1. Vacuum Cleaner
2. Toaster Oven
3. Toaster
4. Iron
5. Blender
6. Food Processor
7. Lawnmower
8. Can Opener
9. Coffee Maker
10. Coffee Grinder

And those are just household small appliances. Setting up a household also requires trash cans, bath mats, curtains, dish racks, extension cords.  You get the idea.  There is a great list of basic household items on the University of Michigan site. “House/Apartment Setup Checklist” (Scroll down, PDF will automatically download.

When you move into a house that’s already set up many of those items are already there. That’s a great advantage.

If you do buy things for your home, it is a good idea if one person owns an item, be it the coffee maker or the living room curtains. In other words it is a bad idea to share the cost of buying a household item. At some point you will go your separate ways and it’s good to be clear then who will take what items. If there are items you and your housemates agree you need, plan who will buy what. It is that person’s decision if they buy top of the line or budget. After all she will own it beyond the time spent living with you. You can save money on these items. Check out this link for some great advice: Graduation Time: Setting up Your New Home

When people use what you own, wear and tear is inevitable.  Be prepared for this. Use other people’s possessions with care. Clean up after yourself.  If you break something that belongs to someone else, replace it.  Look at this post on Dutch rules for great guidance on living well with another person’s possessions.

A nicely written article in a Vancouver publication called “Save the Planet, Save the Earth” describing the benefits of sharing housing. What caught my eye was the information of the ecological benefits of sharing housing.

The author, Chris Cannon, cites statistics that lead to the statement that if everyone lived in shared housing the gains in reduced CO2 emission would “make the Kyoto targets quaint.”  He writes, “Our structures account for the greatest portion of CO2 emissions in North America; more than a third of the carbon released into the atmosphere is the product of electricity from our residences and workplaces, and for every kilowatt hour used in a home, twice as much is lost in generation and transmission. The average North American household produces about 150 pounds of CO2 a day, nearly five times the global average, and twice that of Europe.”

Wow! So if, in North America, you move from living alone to living with one other person, you have eliminated  54,750 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere in a year.  Probably a pittance in terms of the amount of green house gases generated daily, but still it’s a solid way to reduce your carbon footprint on the planet.

If you want to live sustainably – choose to share housing.  But find a home that suits you.  That’s the point of this blog, so keep reading.

The title comes from Sharon Aystk’s excellent posting on her experience of having her in-laws live with her and her thoughtful discussion of the benefits of multi-generational households. Go and read it. Also read the comments.

What’s amazing to me is the strong negativity of some of the comments.  It shows me how difficult it is for some people to consider altering their lives to make space, literally and emotionally, for their relatives. Of course, every family is different and no one on the outside can have the insiders’ experience of their family, but it seems sad to me. Our families should be a source of love both given and received.

Sponsored by Griffith University Welfare and Student Liason Office (in Australia), a series of videos teaches about how to share housing. The series is specifically designed for university students in Australia. The first two in the series describe the pitfalls and illegal scams that trip up inexperienced young people. It does this through the stories of three university students who meet by accident and then decide to live together. While the legal details described are specific to the area, the types of scams are universal.

The third video shows them living together. Some tensions in their daily interaction are showing up and they sit down to make agreements to resolve the issues. This video describes the key areas of agreement housemates should have to live together well. Uni housemates get agreement

However,  the agreements they need to make: cleaning duties, bills, and managing food are all things that should have been talked about during the interview process!

Living alone might actually be unhealthy.   “Loneliness Harms Health” on the Association for PsychCentral.com summarizes the longer book, “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection,” by Drs. Caccioppo and Patrick.

Their basic point is that loneliness has negative physical effects on the body. These effects become more pronounced as we get older. From the article,  this summary: “Loneliness not only alters behavior, but loneliness is related to greater resistance to blood flow through your cardiovascular system…. Loneliness leads to higher rises in morning levels of the stress hormone cortisol, altered gene expression in immune cells, poorer immune function, higher blood pressure, and an increased level of depression. Loneliness also is related to difficulty getting a deep sleep and a faster progression of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sharing housing can do much to alleviate a certain kind of loneliness. Someone in the house to whom one can say “good morning,” and “how was your day?” provides  social interaction.  For elderly people this may be especially helpful, since they are often socially isolated when they can’t drive and their life-long connections with family and friends are gone due to death and infirmity.

What do you consider normal behavior in your home?  Is leaving the television on in every room simply the way you are used to living? Or is the opposite the case, where there are no media on in common rooms? Is dinner time at 5:30 or at 8? Does it matter? In the morning, is “normal” being perky and ready to chat, or is morning a time to silently come to terms with the day? Is “clean” a kitchen floor that you can eat off of or a general description of not having dirty dishes in the sink?

“Normal” is quite different for different people. Our assumptions about  “normal” begin with the families in which we were raised.  Many times these assumptions are unconscious. If we live alone and never with other people, we can go through an entire life living in our own “normal” ways without thinking anything of it. It is when we start living with others, people who grew up in different families, with their own idea of “normal,” that our assumptions bump into their assumptions. This can be uncomfortable.

This need not become a serious conflict, but rather may simply be a discomfort, a bump, a hitch, or something that happens where we can’t be on automatic pilot anymore.  So then you get to figure out whether your assumptions are part of your conditioning or part of who you really are.  This is a process of discernment. It is also part of your growth as an individual.  Shed what you don’t need, keep what is truly vital. Use the simulus from the discomfort to figure this out.

Communicate with your housemates. Compromise, accommodate, and adapt without giving up what is essential to you.

This is why it is so important that before you go to interview, think carefully about your daily routine and what you must have and what you can’t live with in a home sharing arrangement.  Think about what your “normal” is. See if you can get your assumptions of “normal” conscious,  so that you interview effectively and find a good house sharing arrangement for you.

Moving is an effort. From locating a new place to live to informing the bank of the change of address, there are tons of details that cost time and energy. And also money. No wonder people don’t like to do it. No wonder housemates suffer a bad situation way too long!

It’s time to move when you don’t want to go home.  For the householder, this is the time to ask a housemate to leave. They are probably as unhappy as you are. Use the experience to learn what you “must have” and “can’t live with.”

Since you don’t want move too often, you should be very, very careful in choosing a place to live and your future housemate(s).  Interview thoroughly. (See other advice on this blog.)  Know what you are looking for. If you are the householder, deal with having an empty room for awhile if you can’t find the right person. If you are a home seeker, don’t get desperate.  That’s hard and okay, there are regions in this country where housing is so scarce that feeling desperate is a common experience.  If you can’t bide your time and really need a roof, take a place, but recognize that it is temporary until you can find something better. And be sure not to collect lots of stuff that you then have to cart to a new place.