Posts Tagged ‘roommates’

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 [...]

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 [...]

Housemate Heaven is a website that presents 16 “lifestyle types”. The reader is asked to pick the type that best describes themselves.  The 16 types are based on four basic categories: how personal property is shared, cleanliness of the house, the level of sociability between housemates and the attitude towards guests.  It’s an attempt to [...]

I’ve just read an article on Helium about nightmare housemates. It’s enough to make one think that sharing housing is a bad idea.  It isn’t. There are plenty of wonderful people out there who are great housemates.
What makes a housemate a nightmare? Self-centeredness. Plain and simple. The nightmare housemate breaks agreements and/or refuses to modify [...]

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, [...]

One of the first hurdles in deciding to share the home you live in is figuring out what to charge your future housemates.
Renting
When you are all renting the space, this is somewhat easy as generally people simply divide the rent by the number of persons. Occasionally a room will be significantly better or worse than [...]

The ad you write needs to have six types of information:

Location
Features of the room and house
Something about who you are
What you are looking for
The financial informaton
Contact information

The location is in the subject line or headline of a paper ad. The headline should also describe the basics. It is a house, apartment, and how many people [...]

It never occurred to me that for some sharing a house is shameful. Honestly. It’s always made such good common-sense to share the costs of rent and utilities that pride never entered into it.
I gather that that isn’t the case for many Americans. But why? One reason is a culture that expects adults to be [...]

Welcome to the Sharing Housing Blog
Sharing housing just makes sense. Especially when money is tight and you are stretching to make ends meet. This blog is intended to help you find and keep good housemates. This is for all generations. In our society we have all ages of people who live alone supporting one [...]

NPR (National Public Radio)  discusses the growth of home sharing arrangements in the US. This three-minute piece describes the Vermont HomeShare program and the success of two different arrangments.