Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome back. If you're new here, I'm Shaina. I am continuing my back to school series with a video on living with roommates. Joy. But of course, you don't need to be in school to reap the benefits of this video because let's be honest, you could be living in a big city and 34 or 45 or 55 for that matter, living with roommates, right? That's just the 21st century norm after all. I have a lot of experience with roommates. I obviously shared a room, one room with people in college. I lived in a sorority house with 50 girls and since college, I've lived with guys, girls, one roommate, two roommates, bad roommates, good roommates, the whole ordeal. Currently, I have one roommate. Her name's Lindsay and I call her Lifer. We call each other soul sisters. Maybe you can meet her one day. We met on Craigslist, who knew guys? Hopefully, she's not the Craigslist killer. That is a really random thing to say. Kind of scary too. Okay. When she moved in, it was just a breath of fresh air for both of us because we really are a great balance and we've become really good friends and we like all the same TV shows. That is probably, you know what, video's over. My only tip, make sure you enjoy the same TV shows. Serious bonding time. Serious. I'm Shaina and I love sharing ways on how to better yourself and how to create a beautiful life. I just want to start off by saying this, in the world of living spaces, there is nothing worse than approaching your door, praying, hoping, wishing that your roommate is not there. I've been there. It's not fun. Your space should feel like your sanctuary. If after a long day, you don't even look forward to going home, then it is time to definitely make some changes within your current living situation or actively search for something new. With that being said, let's get started. I broke everything up into categories so that it's a little bit easier to absorb. We're just going to kind of go through these. The first one is when you're searching for and choosing a roommate. The first point is kind of obvious, but you want to make sure that you find a good match. I know this can be easier said than done. When we're desperate to find a place or we find a place that's a great deal, remember that you're going to be living with this person. Of course, you want to meet with the person face to face, but pay attention to their personality and what they say about past living situations and roommates. If I'm really reserved and quiet and they're really outgoing and kind of in your face, that might not be a great match or it may be exactly what I need. If I'm really independent and I like doing things by myself on my own all the time and they say, yeah, my roommate and I, my last roommate and I did everything together and I loved it, then that might be a red flag. Also, figure out what their schedules are like. Everybody appreciates the place to themselves sometimes, so if you both have mornings off and you both go into work in the afternoons, you're probably not going to have as much space as you'd like. Figure out if they're clean or messy, what their social life looks like in comparison to yours and so forth, just to find that overall good balance. Make sure ahead of time that everything is divided evenly and fairly. For example, if I have the master bedroom with bath, then it is the norm to pay a little bit extra than my roommate. You just want to make sure that everyone's comfortable with what they're paying based on what they're getting in advance. If they have a significant other, make sure you place boundaries. Talk about how often their boyfriend or girlfriend will be over and if it's excessive, assuming that's okay with you, how are they going to contribute to the bills, etc. There should be no dispersing of extra keys without talking with one another and as a common sense rule, if you're not there, your significant other shouldn't be at your place either. You would think this was a no-brainer, but it's not. At that point, they just need to get their own place. Communal areas. Pick up after yourself. Nobody wants to play mom. Nobody. When you're cooking, you clean up the kitchen. You put your dishes away. When you're in the living room, you take the blankets that you used and you fold them and then you just take whatever's yours and you make sure you put it back into your bedroom. Big clean outs and deep cleans. You can take turns doing this. You can set a time and day that works for you guys to do it together or if it's in your budget, you can hire a housekeeper to come bi-weekly or every month or whatever works best for you. Communal products. Cleaning products, paper towels, dish soap, toilet paper if you share a bathroom. Luckily, I've never had to do that, but to restock, you can rotate or you can put one person in control of it and then just charge the other person or persons. Food. I prefer that everyone fends for themselves. I really don't see how sharing food on the norm can possibly work. Obviously, if you want to use some of my ketchup for your french fries, then that's okay, but if you want to take my last piece of bread, that's not okay. If you're going to eat my food and you are going to replace it, first of all, you better replace it. Second of all, please replace it with exactly what I had instead of some bootleg version of it. I ain't joking around about the food category here. Economically speaking, it does make more sense to cook meals together, so maybe you cook dinner one night a week and then your roommate does the same. Mutual respect. If a roommate confronts you about something that's bothering them, especially if it's an easy fix, just try your best to change your behavior to keep a level of peace and calm. One thing that I've learned from living with roommates is that everybody has their things, right? Something that I could care less about may be so irritating for somebody else. Just know that it's not you. It's nothing personal. It's just their own neuroses. Just be like, yeah, glad you brought it up. I'll definitely try my best to change it in the future. And on the flip side, if something's bothering you, make sure you confront them about it instead of letting it build up inside of you. Noise factor. I've never had an issue where a roommate was too loud, but I know it can happen. If I need to be up at 7am for something, don't bring the party home the night before. But on the flip side, if you guys are on the same wavelength on a Friday or Saturday night, then sure, go for it. But you just want to communicate and it's just common sense, guys. Foods and smells. I'm kind of guilty of this because I love cooking with garlic. Lindsay's pretty cool about it. She'll just make sure her bedroom door is closed so that the smell doesn't linger in there. But you just want to make sure you're ventilating using the fans and opening windows and so forth. The next category is bills. I take care of all of the bills and Lindsay just pays me her portion via Venmo. P.S. if you don't have that app, it's kind of a game changer in the roommate world, so definitely download that. I like to be in control of the finances, so you can do it that way where you put one person in charge or you can divvy up the bills between you and your roommate or roommates so that each one is handling one or two bills. I found this to be a little confusing. I did this when I lived with two roommates and I understood why we did it that way, but when it came to like paying each other, it just got confusing. It was like, oh, I owe you this amount, but you owe me this, so we'll just deduct that. I'll just give you this now, but you can just add that to my next bill. And it was just too much math. Post bills on time. You don't want to be like, oh, I forgot to post the cable bill the last three months, so now you owe me $400. Just be on top of it. Pay on time. You want to pay the actual bill on time, of course, but you want to also pay your roommate in a timely manner. Personally, I'm not crazy about this if Lindsey doesn't pay me the day of or even the week of because A, I know she's good for it and B, I'm not desperate for it, but you want to be considerate of your roommate's finances and you don't want them stressing about their money situation because you owe them all of this money. And the last point that I want to make is to pay it forward sometimes. I know that the best living situations I've been in are the ones that feel like a true home, so you want to create that loving, homey environment, whether you've just met this person or persons that you're living with or you've known them for a long time. So if your roommate's not feeling well, you can say, hey, I'm going out to the grocery store. Can I get you anything? Or if you know that they had a really tough week, maybe you do a huge clean out of the apartment for them. One small, kind gesture can go a really long way. That is it for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you found these tips helpful, be sure to give it a thumbs up right below. Subscribe to my channel for a new video every Wednesday at 10 a.m pacific time, and I'll see you back here next week. Bye.