Roommate Responsibilities and Expectations

Living in an apartment often means living with roommates, whether they are friends, family, or someone new. Moving in with a new person can be stressful enough on its own as you try to figure out how to live around each other.  One way to ease the stress is by setting up clear guidelines about apartment life so you each know what your responsibilities are. This can help with all kinds of roommate tensions such as cleaning and partying.

Set up a chore list. Keeping your common areas, like the living room and kitchen, clean is a must if you’re living with a roommate (or roommates). It’s no longer only your stuff piling up, it’s a combination of everyone who lives there so it’s imperative to be proactive about a cleaning regimen. Try outlining a chore list. Start with all the major cleaning tasks such as sweeping, dusting, cleaning the bathroom, and doing the dishes. Figure out how you want to assign these chores. A good option, and one that keeps it a bit fairer, is to rotate through the chores on a weekly basis. Split them up as evenly as you can and each roommate will be responsible for their chores for the week. Once the week is over, rotate to a new set of chores. This means that no one is stuck cleaning the bathroom all the time, and you can’t complain that you always get the nasty tasks.

Another good way to tackle apartment mess is to have clear agreements about picking up after yourself. Make it a point to discuss with your new roommates the importance of cleaning up your own clutter. Often the mess in a living room is not from it being dirty, but just from there being books, papers, and various odds and ends collecting everywhere from each roommate. A little bit of picking up each day can help immensely with keeping your common areas clean and comfortable.

Keeping clean is not the only thing you need to organize with your roommate. Be sure each of you are aware of your responsibilities when it comes to bills. Know when due dates are and make a plan for which person will be in charge of getting them paid. Figure out how you are going to split your bills. Most people like to do it evenly among all the roommates, but sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where half and half is a bit unfair. For instance if you have the bigger bedroom, do you still pay equal rent. Or if the cable tv was your idea and only you use it, then you should probably foot the entire bill yourself. Having a clear way of handling financial issues will help with tensions down the road. The goal is to have open communication right from the start about expectations and responsibilities.