Do you, or did you, ever have a roomate?

During my first year in college. I hated it conceptually; she was a sweet girl. I arranged to have a single room for the next two years and then I got married (probably to escape from the dorms).

First year of college I did. Next year I’ll be living with other people, but not sharing a room. There were things I liked and didn’t like about it. The main problem was just the size of the room. If it had been bigger, I probably would’ve liked it more. It just felt too cramped. Sharing a bedroom with someone is not my idea of awesome. Sharing a house or apartment, fine. But not a bedroom. However, despite not being friends at the beginning of the year, he and I are now friends and are going to live together again next year.

When he was out sick for a couple weeks and went home, I felt extremely lonely. That made me realize how bad it would’ve been if I had had a single room. I’m an extrovert. I want other people around, maybe just not so close as to share a bedroom with them. So while not perfect, I would definitely do it again. My roommate is a great person, has some obvious flaws, but has now become a good friend of mine.

I’m in my living room with my roommates now. I would rather spend the extra money to live alone. I hate this so much…....

I did in college. I do now. Those in college were friends. The one now is my bedmate.

I’ve been in several different living arrangements with other people. Sometimes it works out well, if you are suited for each other, and sometimes it doesn’t. The best times for me was when there was one prime person in the household, the owner or lease holder, and the others were there to help.

Is your roommate really eating all of your food? Slap that ho.

I’ve had the same one for the past three years. Just this past year she started (or I started noticing) that she eats all of my food, wears my clothes, drives my car without asking (when I go on trips), steals little things like toilet paper, quarters for laundry, stamps, tampons, dog treats etc. She thinks I won’t notice or something. It’s unfuckingbelievable. Everyday I wished I lived in a little studio apartment all by myself with my wittle dog. That would be great. However, the low rent I pay right now kind of makes it worth it so I put up with her bullshit. I usually always ask her to replace anything she’s eaten/taken, but she only follows through half the time.
Just once I wish she would stop and think to herself how hard I worked for the money I made to be able to afford all of these things. I already don’t have much and she’s fine with taking it from me. She’s pretty cheap and inconsiderate. I could never do that to someone.

You and I would make epic roommates. When can I move in? ;)

I think it depends on who your roommate is going to be.

college classmates – People have different standards for cleanliness and responsibility. Make sure that there is a clear understanding about paying rent and utilities on time and that the chores are going to be done by everyone.

co-workers – My co-workers and I lived together well but I didn’t like how they knew about my personal life outside of work :<

boyfriends/girlfriends – You will see how they really are because they will get tired of putting up a front at home and you might or might not like it. I didn’t really like living with any of my boyfriends. I felt like it was a lot of commitment but we did it for convenience.

“However, the low rent I pay right now kind of makes it worth it so I put up with her bullshit.”

@Vunessuh Yeah….......this sucks lol…....

@Blackberry It really does. I’ve actually never been lucky with roommates. The people I lived with before her were terrible which is why I moved out. Fuck me to tears. >.<

@Vunessuh Yeah, she scarfs everything down, and not only that she’s so…messy. She never throws anything away, leaves wrappers and empty cans ALL over the place, and she bitches at me when I huck them in the recycle bin, she’s like, I’m keeping those to turn them in! But they just gather and gather…and half of it is all my damn shit…and today she got all pissed at me because I didn’t like the idea she had for changing the living room around. She wants to put my TV, home theater and video games on my COMPUTER DESK. What the hell?
This sucks.

@Vunessuh Some of my friends actually suggested I find roommates on a website or craigslist. I told them I do not like being raped and/or having my stuff stolen lol.

When I was University, yes.

I like having my own space and there were 4 of us crammed in a small house. No, I didn’t care for it.

I had a husband for over 20 years, but he felt like more of a roommate.

Since I have been single I have had a couple of different people rent out my basement.

The first didn’t go so well and I still have lingering resentment. He was unemployed when he moved in but we had a deal that he would be working within a month and pay his rent. Well Dude stayed in my house for six months without ever getting a job or paying a dime in rent. When the snow melted I found hundreds of cigarette butts on the parkway – he had been tossing them over the fence into the snow rather than putting them into the trash. He ate our food and only offered money twice – after I insisted. Then when he used money (what he got from donating blood) to buy his own food, put it up out of reach in the pantry to signal that we weren’t supposed to take it. He even had the nerve to let his brother do his laundry at my house (without asking me first) and berate my son for taking a piece of his pizza. I know that I should have been more stern and kicked him out sooner, but all things considered it was a very trying experience.

Fast forward to today. I am renting the basement to a young single mom and her two kids. I could not ask for a better roommate. She pays her rent on time, shares the housework, doesn’t complain, offers to share her food, and doesn’t smoke.

I guess it all comes down to getting someone who thinks along the same lines as you do and setting very clear ground rules going in. As my boyfriend likes to say, it is all about communication.

Roommates are not easy. i used to live with some men and not lived with females for long since the 80s.

I have a house and even though it would be great to have a renter, I love my paradise.

I do. He’s been my roommate since second semester of freshmen year and he is probably my best male friend on campus, despite the fact that he and I are very different and I often don’t approve of some of the shenanigans he gets involved with.

He and I have a total bromance going on. That’s me on the bottom. Him in the tree.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I wish you both as many happy years – or more – as JD and Turk. A true bromance is hard to find and keep alive. The best of luck to the two of you.

@SuperMouse, haha! Thank you!

My wife and I have a roommate right now. He went to college with her and is a friend of mine from back in my high school days, though her and I didn’t know that the other had known him for so long until we had been together for over a year.

He moved to Seattle many years ago and when we decided to move to Seattle a couple of years back, he had just lost a roommate and needed help keeping his 2 bedroom apartment, which saved us a lot of looking and a security deposit.

After nearly 20 years of knowing each other and two years of living together, the three of us still get along mostly fine.

Sort of. I rented a room in this lady’s place in Milan (she was around 57). She only spoke Italian, which I guess was a good thing, ‘cause I got to practice, and she was generally nice, except that she kept nagging me to go out when I just wanted to chil. She had three different dudes sleep over (her estranged husband, this other guy that I think was her coworker, and another dude), so she made me feel sad about myself ‘cause she got laid more than I did. She was an amazing cook, and didn’t steal from me. Yay!

@Symbeline & @Vunessuh If you two move in together, I gotta get me a pizza delivery gig in the area.

@bob_ Yes, good evening. I’d like to order a bob please. :D

@Symbeline That comes with spicy sausage, is that okay? XD

@bob_ It’s what I was expecting. :D

I had roommates in college and rented places with roommates for a few years after that. The best one was renting a rowhouse with three of my friends from art school. Living with them was so much more fun than living alone would have been. We played video games together, cooked dinners together, and had movie nights. We would have been hanging out anyway, but we all just happened to be in the same house, which was awesome. There were some quirky things- I always stayed up really late and woke up late, and one of the roommates had two kittens that were really frisky. The girl kitten learned how to open doors, so one night I woke up and she was sitting on my stomach kneading me with her little claws. The place was dirt cheap and had bars on the windows, and it was a lot of fun living there.

For the past year (almost. I moved in August 2nd last year) I’ve been living with the same 3 guys. For background, I moved in with them because I wanted to have a 15-mile commute, rather than 40. I didn’t mind living with my parents at all, aside from the drive.
I had put up a craigslist ad and within about 4 hours I got a reply from the guy who is now Housemate #1.

We all do it to different extremities, but all 4 of us are computer gamers, so I think that was a good common ground for all of us to build from. and we’re all into similar shows/movies as well. Vastly different musical tastes, though.

As far as housemates go, I really lucked out. My sister had many horror stories (but I would not be surprised if most of the roommate problems were her own fault).
The guys I live with are all respectful, there’s no issue with stealing laundry or food, or arguing over who has to unload the dishwasher. They all seem to mind their own business.
I wouldn’t really call them friends, I don’t really spend time hanging out with them very much.

But. If it weren’t for the cost, I’d much rather live alone. Social situations are very stressful to me. And otherwise I’d just generally like the simplicity of living alone.

When I was hunting for a place, one of the options I had was an efficiency/studio that was just a block away from the “village shopping center”. It was actually the same price as where I’m living now. I chose to live with housemates hoping that maybe, somehow, I’d “come out of my shell” so to speak and be able to socialize better. But no such luck.

No, I never had a roommate. I lived in my mother’s house until I married.

I had a roommate for a while in my late teens. We were very good friends. We had fun. We talked all night sometimes and had small parties. It lasted for several months until her boyfriend started practically living there. We didn’t have any bad words about it, really, we just decided to move. We were both sad that the situation changed, but things happen. We are still good friends, but she lives several hours away. We haven’t seen each other in years, but we talk frequently.

I had roommates all through college, and one roommate for a while after college. For a couple of years I had a dorm room, each time with one roommate. They were fine, and we usually didn’t have any problems that I can remember now. Then, I had a suite with three other girls. The four of us got along well, and we had a lot of fun that year. Because the suite was in the dorm, we didn’t have to do the cleaning. Once a week someone came to dust, clean the bathroom, etc.

One year I had a smaller suite with a friend of mine. That time, it didn’t work out so well. She had some emotional problems and it got to be so I couldn’t stand to be in the room with her. About halfway through the semester she decided to move off campus. It was weird, because we were really good friends before we lived together. After that, I barely spoke to her. I lived in fear of the day I’d find out a new, unknown, roommate would be given to me, but it never happened and I had the suite to myself for the rest of the year.

After that, I had a campus-owned apartment with two other girls. One was my best friend, and one was a girl we only slightly knew. It was great for me and my friend, but I think the other girl sometimes hated us. ;) We could be too loud on the weekends when she had to get up early to go to work, and neither of us was good at doing dishes or taking out the trash. She’d complain, and we’d try to do better. Mostly we all got along fine.

After college, I moved out east with a really good friend who’d graduated a semester before me. Living with her, I found out she was not the person I thought she was. She’d take groceries I bought and bring them to her sister’s house for a cookout without asking me. She’d help herself to whatever she wanted for food, but never replaced it or bought groceries herself. When I asked her about it, she’d promise to go to the store or pay me back, but never did. We were supposed to split the costs of the puppy we adopted, but that all fell on me, too. She started acting really strange, hated my boyfriend, and threw huge tempter tantrums over every little thing. She made it clear our friendship was only important when she needed something from me. I moved out when my husband and I got engaged, and over the course of the next several months just gradually stopped talking to her. Just thinking about some of the things she did and said now (12 years later) makes me cringe.

Back when I was going to college and later, living in NYC, if I’d had roommates like the ones in “Knocked Up” I would have been a lot happier than I ever was with any of the guys I actually shared apartments with. I could just never get used to having another person’s life going on in rooms we shared… plus I was never sure each month if any of them were going to be able to come up with his share of the monthly rent.

I had roommate in the dorms at university. I got along with some better than others. One semester, I splurged and paid double for a private room. That was nice.