August 24, 2016

How to Be a Good Roommate


Having a strong relationship with your roommate is really important, especially in your first semester.  There are definitely some situations that don’t work out, but from my experience I loved being best friends with my room mate.  

Like a lot of people, I met my room mate online.  We didn’t meet in the Facebook group though, we actually met on Tumblr! I remember the first night we stayed in our room freshman year being so awkward until we decided to go out and do stuff.  I think after our first night together we were extremely close and even decided to live together a second year! Sadly, we’ve parted ways this year but she is still one of my very best friends! 

Regardless of if you and your roommate are good friend it’s important to be considerate of their space and time, as I’m sure you’d want them to be of you.  Here are some of my tips! 

Give them space. One of my most important tips honestly! It’s hard to suddenly be living in close quarters with a stranger (in most cases).  While it may be so tempting to want to sit in your bed and do homework or watch TV all day long, get out! This could be great for both you and your room mate.  I tried to make myself get to the library to study so that my room mate could have time alone in our room to relax and there were plenty of times where she would be out and I would stay in.  

Include them. The past few years my roommate and I almost always invited the other on our plans with other people.  If we were going with a few people to dinner it’s easy to ask the other person if they want to come.  This is especially nice in the first few weeks when neither of you know many people.  I think it’s one of the reasons we got so close! 


Share. There’s no reason you and your roommate need to have two of a lot of different supplies.  Plan out ahead of time who will be buying what bigger items, but also talk about what food or cleaning supplies you might keep in your room.  

2 comments:

  1. These are such great tips! I totally love the one about giving people the right amount of space. It's tight living quarters so having your own alone time is huge! Another tip I feel like people sometimes totally forget - just common courtesy around being clean. It always drove me nuts when my roommate wasn't just disorganized but was straight up dirty (dirty dishes - ugh!).

    xoxo Kelsey
    www.blondesandbagels.com

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