Surviving a House Share in your 20s. For many, the first time living on their own will be in a shared property, often at university. And while you’re a student it’s relatively easy to enjoy, even if the standards of cleanliness and repair aren’t perfect.
When you’re in your twenties, you could be living in a new town, beginning to establish a career for yourself and starting life as an adult. Suddenly, keeping your home to a certain standard becomes more of a priority – you want a home you can invite people round to for dinner, and one you can relax in on evenings off so you’re recharged and ready for whatever the next day brings. And you need to achieve all this while keeping on the good side of your housemates! Causing friction there could make life much more difficult for you, causing more stress than a pleasant home can undo. Today’s guide helps you navigate these difficult waters!
Clearing a Space
The most important thing to begin with is keeping your clutter under control. If you’ve moved from a big family home into a small room in a shared house, you might find you’ve brought more with you than you can comfortably accommodate.
There are lots of creative storage options you can use to stop things getting out of control, from bed risers to create more underbed storage space, to storing things on your walls, from yoga mats to bike racks! If you find your possessions are still filling your room and spilling into shared spaces, you might need to look into some storage options.
Organisation
It’s a cliché, but organising a cleaning rota is probably the best way to make sure everything stays clean and organised, with the work being distributed fairly – this is the most important part! If one person feels they are shouldering too much work regularly this will create resentment, and make the whole house feel tense and unpleasant. It could spill over into full blown arguments.
It doesn’t have to a strict rotation of duties: you could play to people’s strengths and preferences. If one person hates cleaning the bathroom, but is happy to hoover the stairs, this could their regular job – as long it gets done!
Relationships
It’s important to reward yourselves as a group for getting the housework done. What that reward looks like depends on who makes up the houseshare! For one group, spending a couple of hours cleaning on a Sunday morning before taking a trip to the pub for the afternoon might be ideal! For others, an appropriate reward might be a movie night or a takeaway pizza. Whatever you choose, recognising your hard work will help you keep at it, and bind you closer as housemates and friends!
Disclosure: This is a featured post.