How to Survive Shared Accomodation

There’s an abundant number of reasons you can find yourself in shared accomodation. For many, it will be when they first move to university, or when leaving home for the first time and not yet being able to afford to buy or rent a space of your own. For whatever reason you find yourself in shared accomodation, here’s a few tips to make your cohabitation that little bit easier

Firstly, it is key to continually have good communication with your fellow housemates. It is never good to let a problem fester when sharing a house. Often it can lead to something very small unnecessarily snowballing into something much bigger. It is important to know when is the right time to bring something up, but also how to bring it up. Always try and be cooperative with a problem, rather than confrontational.

On a practical level, somewhere such as university halls, it is often the case you will be sharing a shower between a large amount of people. If this is the case, it can be worth investing in Slydes. They double up nicely for casual footwear round the house, and can be great for those 9am lectures you don’t feel like dressing up for. If you invest in a notice board, it can be used to help divide shared tasks fairly, and possibly meal planners for the week, and other shared activities. Having a meal planner is a great way to save on cooking time and your individual groceries budget. It also helps bring the whole house together a few times a week, which can help make your shared house feel like a proper home. If you’re at university, this can be great to do once a week, within your flat, or even with your neighbouring flats too. It also has the added bonus of your student diet having at least one cooked meal a week!

It can be a daunting time when you find yourself in a shared house or flat for the first time. It can be liberating too though, especially if it’s your first time moving away from home. It’s important for you to be doing things the way you wish to do them. While at the same time, understanding there may have to be compromises in those ways, if for whatever reason they clash with someone else you’re living with. This is a very exciting time in anyone’s life, and if you create a harmonious living space to begin with, you are laying strong foundations for this particular chapter in your life.