The Buffer.

Elsie and I were talking about flat-breaking, which is where your flat is sold or your flatmate(s) moves out or you have some kind of BIG uncertainty about where you will live and what you should do and how much your rent will be and specifically, how long to pay the rent on a 2 bedroom unit while you try and find a flatmate. We've both been very lucky and never had to pay the whole rent on a unit in a flatmate gap. And the idea is quite frightening, paying 2 or 3 times your rent for an unknown number of weeks. I mean, my rent is not far off 1/3 of my income already. What a horrifying thought. Anyway, Elsie said "I actually shouldn't stress about spending my buffer, because that's what it's for." Mind Blown. I'm the kind of person who saves a buffer, which is to prevent stress at times of financial uncertainty. But then if I stress about spending the buffer, that defeats the purpose of the buffer. It's there so you don't have to worry. You've got the money, it's for a rainy day, it is actually raining right now, so don't worry about whether you should stay wet or spend it! Focus your worrying on other things, haha.

Respect

I've got a lot of respect for one of my colleagues at work, because he's doing young adulthood right. I respect him because:

• He lives out of home, in share housing. He's dealing with the trials and tribulations of living with flatmates and is living independently of parents.
• He lives on his income (i.e. not getting any additional support from his parents). He's learning to live on what he earns.
• He's a migrant and I respect that he's making a life for himself in a foreign country.
• He's got a real heads down attitude towards study. We've both studied for the same professional qualification, while working full-time, except that he's done all his modules one after another, without breaks and without whinging. Unlike me.
• He cooks for himself and often packs lunch to work. This shows he's organised and can take care of himself.
• He finds the time to exercise regularly even though he commutes to work, cooks for himself and has to study. I struggle and I live a stone's throw away from work.

Just google "young adults living at home smh" and you'll see a litany of articles on young adults still living at home, but my colleague has got his act together and for that, I respect him.

Shared living

Having lived in a few different shared households, it doesn't matter who you live with, there will always be something a person does that annoys you. You'll never find the perfect flatmate (though, I think someone came close once). Let's continue the thought with this conversation from jelssie:

E: "I wonder if I were married, if I'd get annoyed with my husband for all the things I get annoyed with all the housemates I've ever lived with, or whether I would just clean up after him and not care."

J: "You'd get annoyed. Everyone is annoying. Although I think it's also a part of marriage to work on not being annoyed. To love the person and serve them, and hope they serve you by not being a mess. But James Valentine does a segment on "what I live with" and couples ring up and complain about a bizarre thing their spouse does, like, never squeeze out the dish mop and leave it gross, or, puts a towel down over the bathmat to keep the bathmat dry. Both extremes are weird!"

Different people make you realise the different things you get annoyed by. I wonder which habits of mine my flatties find annoying...

Flatmate reality/TV.

Elsie came over recently and we watched the episodes of New Girl that I taped. Elsie made a very apt comment: "Why do TV people always socialise with their flatmates? Who actually does that?". Good question. It looks so normal on TV, and I did aspire to it myself, in my naivety, but I can't say I've experienced it. I share a flat with flatmates, I share friendships with friends, and there is very little overlap. I think because all my flatmates have been temporary relationships of convenience. But friendships don't have those clauses.

Open house.

I'm really enjoying how my flat is at the moment. My new flatmate is very easy-going (and I've quickly relaxed to accommodate her!), so while it's not the tidiest flat in the East, it's the best place I've ever had for hospitality—I can just invite someone in for tea or dinner or sewing without especially checking or lining it up on a certain night. It's important to have time and space to withdraw, but personally my home is truly my home when I can share it. Not that I'm a kitchen queen, I just like to see the couches all sat in and all the cups out of the cupboard at one time.

Epic epic story.

Strong flatmate bonds are forged in the fire of battle. When invasion forces come against you, the trials of war and the emotional journey will shortcut months of "getting used to each other". Flatmates united against the terrors of evil. 

I speak, of course, of bugs.

At 11 o'clock last night, the new flatty and I confronted an enormous huntsman on the wall between our two bedroom doors. K is phobic. I'm alright with spiders but I'd rather have them out of the house before I go to sleep. As the least frightened, I was the frontline, while K was the tactical support.

There are 3 options. Squash, spray, or capture and release.

Squash is out, because Yuck. Squashed spider is no better than alive spider. Also, what if it's not a clean kill? I might injure or enrage it.

Spray is out, because it seems inhumane to spray larger bugs. Cockroaches I'll spray, but a big spider reminded me of the spider in Harry Potter that gets the Cruciatus Curse on it. All that writhing and pain. Also, all we have is surface spray. Can that be used directly on bugs to kill them? I'm not sure. Again, it might not be a clean kill.

So that left capture and release. K gave me a large 4L, clear decor container. And 2 cans of surface spray for backup. I stood there for 5 minutes moaning about how ugly it was and wishing I didn't have to be the one to do it, while K was moral support from the safety of the kitchen. Eventually logic kicked in: since the spider didn't move with all my screaming and jumping when I first saw it, I decided it probably wouldn't run around if I snuck up on it with the clean container. I covered it successfully, but when I bumped its foot to get it off the corner, it ran all around in the container and I screamed again. (It's interesting: I don't think of myself as the screaming sort, but it's an involuntary reaction I developed in my 20s.)

I got it outside, but in the dark I couldn't see if it was going out of the container. I was shaking it out and it was hanging on. I thought it was gone, picked the box up, and screamed again when I saw it on the box next to my hand. K leapt to my aid, providing backup again with a small book-light so that I could rescue my box in safety.

Such trials build unity and respect. Flatmates united against a common foe will be strengthened to withstand the smaller irritations of flat-sharing.

Making a clean start.

LB and I both ended up with some accumulated communal shared house stuff from our previous places. In particular, we have a lot of cleaning supplies, including 3 bottles of sugar soap and about 5 bottles of dishwashing liquid. Strangely, the multiple windexes are all LBs and the multiple and soap pumps and refills are all mine.

Advice on the logistics of rental-sharing.

RANT: For the last 3 years I have lived in a 3br unit. The original 2 housemates left and were replaced. There were 2 rent increases. The unit was sold. We all paid our rent separately, some weekly, some fortnightly, and some monthly. At the end of the 3 years, $339.13 is missing. And it is pretty much my job to sort it out, because I am the only original housemate and also because it has ALWAYS been my job to sort this stuff out. For some reason the agent always contacted me first, so house problems were always first of all MY problem.

So here is some advice for beginners in the rental-sharing game.

• In a house of 2 people, things are clear. If there is a problem with money or jobs, it is either you or the other person. In a house of 3 or more, it is less clear, there is a lot more passing responsibility around and hoping someone else will fix it. Some people are deliberately evasive, some just make no effort to help and hope someone else fixes it, some are genuinely innocent bystanders. So 2 is logistically easier. If there are 3 or more, be extra especially clear and accountable.
• If it turns out to be a house full of evasive types, be the first one to move out, because you don't want them all to move out and leave you with all the mess they made.
• Try and make it so that your name is not the first one on the lease. Don't be the first in line for the agent to call. I don't know if this works or not, but I'm tired of agent calls and emails, so it's worth a try.
• Everyone should pay their rent weekly. I did it monthly because it worked better for my personal budgeting, but weekly is the simplest way to track payments if everyone pays weekly.
• Divide the rent up according to the size of rooms or whatever. If you can all pay slightly different amounts rent, you can quickly see who missed a weekly payment.
• Start saving, so that you can buy your own place and be rid of the renting for good.

There is some more good advice in Anna's guest post.

Choosing a housemate - to friend or not to friend?

Guest post from Anna!

Some people say you shouldn't move in with a friend because it could ruin your relationship. Let me add my 2 cents worth about living with friends.
Obviously this is just my experience, but I have had it work both ways:

Housemate #1: When I first moved out of home I moved in with my long-time best friend, which some would say is home-making suicide. I was a bit nervous about the prospect to begin with. But we got on great because we think very similarly, are both open communicators and like to relax and spend time together in the same way. In the end it strengthened our relationship and we are still best friends even though we don't live together anymore (because a boy took her away!).

Housemate #2: This was a person I wasn't as close to to begin with, but she was still a friend. I think living together jeopardised our relationship because our expectations of living clashed and communication was weird. We didn't fight, but we rarely crossed paths. All communication on her part was by email. Not every email was passive-aggressive, but communication was by email ALONE. I'm not saying never give each other space, or never communicate by email. But if there's not an open line of face to face communication or spending time together then it causes weird tension. And there's no opportunity to strengthen the relationship. We did experience a period of horrible tension over a particular issue, which I don't think was ever really resolved properly. We tried, but seemed to be communicating at cross purposes and I don't know that either of us felt like the other person understood our own point of view. As a result I think we've lost something in the relationship.

I think potential housemates have to be up-front with each other at the beginning/before you move in together in order to establish your expectations of different aspects of house-sharing. If these expectations clash, that will probably be an indicator that it’s going to be more work if you end up living together. You can never know EVERYTHING about how it's going to work with the other person, even if you have the advantage of being able to weigh up your different personalities. But if you know the other person well enough beforehand, it is worth weighing up whether there’s anything in the relationship that annoys you. Because whatever there is will be intensified if you live together.

In the end I think it's probably less about whether a potential housemate is a friend to begin with and more about your respective "living styles". Here is a list of things to consider when choosing a flatmate. Think about what expectations you and any potential housemate have regarding:

- Cleanliness/tidiness in common areas
- How/when the common areas are used
- How you like to relax (ie do you expect to spend time together or do you always like to spend down-time in your room with the door shut?)
- Having people over (you need to put your flatmate first in this, and give them the opportunity to say "no" to you having friends over if they want a quiet night in and there is limited living space)
- Sharing/not sharing food
- How the bills are split/paid