In this article I have written the biggest problems I have found with sharing an apartment with friends of mine, after my two best friends and I decided to all move in together.

Personal Space and Privacy:

Moving in with a friend over a stranger means you will have almost no privacy, friends have a tendency to wan to hang out especially when you door is shut and you just want to be alone, but a stranger will usually respect your privacy by not bothering you unless it is something important. Friends will also assume it is ok to borrow things from you without asking be it food in the fridge or your toe nail clippers from on top of your dresser.

When I lived with my best friends they were constantly eating my things, and when I said something to them their reply was well it has been in the fridge for a day or 2 so I did not know you wanted it, because apparently I always buy groceries that I do not want to eat, and god forbid you lock your door so your roommates cant go onto your room because it is an insult that you don’t trust them to stay out of your room.

Bills and Expenses:

The reason why you moved in with a roommate in the first place was you don’t make enough to live on your own right. Well my experience has been that a friend may worry less if their roommate is a friend because their friend will help them out if they were short on the rent or electricity because they spent too much money in the online casinos, but that same person would probably be more considerate and make sure to have the rent money if they were living with a stranger rather then a good friend.

One of my friends would always gamble in the casinos and especially the online casinos because it was easier then driving to the nearest land based casino, and sometimes he would spend all his money playing in the poker rooms or the Blackjack or Roulette table, and come the end of the month when the bills were due he would have to ask me to cover him.

Chores:

When sharing a place to live it is usually best to divide the chores around the house such as cleaning the bathroom and taking out the garbage. This is another example of something a stranger will stick to more then a friend will, sure a stranger from time to time may have something come up and they did not clean the shower on the ay he was supposed to, but he will usually let you know that he will do it the next day or as soon as he can. Friends will put things off with no explanations at all.

One friend of mine hated anything being left in the sink for any amount of time and if it was left fore more then an hr or 2 she would complain, so me and my other roommate started cleaning the dishes as soon as we were done with them, only to find that she would leave her dishes sometimes for days and when questioned about it she said that her seeing our dishes bothered her but her dishes did not bother her so it was ok for her to leave them.

Power Consumption:

Unless your roommate has lots of money and lets face it if they had cash they would not need a roommate, then they will be looking to save money and not want to waste money on electricity, and once you agree on things like using the dryer or air conditioning two roommates who meet online or from an add in the paper will usually respect the rules better then two friends will. Friends will usually bend the rules, like leaving the computer on all day or running the ac all night.

When I have lived with friends I would constantly come home and find my roommates using the dryer even though we agreed only 1 usage a week per roommate, and the worst was how often I would come home to find the AC on in one of the bedrooms and no one is even home. This is a very common way for friends to take advantage of one another.

This article just points out the most common problems I had when I tried to live with my friends. This is no way means that you can not get a friend who will respect you enough not to do these things or that you will not find a stranger that won’t do all the same things.