25 Mar Living with Roommates

Before I came on exchange I had organised to share a room with a girl from my university in Sydney. We barely knew each other, only meeting in person twice before we moved in together, but I knew I would prefer to save money by sharing a room than spending more than I need for a bit of privacy. When I told my family, my sister said to me, “You do realise sharing a room is hard? You’re going to hate it.”

When I think about my sister’s warning now I can’t help but laugh. Even though it has its moments, sharing a room with someone has been relatively easy and one of the best decisions I made coming over here. My roommate and I are as close as sisters now and spend every night laughing, watching movies, complaining about homework and staying up way too late having deep and meaningfuls. Both of us agree; sharing a room together is like having one big sleepover that never ends.

Before coming to San Francisco, my roommate and I had a few Skype calls with the two girls that are on the lease for the house, telling us everything we would need to know about the house, showing us around as well as you can with a laptop, and going over what would be expected of us in terms of rent and utilities. We were pretty nervous agreeing to everything over the internet, especially seeing as we met them over Facebook, but the girls seemed really nice and open, and it was the best place we’d seen so far. They even agreed to cover our first months rent until we got there because they understood that sending large amount of money over the internet to strangers is not usually something you should do. As soon as we got here and saw the place in person we were at ease. Everything was exactly how they said it would be and we were so excited to move in.

Obviously, we’d met two of our housemates over Skype, and after about a week of living in our new home we met our other two housemates when they came back from winter break. Amazingly, they are all really lovely. One of the girls is barely home as she works and socialises a lot, but it’s kind of nice because the house feels a little less crowded. The other three girls are home more often, and go to SFSU as well so they understand the struggle of student life. During the week we spend evenings having dinner in front of the TV while binge watching Gossip Girl or Grey’s Anatomy and we’ve gotten to know them really well in the short amount of time we’ve been here. They’ve even offered to have us stay at their homes in LA and San Diego if we travel there.

As amazing as it has been, living with roommates is definitely different from living at home. Small stuff like whose turn it is to take out the rubbish, keeping the kitchen sink clean and trying not to be too loud in the mornings in case someone is still sleeping has definitely been an adjustment. Even though I help out with cooking and cleaning at home, it’s different when you’re living with people who aren’t family. The good thing is, the only thing that’s ever really annoyed me about living with roommates is my food being moved around in the fridge. And that’s definitely not something to get worked up over.