House sharing is all about diplomacy, domesticity, and someone else's dirty dishes
The last straw was when the cat started using the tub as a litter box. Until then, Melissa Filgerleski, 25, a downtown paralegal, had tried not to make a big deal out of her roommate's living habits. She and a third roommate would "passive-aggressively not do the dishes in the sink," says Filgerleski, "just to see how long they'd stay there."
Sometimes weeks would pass before Filgerleski addressed her roommate's messes. But when she found cat feces in the tub one morning before work, Filgerleski shook the woman awake and urged her to clean up the mess. The roommate took the incident personally, says Filgerleski, and it wasn't long before Filgerleski began looking for a new apartment -- and a new person to share it with.
The situation is common. The average age of Boston residents is 31. Talk to any number of Bostonians around that age and you're likely to hear a roommate horror story. There are tales of stolen rent, rampant mold, illicit drug use, and missing food. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Boston was $1,400 in 2003. With thousands of income-restricted students and recent graduates paying off education loans as they begin their careers, many budgets dictate splitting the rent multiple ways. For many young Bostonians, negotiating households and habits is a fact of life.
Cleanliness is the most common source of conflict in shared housing. For some, like Sam Phinizy, 27, who shares an apartment in Brookline with four others, mess "isn't a big deal," he says. He describes the household as being "pretty laid-back"; as a result, they live in a pretty messy apartment. The living room smells like snack food and dirty socks, and the floor is a jumble of electrical cords, old newspapers, loose change, and piles of clothing. Empty Coke bottles line a windowsill.
Luckily for the four men and one woman, ranging in age from 19 to 27, household conflict hasn't arisen. It could be due to the uniform standards of the group. "We did have one girl who moved in for a month and was really anal. She wanted a [cleaning] schedule" says Phinizy. "That didn't work out."
After that experience, says Phinizy, "we just looked for people with common interests." He says that the friendships in the house help relieve any tension that might arise when dishes are piling in the sink for weeks.
But while some people are eager to live with friends, others have had relationships dissolve as a result of living together. Kelly Andreoni, 23, and her fiance recently found their own place after living with a friend of theirs from college.
"In the beginning, we sat down and made what we called the Wheel O' Clean," says Andreoni. "We divided the chores into kitchen, bathroom, and living/dining room, and switched every week," she says. While she and her boyfriend did their chores as they came up, the other roommate never did. "I think he expected me to do everything," she says. After months of tension, Andreoni stopped talking to her roommate. "My boyfriend had to be the liaison," she says. After parting ways, Andreoni says that she and the ex-roommate are no longer friends.
For some, cleanliness comes before friendship. When the situation with her unclean roommate ended badly, Filgerleski, the paralegal, realized a few things. "I learned you really need to be up front with people," she says. "Now I'll say, 'this is my standard and I can't change it, so can you meet it?' " For Filgerleski, common standards are more important than common interests. "I don't need to be your friend," she says. "I need to be able to live with you."
And the ability to keep house, while a priority, is just one quality people seek in a housemate, be they friends or strangers. "Respectful" and "sane" are among the other qualities most cited by people looking for roommates on craigslist.org, a widely used online housing resource.
"We look for no drama," says Emily Shull, 29. In her Somerville household of six, candidates meet with the entire group, and "they usually have to come twice," says Amy Jollymore, 33, another resident. They specifically look for busy men or women over 25. "We don't want people thinking this is the center of their lives and they've just inherited a new bunch of buddies," says Jollymore. But members of the household, whose ages range from 28 to 33, agree that it's important to have someone likeable, who fits in, rather than just someone to fill the room. "If we don't find anyone we like," Jollymore says, "we suck it up and pay the rent."
As for cleanliness, this group has it figured out: They recently hired a cleaning service.