How To Live With Roommates Pt.1

Living with roommates can be difficult and it's inevitable you'll encounter some disagreements throughout the year. Between dirty dishes and consistently leaving things out of place, there'll eventually be some tension between your differences. However, there are ways to prevent said tension by setting rules each resident must obey. Commandments of the house if you will. Below is a copy of my apartments personal commandments :

All the commandments contribute to a cleaner living space but commandment #9 is the most influential commandment motivating my roommates to follow the other rules. When someone doesn't obey a rule, they are forced to donate a dollar to a jar. Eventually, once the jar fills we spend the money towards something our apartment needs for the week such as paper towels, food, or a new X-BOX ONE video game. Having a small reasonable consequence for disobeying the rules is what motivates my roommates to clean up because we're all already broke enough as it is.

If you're having any disputes with your roommates I encourage you to communicate to them rather than holding it in or letting it slip. A tip to minimize assigning blame to a specific person is to use "I" statements rather than "you" statements. For example instead of saying "Jason, YOU left YOUR used scrambled eggs pan out and YOU left the milk out again, can YOU put things away?" try phrasing it as "Hey Jason, sometimes I feel frustrated when I wake up in the morning and need to cook breakfast before class and have to clean a dirty pan and use warm milk, maybe we can work on putting things back where they belong together". By using "I" statements rather than "you" helps take away the blame and focuses on the problem and why it's a problem. By using "I" statements your roommates won't feel targeted or feel like they're being nagged to do something.