Having a flatmate can be a fun, exciting experience. It comes with many challenges. You may be living with a person who is completely different than you. You do not have to be best friends with your flatmate. Most problems can be resolved through good communication, compromise, and respect.

Set Boundaries

Discuss the cleaning schedule. You and your flatmate probably have different ideas about what is considered clean and neat. This can be a major area of conflict. Make a chore schedule and determine who will do what and how often. For example, you two may designate Sunday afternoons as your cleaning day. Choose a time that works with both of your schedules. Responsibilities you may consider include:

• Taking out the trash
• Sweeping the floor
• Cleaning out the mini fridge
• Washing the sink
• Straightening up the room
• Washing dishes

Develop a written plan to handle visitors. Talk about how you will handle friends coming over and intimate visitors. Conflicts are more likely to occur when it involves an intimate partner. Set up a system that both people are comfortable with.

• What is the time limit for guests?
• Can intimate visitors spend the night?
• How will you notify the other person that you need privacy (e.g. rubber band on the door knob, a symbol on your name tag, a certain colour of paper on the door)? Discuss your phone policy. You will probably talk on the phone and video chat with your friends and family while you are away at school. Are these conversations private? Should these conversations take place in the room or outside the room?
• Consider having different rules for daytime talking and nighttime talking.
• You may say talking in the room is fine as long as the other person isn’t studying. Determine a lights out time. You and your flatmate probably do not go to bed at the same time. You may prefer a 9:30 pm bedtime while your flatmate doesn’t go to sleep until 2:00 am. To compromise, set up a time when the lights have to be out. During this time, headphones should be used to watch movies and listen to music and a personal light should be used for reading instead of using the overhead lights. For example, a fair compromise between a 9:30 pm bed time and a 2:00 am bed time may be to turn the lights out at 11:00 pm, however you may set a different time for weekdays and weekends.

Sign a flatmate agreement. Once you have developed ground rules for common situations, write them down and sign them. This will keep both of you accountable. If you someone is not holding up their end of the bargain, you can use the agreement as a starting point for the conversation. You will have to compromise to come to an agreement. Both of you should get some of the things you want, but things may not be exactly how you want them to be. Be sure that both you and your flatmate are comfortable with the terms of the agreement and keep in mind that you may have to modify and change some of the agreement as the school year goes on.

Working Through Problems

Choose the right time. Do not go to your flatmate when you are super annoyed and irritated. You may say something that you regret. Also, if your flatmate is studying or getting ready to leave the room, wait to have the conversation. The conversation will not go well if your flatmate feels like they are being ambushed.

If you are not sure of a good time to speak with your flatmate, you may ask or send a text that says, “Hey, when are you going to be around? I wanted to have a chat about something.”

Talk in person. An in-person conversation is much better than texting or venting on social media. It is easy to misinterpret what someone has said when you are only reading their words. You do not see any of their body language or facial expressions. People also will say things over text that they would not say to your face.

Posting how you feel on social media often makes things worse. Imagine how you would feel if your flatmate tweeted about how messy you were or that you snore all night long. Not posting on social media also keeps other people from interfering in your flatmate problems.

Focus directly on one problem. This could be studying or talking on the phone with all the lights on while you're trying to sleep, using all the hot water in the shower, or not cleaning up. Try to talk to your flatmate about this one big issue, and offer a suggestion for how to make it better. Allow your flatmate to disagree/agree with your suggestion until you work out a solution.

If you try to discuss too many issues at once, your flatmate may feel like you are attacking them.

• Talk about the behavior not the person.
• You may say, “It’s hard for me to sleep when you talk on the phone late at night,” instead of “You’re rude and disrespectful when you talk on the phone at night.”
• Focus on the behavior and how it makes you feel. Your flatmate may not even realize how their behavior affects you.

Listen to your flatmate. Once you have told your flatmate the problem and how you feel, allow them to speak. Your flatmate has a different perspective than you and may say something that you have not even considered. When you listen, ask yourself what you would do if the situation was reversed.

• After you have spoken, you may say, “What do you think?” or “How do you feel about the situation?”

• When your flatmate speaks, do not interrupt. Communicate with your flatmate. Spend time getting to know your flatmate. Talk to your flatmate about their likes and dislikes, what they did in high school, and what they are looking forward to in college. You are going to be living in tight quarters with this person for the whole year. It is worth the effort to get to know them. Here are some questions to get you started.

• Are you a morning person or a night person?

• How will you handle boyfriends/girlfriends? How long can they stay?

• Do you want to share food, clothes, and/or school supplies?

• Do you sleep with the TV on or with music?

• Do you sleep with the lights on?

• Are you super neat or are you messy?

Develop a solution together. Once you and your flatmate have had a chance to speak, it is time to come up with a solution to the problem. If it something that has already been covered in the flatmate agreement, the solution is simple. If it is a different situation, you will have to negotiate something that works for both of you. Ask your flatmate, “What do you think we should do?” or “How can we fix this together?”