college students 300x200 - Tips For Roommates Part 1Is it OK if I clean my toenails in the kitchen sink?

This is just one of the few questions you might want to inquire about before you cast your lot with a new roommate. Just for good measure, here’s the first seven of the 15 Tips for Choosing a Roommate. Tips 8-15 will be in the next post, so be sure to check back!

1. What’s your definition of clean? This is a throw back to our question about servicing your toenails in the kitchen sink. Where are you on the spectrum of clean versus sloppy? So long as that knock on the door isn’t the health department come to call are we OK or were you hoping for something a little tidier?

2. What about when you sleep? Are you a third shifter that needs to sleep during the day? Will your new roommate be gone at work while you’re sleeping – a perfect arrangement – or home blasting the newest hit from Metallica on the stereo?

3. What’s your favorite recreation drug? More importantly, what’s your roommates favorite recreational drug? If your new roomie views your new pad as a crack house, know that the landlord can’t just evict your roommate. You would likely get tossed out too. This stuff is going to be found out. No one should be doing anything illegal in your home.

4. What’s your social calendar look like? Do you like settling down with a good book and a little quiet time or is your home a revolving door of new friends and new faces?

5. What about pets? Does the landlord even allow them? Is anyone allergic? What are you going to do if the tarantula gets out of the aquarium?

6. Where will you put the drum set? Is your new roommate an aspiring musician or merely a heavy metal aficionado? Either way, you’d better get an understanding of each others expectations.

7. What about food choices? Before you whip up that batch of curry, better think about how that’s going to smell. What if you’re a vegan and your new roommate likes to grill up a thick juicy steak every weekend and even reading this sentence makes you want to hurl?

So how many of these would you have thought of on your own? If there were a few points you never considered, you’re going to want to tune in to the next post where we will discussing eight more points to consider before bunking up with a new roommate. And Decker Properties screens tenants carefully too.