Settling Arguments

Living with other people can be extremely difficult, especially with three other guys. You're almost certain to get in some sort of argument or disagreement. How you hand those arguments can determine whether the rest of your time living there will be enjoyable or just plain hell. Here are a few different things you can do to keep any disagreement from turning into full blown argument.

• Ask for someone else's advice
• Getting input from a non-biased third party, preferably not another person you live with. It's a great way to get input on your problem, possibly even settle the dispute.
• Don't make any rash decisions or comments
• If the problem really upsets you, try to calm down before attempting to talk to your roommate. Out of frustration you could easily say something you don't necessarily mean. Which could cause even more problems than the original dispute itself. 
• Don't try to get revenge
• Attempting to get revenge on your roommate will turn itself into an endless vicious cycle trying to get revenge upon one another. It will get you nowhere except for more arguments.
• Make things better, not worse.
• For example, if the issue is over dishes, don't be the jerk that just adds more dishes to the pile. At least clean your own dish and put it away instead of making matters worse. 

Always try to remember that you're sharing the house/apartment with other people. Always try to be considerate of other's habits, even if you do not agree with them. By following a few of these tips you can be on your way to never getting into another major argument with your roommate.

Bringing Nature Inside

The door to our house is on the back side of the house. You have to walk down a long driveway before reaching some stairs that lead up to the second floor of our house. This path is extremely dirty and becomes even worse during the fall and winter season with all the rain and snow. Whenever someone comes home, they drag all the mud and leaves on the bottom of their shoes throughout our house. Which has created a major problem for B-fresh and I because we love to walk around the house barefoot.

Photo taken by me

When you walk into our home, you go down a long hallway where all the rooms are located. The hallway leads into a large living room and one other room. My room happens to be the very first room as you come to the top of the stairs. It is also where the carpet begins. The majority of mud, leaves, dirt, sticks, and any other things from outside get dropped off right in front of my door. Since 90% of the mess is in front of my door, no one else bothers to clean it up. 

Photo taken by me

I have no problem vacuuming the hallway a few times a week to keep it clean. However, that is not enough to prevent me from stepping on certain foreign objects. One week in particular finally made me realize something else had to be done about the carpet situation.

Around the outside of our house there is a bunch of vegetation. Walking down our pathway sometimes feels like you're walking down a nature trail. Some of the plants have thorns and a few of them produce burrs, which are the tiny balls that stick to your clothes. 

One week during the summer they all seemed to have bloomed at once. For almost a week straight when I would walk out of my room in the morning I would step on one of those damn things. After the third day of this happening, I had to do something. 

I sent out a mass text to all my roommates to please take their shoes off before stepping onto the carpet. They took their shoes off for about a week before going back to their old ways. I decided to put up a sign to remind my roommates to take of their shoes. Ever since I have yet to step on another burr or thorn

Four Men, One Bathroom

The house I live in only has two bathrooms. One upstairs and one downstairs. The house is also a duplex. This means my three roommates and I have to share one bathroom. This creates a couple different problems. First, everyone has to use the bathroom in the morning. Second, no one ever wants to help clean the bathroom.

The first couple of weeks after Kaveman and Markie Mark moved in, we noticed that we were all using the bathroom at the same time in the morning. This dilemma created a time issue and plenty of awkward situations. 

I only need the bathroom for a couple minutes in the morning, as to where Kaveman needs it for about 30 minutes to get ready for work. We would get upset at each other for taking too much in the bathroom because someone else needed to use it or they would end up being late to work or class. It'd also create awkward moments because someone would forget to either lock the bathroom door or shut it all the way. It  We started to get tired of everyone walking in on each other every other morning and using the bathroom for too long. We decided to make a morning bathroom schedule.

We figured out each other's schedule and allotted a certain amount of time each of us had to follow, otherwise that person would be forced to do yard work alone. 

The schedule has been working very well for us. The other issue that took a while to resolve was keeping our bathroom clean

Our bathroom, especially our toilet, can become extremely dirty. Myself and B-fresh have been the only two that contribute to keeping the bathroom clean. We buy all the cleaning supplies as well as being the only ones to use them. We have made multiple attempts to get the other two to help us, but they never do. We got tired of being the only two to ever clean the bathroom, so we asked our roommates how they felt about splitting the cost of a maid to come in once a month to clean the bathroom. We all decided that would be the best option. 

Lesson to take away from this: Bringing in outside help is never a bad idea, especially if someone is going to split the cost with you. 

Privacy Issues

Privacy can become a major issue when you have 3 roommates. If privacy is important to you as an individual then having roommates isn't the best idea. You learn a lot about a person's personality through their living habits, I feel as if I know Kaveman extremely well but he and I hardly ever talk. I have had my privacy invaded a few different times while living with my roommates. Each one of them could have been avoided by taking certain precautionary steps.

One of my most unfavorable memories about my privacy being invaded is when my card got declined while on a date with my new girlfriend. My girlfriend ended up having to pay for our dinner, thankfully we're still together. How does this pertain to my privacy with my roommates? One of my roommates friends stole a bank statement from my desk in my room. Unfortunately, I had written my account information on this particular statement. The bank was able to recover all my money from the person because he was caught on the ATM camera, which made it extremely easy for the police to identify him. 

I know that this could have been avoided if I would have never written down my account information on my bank statement. However, I thought I could trust everyone that came in and out of my house. After this incident I learned that is not true. 

Since this has happened, I have taken two steps to further prevent such situations from happening. One, I put a lock on my door that uses a key. Two, I bought a paper shredder for my all my personal documents that contain sensitive information. 

Photo taken by me

The lesson to take away from this: No matter how much you think you can trust someone, always take extra cautionary steps when it comes to your sensitive information. 

What makes a good roommate?

Living with three other men can become very complicated sometimes, between deciding who takes out the trash and who does the dishes when no one wants to do it, your patience gets tested as a person. But it is easy for me to sit back and point out everything I believe my roommates do wrong. Personally, I think I am a great roommate. However, I wanted to find out what others opinion's are on what makes a good roommate.

I searched around the Internet and read a few different articles about how to be a good roommate. Here is what I gathered from around the web that seem to be the top three factors to being a good roommate.

1. Communication

• Be honest with each other. If I leave a dirty dish on the counter and someone asks me about it, I should just be honest and say "yeah I'm sorry, I'll take care of that right now". 
•  Be clear with each other. Always be open with each other about things the other person may do that upsets you. If one of your roommates doesn't like shoes worn in the house, then be sure to let them know that it bothers you, in a nice manner. 
• Willing to negotiate with each other. When living with others, it is inevitable that you're going to disagree on something. If there is a laundry list of chores that need to be done around the house then negotiate a "contract" of some sort with your roommate to determine who does what chore. Instead of opting to do all the easy chores and leaving the hard work to your other roommates. 

2. Respect

• Be respectful of each others decisions and beliefs. If you see that your roommate is taking part in something that you find to be wrong or "stupid", unless it is directly affecting you, leave them alone and respect their life as an individual. In other words, do not to harass your roommate because of some view they may have on political issues.
• Be respectful of their belongings. You should treat every item in the house as if it were your own. 
• Respect their privacy. People do strange things when they believe no one is watching. Don't be a jerk and record your roommate dancing in his underwear to his favorite song. 

3. Accountability

• Be accountable for your actions. If you accidentally break something of your roommates, let them know what happened and that you will pay them back. 
• Lock the door. If you're coming home late at night then you are accountable for locking the door to make sure a burglar doesn't easily walk into our home and take our belongings.
  (I have had this happen to me once before)
•  Do your part. If you and your roommates have agreed upon who does what around the house, then be sure to always do your part. A lot of arguments are started over something that didn't get done.

These are the most common guidelines to being a good roommate that I found on the web. If you and your roommates can follow these simple guidelines then living together should be easy. Personally, I find these guidelines extremely helpful. There are plenty of other aspects that make a good roommate but I found these to be the most important. 

Here are a few websites I visited to gather the information:

http://collegelife.about.com/od/roommat2/a/How-To-Be-A-Good-Roommate.htm

https://www.unigo.com/in-college/campus-life/how-to-be-a-good-roommate-a-college-student-perspective

http://www.fastweb.com/student-life/articles/the-7-rules-of-being-a-good-roommate

I also found this video that had good information on being a good roommate. I like the video due to its simplicity and how it is straight to the point. I watched a few other videos and all of them were completely off topic within the first minute. 

"Hey I didn't know you bought milk"

When there are 4 full grown male adults living under the same roof, your food is bound to get eaten by someone other than yourself. Whether it is because one of your roommates is so stupid drunk that he cant formulate a coherent sentence or they use that oh-so infamous line of theirs "I didn't know...". Around our house, the food items that go missing the most is milk and pizza.

This problem usually arises when 2 of us buy the same exact item from the grocery store. We all drink the same kind of milk, 2% low fat from Dillons. One time I noticed that my brand new gallon of milk had been opened and used, not by me of course. I text all my roommates and ask them if they accidentally drank my milk, mistaking it for their own. All 3 of them told me that they didn't drink my milk. I gave all of them a chance to tell me, without me getting extremely upset over the issue. Instead they all chose to lie, which infuriated me.

I am usually not a man of action but when my milk is consistently being drank by someone other than me, I needed to come up with some solution. I decided to label my carton of milk with my name. Having my name on the milk stopped my roommates from opening the carton but not drinking from it. Therefore, I decided I had to take one more step. I drew a line on the carton that was level with the milk. This way I would know for sure if someone had taken drank some of my milk.                                                                                                              

This may seem like an unnecessary and drastic step to take for preserving a little bit of milk. I thought it was too until I woke up one morning expecting to eat a bowl of cereal before a huge test. I always remember my teachers in high school telling me to always eat something before a test day,apparently it helps with information retention. I figured out that this statement was all too true when I failed my test because I was so hungry while taking the test.
                                                                                                           (Photo taken by me)

The lesson to take away from here: If you aren't going to share groceries amongst each other, then always label what is yours to avoid confusion and arguments with your roommates.

"Whose turn is it to do the dishes?"

"Whose turn is it to do the dishes?!" is a quote I often find myself screaming throughout my house. When the two new guys, Markie Mark and Kaveman, first moved in I noticed that they would help B-Fresh and I with dishes all the time. They would consistently rinse their plates off and put them in our dishwasher. However, after about a month of them living with us they started to become very lazy.

Our very first fight as new roommates came around a little after the second month of them being here. It was over the dishes. I remember it so vividly. I had not been home for about 3 days. As I walk through the door, I am instantly smacked in the face with an utterly disgusting smell combination of raw chicken juice and old milk. It was gut-wrenching, I have worked in the service industry ever since my first job and I have never smelled anything so potent before. I was gagging as I walked up the stairs and into our kitchen. Every single dish that was in our house was in some way stacked in this heap of rot where I thought our sink should be.

After realizing where the unbearable smell was coming from, I tried gathering all 3 of my roommates together so we could get these dishes clean. Both Markie Mark and Kaveman refused to help B-Fresh and I do the dishes because they were both in the middle of playing an online video game. I asked them to come help us when they were done and they both agreed to after acting extremely irritated that I asked them to help with the dishes.

After about 35 minutes, B-Fresh and I had finished all the dishes, between the two of us. We went and asked the other two why they didn't help and both said "they forgot about it". This has happened to B-Fresh and I more than once. Every time we would try and get help from one of them, they would act as if they had no contribution to the giant pile of dishes. Their most famous line though is "that isn't mine".

 Our solution to the problem was the picture you see below. I am always having to remind Markie Mark and Kaveman to put their dishes in the dishwasher because they "forget" to do so. Instead of trying to constantly remind the two to put their dishes away, I just made it so they couldn't use the "I forgot" excuse. I have this reminder on our fridge so they can't even make food without being reminded to put their dishes away.

Photo taken by me

The lesson to learn here is: Be patient with others, especially someone you live with. Small things such as doing dishes is no reason to get in arguments and possible fights with your roommate. 

Here's a link to a site in which others with roommates have posted notes that they leave for their roommates Passive-Aggressive notes