It is hard to establish boundaries with your roommates to make sure you are getting the most out of your online class while still having fun and maintaining your mental health. Tips I follow with my three amazing roommates are what helps us conquer living together while tackling online classes.
Active Communication:
1. Create a Group Chat:
Make a group chat so that you can alway keep your roommates updated so that they are never surprised with your social or academic choices.
2. Set up a Master Schedule:
We all texted in our group chat the times of our classes and compiled the times. We color coordinated our classes to see when our classes overlapped. Now there is no confusion knowing who is in class or not. This is a way we can have the working environment we desire.
3. Take Turns Making Dinner:
My wonderful roomies and I all love spending time together and a great way to do this is making dinner. Making dinner is a hard task and it should not always fall on one person. We made a schedule of who is making dinner and we always trade off on who does the dishes.
4. Make Sure to Keep Things Clean:
By actively communicating with one another, my roomies and I decided we should tell each other when we think our apartment needs to be cleaned. We also have a master chore list we all follow because we want our home, which is now our working environment, to be clean.
Boundary Setting:
1. House Rules During COVID-19:
Boundaries are important, so we made a list of house rules. One of these house rules being to limit the amount of people we want over.
2. Creating Our Own Working Spaces:
We also decided to tell each other where we will be working in the apartment for the day. For example, on Mondays we all have overlapping classes. One roommate decided she wanted to work in her room for her class, the other decided she wanted to work in the living room, the third roommate takes the kitchen, and I work at my desk. We made sure we had a space we were all comfortable in. The boundaries were created to let us all have our separate spaces are what make a conducive working environment.
Respect: The last element of our success is basic. Respect. We respect each other and always make sure to check in on each other.
1. Rent:
Rent can be a stressful topic, but communicating to your roommates your financial worries in order to make sure everyone pays on time is very important.
2. Groceries:
Respect comes in many forms and our household it comes in the form of sharing each others food respectively. We all pay for our groceries, but if someone wants something just for themselves we always respect that.
Living with other people is not going to be perfect. Recognizing that everyone is human and will make mistakes is very important. I am still learning that roommate relationships are a different kind of a relationship and it is an ongoing process trying to figure out how to live with others. It might be challenging, but communicating, setting boundaries, and holding each other accountable is even more imperative in the time of COVID-19 for the purpose of safety. Make sure you and your roommates are having fun while staying safe and social distancing, so your semester online can be amazing.
Photo Credit: Her Campus Media Library