It sounded like such a good idea. Despite the numerous people who tried to tell me it would turn out bad, I didn’t listen. “Our situation is different”, I would say. “We’re very good at communicating”, I preached. If only I would have taken their warnings to heed sooner. I moved in with my friends, and now I’m paying the price.

It all started in October of last year. My lease was running out on my bachelor pad, a bachelor pad that had a lot of good things going for it, but also a lot of bad things. It was huge, but it also had no heat. It was a basement apartment under a pizza store in Boston, not exactly optimal conditions for living.

Anyways, I wanted to try something new, so I asked one friend in Dallas if he wanted to move into an apartment with me. If I would have left it at that I truly believe everything would have been alright. However, my friend got the idea that we should bring in a third person and try to rent a house. It sounded like a good idea at the time, so I went with it. We started looking for houses and found a nice 4 bedroom for rent that was a bit out of our price range, so we brought in a fourth person.

Finally, our house had a separate basement apartment that was also available. A fifth friend decided to move in.

Going into this endeavor I was willing to do everything it took to make it work. Unfortunately as so often is the case, most of my roommates did not have the same willingness to maintain a peaceful living arrangement. I thought with 4 people (the guy in the basement doesn’t count) we could make Sunday our cleaning day. I divided the cleaning into 4 parts, bathroom, kitchen, living/dining rooms, and vacuuming/dusting. This way we could work on a rotating basis. Everyone agreed that this was a good system. It was successful for exactly zero weeks. That’s right, the first Sunday came and responsibilities were shirked by many.

Then, there is dishes. The rule agreed on was that everyone just does their own dishes. You dirty something, you have until the end of the day to clean it. Lets just say that there has been many times that after seeing the same dishes sitting there for three weeks I’ve had to suck it up and do them myself.

Lawn work? Only myself and one other person have ever done any work outside.

Now we come to girlfriends. When I say there are 5 people living here, I really mean 7. Two of my roommates girlfriends are here for 5-6 days of the week. They shower, they use our dishes, they make messes. Do they clean after themselves. No. Do my roommates do the right thing and volunteer to pay more of the utilities for all the electricity/gas/water they use. You know the answer to that.

When it comes to moving in with friends, you may think it is a great idea to save a little bit of money. Just be sure you know what you are getting yourself into.