on communal living

[kirakira]

I love communal living. There are plenty of practical reasons to have roommates, like lower expenses, people available to watch your pets, shared chores, shared resources, etc. However, I suspect the primary draw for me is not practical. Instead, it appeals to my emotions and my upbringing

Comments

patience and organization!

[kirakira]

Well, I've increased my tolerance for some of it. Patience is key, because probably most people you live with will not be as neat as you. Organization is the other key -- if there are places for things, then people ought to be better about putting stuff away.

For example, my kitchen table is in a highly trafficked area of the house, right by the front door. People leave the mail on it, or their bag, or the book they were reading or whatever. It's not piled high with stuff, but it accretes little things. So I put up with it for a few days, knowing that anyone might set something down when arriving home and then move it in the morning. If the object shows no sign of moving, I put it away myself.

We don't get much mail on the table now that we have mail bins on the wall by the front door. The saltshaker doesn't end up in random places now that I have a lazy suzan for salt/pepper/soy sauce etc. on the table. It's not ideal, but I took the universal absolute that the table would attract clutter, and let go of my desire for an empty table, in order to compromise on a table that had stuff on it NEATLY.

As to people leaving craft projects out -- that's just irritating. I mean, I do it sometimes, too, but once we cleaned up our craft room I left the stuff in there instead. Do you have a craft room? Or an area/corner you can make a craft area, so that you have some control over where the messes end up?