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living with roommates

Pet is not a problem when living witha roommate

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Roommates with pets

Having a pet, just like having a baby, entails too many responsibilities (even if you are not the pet owner) and certain household adjustments. That is why, having pet when you live with a roommate in NYC is an issue, so if  you are either sharing a place with a pet owner or being a pet owner living with a roommate yourself, you might find this article interesting.

IF YOUR ROOMMATE HAS A PET

your rommate's cat

Do not adopt the pet! 

Make sure you don’t become the pet’s care giver, cleaning, feeding, walking and treating it instead of your roommate. There must be a reason why you didn’t get a pet for yourself, and whatever it is, it can only mean one thing- you don’t need it now, so don’t let it be imposed on you by a careless owner.

Lay out some rules

Think of the pet free zones in your apartment, meaning the areas where you don’t want your roommate’s cat/dog/tea cup pig have access to,  and make sure that your roommate understands the full meaning of “pet-free”.

Take precautions

roommates with pets

Get all the things that might be damaged by a pet and get them safely out of reach. As we said above, having a pet in the apartment entails the responsibilty from both sides, so be responsible for your stuff. Better safe than sorry.

Communicate

Don’t hesitate to talk to your rommate if you feel an issue arising, and be sure to do it right away to avoid escalation.

IF YOU ARE THE PET’S OWNER

Train your pet

Make sure you pet is properly trained. Biting puppy or a not (potty) trained cat is a problem that could cause your roommate to start hating your pet and all pets in general.

Set boundaries

Confine your pet.  As a pet owner you might be ok with your dog’s chew toys scattered around the apartment,  but your roommate is most likely not going to be ok with it. So it makes sense to get a puppy pen if you have a dog.

roommate's cat

Be extra clean

Don’t fail to clean after your pet right away, even if you feel that it can wait a few hours, and make sure you give your pet a proper bath as often as it takes, to ensure that it doesn’t stink.

Take extra care about your pet

Again, if you have a dog, maybe, it makes sense to hire a dog walker, to make sure your canine is healthy, and not going nuts inside the apartment out of boredom.

Even if you are sharing an apartment with someone, you can still enjoy having a four legged baby in your house, the only thing that  you should watch out for, is making sure that your pet is not causing any problems to your roommate turning his/her life into a nightmare. That is why it is important to let your roommate know about your pet upfront, before you got into a commitment, and the perfect way to do it, would be to put the pet in your profile, when you are just looking for a roommate, and maybe even put your pet as a profile picture to let everyone know about it right off the bat.

living with roommates

Adult vs Childish Ways of solving problems with your roommate.

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There are two ways of solving problems, adult way and childish way, it is ngotiable which way is better but from I’ve learned so far, acting like a child does not help you when you are having problems with your roommate. I didn’t even realize untill recently how irrational and unreasonable my behaviour is sometimes (especially when I am under pressure) so now I want to share my thoughts with you, in case you are having the same problem.

Trash situation

Problem: My roommate and I agreed on taking turns putting the trash out, and we decided that it should be done as soon as the garbage bag is full. But as we are both hard working young adults with personal life and after-work time interests and activities, it happened quite a few times that garbage stayed in our kitchen for days, (in fact, I wanted to write “weeks” but I felt too embarrassed to admit it), untill the stench from it reached its unbreathable maximum. Then someone, whoever turn it was at the moment would finally put it out. We both felt guilty about it and tried to make sure it is not happening, but… you know… it didn’t always work. My roommate was doing better than me though, so she started making comments about me being careless, which made me slightly irritated.

Solutionabby-lee-takes-out-the-trash

Childish Way (what I did): I’ve waited patiently for a few days untill she was finally the one who forgot to take the trash out, and when the trash bags started looking/smelling gross again I filmed it with my phone, dressing the video with a few sarcastic comments, and sent it out to her.

Adult way: Apologize and move on, making an effort to be more mindful about the trash situation.

Midnight clash

Problem: My friend and his roommate Dea have different daily schedules, so he comes home late at night while she leaves for work really early in the morning. He makes noise, occasionally, that wakes her up, because he just doesn’t pay attention to how heavy his walking is, and how loud he slams the kitchen cabinets and fridge doors.

Solution: 

Childish way: One night he woke her up, Dea appeared in the kitchen wearing the “devil’s face” (my friends literate expression) stomped to the Tom-Jerry-89bathroom without a single word, not even “hi”, and then went back to her room slamming the door behind her with the loud Bang!  Next morning she tried to make as much noise as possible resetting the microwave three times (microwave buttons make this heart wrenching beep sound) and making herself three smoothies in the bullet blender.

Adult way: Leave a note in the kitchen letting my friend know that he wakes her up with detailed explanation of what exactly he does that makes so much noise. (Yes, this is how my friend is, you have to break your issue into elementary particles and give it all to him one micro particle at a time, but once he got it, you’ll never have to get back to it again).

Money matters

Problem: My friend and her roommate Laura went to Benjamin Moore to get painting suppliedownload (6)s for their upcoming living room makeover, and the total cost of it ended up being more then Laura could afford.

Childish way: Once they were done shoppping and back home Laura had resentfully confronted my friend about the final bill coming up to $120.00 (split between two of them) talking about how she now has to cut her lunch money for the whole week untill her next paycheck.

Adult way:  Let my friend know, that you are on a (tight) budget upfront and either postpone the makeover till the next paycheck, or come up with cheaper choice of supplies.

The baking pans that made Tanisha famous. 

Problem: Tanisha Thomas the Bad Girls Club Season 2 star got frustrated with three of her roommates partying in the house till dawn while she and other girls tried to sleep.

Tanisha’s Way: What would be the better way of addressing the issue than walking around the house at the break of dawn next morning and banging two alluminum oven trays against each other to wake up everyone in the house (including those who didn’t get to sleep last night because of partying roommates)? That’s right, walking around, banging those trays AND chanting “I DIDN’T GET NO F*CKING SLEEP CAUSE’A Y’ALL!! Y’ALL NOT GON GET NO SLEEP CAUSE’A ME!!!”.

Adult way: I, seriously, can not think of any better way to deal with this problem. Am I wrong or you can call it a-street-smart-way of dealing with an issue?  And even though this episode aired around eight years ago I guess it will never get old for me.

Afterword

Perfect roommates don’t exist y’all, so we all have to be a little bit more accepting and easy going letting our inner child out somewhere else rather than inside the apartment that we share with another individual who also has an inner child trapped inside him/her.