06.24.10
Posted in Renting with friends at 2:03 pm by kyrias
I don’t think I’m being pessimistic when I say that. Note the open letter which people pretty much ignored.
The current kitchen, shared between four people, not including me because I’m not really here for most of the time and I don’t cook anymore even if I were home — is a disaster. The sink is perpetually full, the stove often has pots sitting on top of it filled with putrid, moldering water, and the floor has visible stains from where people dripped stuff and then didn’t bother to mop up after themselves.
Then there’s the clutter. The used baking sheet with aluminum foil sitting on top of the stove. The things left out in random places.
I will admit that part of it may be a legacy from when I was in residence and there’s so much stuff on the shelves already that people just got frustrated with the idea of looking for space to put the new things they bought. Maybe. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
The new place currently has a dishwasher half the size of our current one and a sink that is both smaller and more shallow than ours. I think this is a recipe for disaster unless we avert it by making smart rules about dishes and who does what. Noting that sometimes when I was in residence, I had to load the dishwasher at least two times a day and I wasn’t keeping up with the dishes.
People are busy, is the problem. All of the people will be working. Some of them will be working and going to school. I get that.
However, I also see things going up in flames because things. won’t. get. done because everyone is busy and everyone won’t have time and things will just accumulate. If everyone in the house runs out of the door, leaving their breakfast plates and glasses in the sink — there’s a load of dishes right there. If lunch and then dinner and the odd snack is factored in, the sink will be overflowing before anyone can say Jack Robinson.
There’s also only so many spoons a person has, and if someone has to choose between going out to socialize or have dinner out or whatever is going on and staying at home to clean up a bit — guess which one they’re going to choose? People in this house work so hard that if they have spare time, there’s no way they’re going to spend that spare time cleaning. Especially if they see it as “not mine, dammit!”. Except, the sink, the floor, and the stove-top kind of are a shared responsibility between everyone who uses it.
Then there’s the problem that people just don’t want to clean up after other people. This is a perfectly human and reasonable response — except it’s not possible to think like that when you live with other people. Heck, I see significant others who have rousing fights because of the tit for tat game.
The fact is, nobody is going to be able to be perfect all the time. There will be that morning or afternoon where you just have to run and you leave a dirty pot on the stove and a glass on the coffee table and by the time you get home, you’ll have forgotten all about it and suddenly there’s multiple orphan dishes and everyone is studiously ignoring them because “dammit, it’s not mine” and the house goes to hell in a handbasket.
If people can’t get over themselves and I’m going to bet they won’t be able to — the only answer is a maid service or housekeeper.
I just hope that either people will be amazing at the game and prove me wrong, which is bloody unlikely considering the current state of the kitchen, or they’ll realize that they need a housekeeper before the entire household dissolves in flames.
Knowing people’s potential for drama, I have no real faith in either one happening. May the gods have mercy on us.
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06.08.10
Posted in Renting with friends tagged money woes, omg moving at 11:28 pm by kyrias
Or rather, we’re renting a new house this year.
It’s in Malden, is a 5 bedroom house with a decent attic and basement that appears to have potential, and we’re really hoping that we can make this work for the next few years at least.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy.
This new place is 2.4k/month, not including utilities, and Zach’s commute goes from about an hour to almost an hour and 45 minutes. This was almost a deal-breaker, but then we managed to decide that four of us were going to buy a car so he could commute so we could take the house.
This decision isn’t as rash as it might seem, even though I have to admit that we also have to buy a dishwasher, washer, and dryer. Even so!
The problem being, of course, that 5 bedroom places just aren’t growing off trees. There’s not a great supply of them to begin with and when you factor in that we have a pretty limited budget, suddenly the pool of choices shrinks drastically. This place has new floors, new insulation and windows, and the kitchen has been re-done recently. Frankly, it’s gorgeous. I can easily see us living there three years from now, assuming that the current collection of people haven’t exploded in drama-fire. I could not see us living in our current apartment for too long, so that thought was what finally prompted me to suggest that we could buy a second-hand car.
That said, there’s still a bit of rough sailing ahead.
The finder’s fee of 1.2k, a month’s rent as deposit, buying the new appliances, and paying for July when we’re still paying for July in our current place is going to be a killer. This isn’t even including what we will have to spend on the car, insurance, and gas when we get the car.
What I’m currently conflicted about is that Ren and Dochola are asking for help with paying for the first portion of July’s rent. They will be moving in July 1st, whereas the rest of us anticipated moving in after the 15th. As such, they two will be responsible for 1.2k.
Usually I would have no problem about helping out. After all, it’s not only a friendly thing to do, it also opens up the possibility of more leisurely moving — which considering that I’m living in Framingham and Caesura works until 11pm every night, is a good thing.
Right now, however, I’m struggling with the idea that Azora, Zach, Caesura and I are already sort of taking one for the team in the form of buying a car so that we could live there. Even if I accepted the argument that we might not have gotten the house if we weren’t willing to pay for the entire month of July, part of me thinks that with our intending to buy a 5k car (at least) and paying for insurance, we’ve more than evened the scales in that regard. Assuming that they’re paying 600 more once so that we could have the house, whereas C and I would be paying 2.5k and insurance — I’m not too inclined to be made to feel like I’m upsetting the scales here. I’m not going to accept the idea that Ren and Doch were sacrificing their own financial security to allow us to live in that house because frankly, much as I liked the idea of living in that house, no one was going to force them to live beyond their means.
I have to admit that I was already a bit miffed that no one else offered to help with the car issue, or anything else in order to help us out, even when it was clear knowledge that we would be struggling with coming up with that money. Especially since C wants to go back to college, we really would have appreciated even a token offer of a hundred or two hundred dollars towards buying the car. Token of intent is always good, people.
Even so, I was going to sit on myself because after all, we did want that house. Ultimately, this will not break us although it might make us very, very unhappy financially for a while. I was thinking about opening a ROTH IRA for C and had been saving up my paychecks for the 3k that one needed to open an account with Vanguard, but not only has that entirely gone down the drain, that won’t even cover all of what we need. Credit card debt repayment will probably also have to go on hold with only minimum payments made until we sort out what is happening with the car and how much money we need to haul out. In fact, I can see the need of having a bread and water month, or months.
Ultimately, I suppose that C and I will give over a token $100, perhaps even $200 between the two of us, and call that acting in good faith. In all seriousness, if Doch and Ren are fine with us sitting on that helping out until later, that’d be great because frankly we have no spare cash at the moment. All I have in my checking and savings account is that 3k and I think I’ll need all of it in the two months ahead.
So — faithful friends, what would you do in our situation? Keeping in mind, of course, the CC debt, the student loans, the going back to college costs, the start-up costs of at least 2k for just the house, moving costs, new appliances, and the purchase of a car.
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01.29.10
Posted in Renting with friends at 11:13 pm by kyrias
Dad offered to rent me his house.
It’s out in Framingham, but he’s going to renovate it so that there’s going to be two bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, dining room, living room, and an entirely new kitchen. In fact, since he’s moving the kitchen, everything in it is going to be new and it’s possible that he’ll take input on designing the kitchen.
Pros:
- Having my parents as landlords would be pretty nice — would mean that if we needed something fixed, they’d be right on it.
- Rent control and cheaper rent for an entire house than we could possibly get in Boston. Dad’s quoting 1.3k to me for putting in an extra bedroom since he originally was going to keep the 3 bedroom layout.
- New kitchen, with counter space, storage, new fridge, garbage disposal, properly functioning stove and range and all that lovely stuff.
- We could store extra bags of rice and cat food in the garage. In fact, we’d also have a linen closet. We could probably put the extra freezers in the garage also, and free up room.
- We could probably partition the fairly large living room off so we could have a reading nook for all the bookshelves we have.
- Since we don’t need the dining room, we could probably turn that into a guest bedroom/sewing room/ extra lounge.
- Garden! Plants!
- Better separation of sleeping space and living space. No more stupid awkward hallways.
- Washer and dryer in-house.
- Two newly done, clean, nice bathrooms.
Cons:
- Having my parents as landlords. I can’t see how it could cause drama, but I’m really not ruling it out.
- It’s about 50 minutes via commuter rail into Boston, South Station. This would be very inconvenient for everyone who works in Boston.
- Commuter rail passes are 210/month assuming that the employer doesn’t pick up the tab.
- Mr P’s dating life would suffer. Assuming Dochola moving in, then his social life would probably also suffer in terms of picking up new girls.
- Our utility bills might be higher because it’s a larger place to heat. On the other hand, depending on how well the insulation goes and with 6 people paying for it, it might not be that bad. On the other hand, if we find a house of the same size, we’d have the same issues. Moot, IMO.
- It is oil heating, which might be more expensive than gas, I’m not sure. Gas is freaking expensive though.
- Going to the farmer’s markets in summer would be a chore, in fact shopping at Harvest would be a chore. Not that shopping right now isn’t a chore, but it would require a car there.
- We would probably need at least one car. Nora and Dochola mentioned that it might be around 1.8k to 2k a year, not more than that for the average car.
To be honest, I’m really hoping that people will agree to move out to Framingham. I’m looking at apartments and houses on Craigslist right now, and the prices are ludicrous. It’s possibly going to be impossible to find a decent apartment/house for less than 2k a month. Whereas 2k a month is a deal when factoring in the commuter rail pass cost for 5 people out of the 6, I’m really not optimistic that we’ll find a nice enough house for that cheap.
With 6 people living there, we’ll really want storage space and a reasonably sensible kitchen. I’m not sure we’ll be able to get that with the price range we’ll be looking at.
If we’re looking at getting cars, Kell mentioned to Dochola that he’s paying around 400/year for insurance and Nora said that the average sedan would be 1.8k/year for good coverage. Assuming 2k/year for insurance with two people being able to use it, that’s 83/month/person — which isn’t that terrible. Then that just leaves the question of gas, which if gas prices stay down, then potentially a car would be cheaper in the long run than the commuter rail pass. Asides from the initial outlay, of course.
If gas prices or rush hour is ludicrous, then there’s the option of driving into Alewife station and parking there for the day, then using the T. Alewife station is about 22 minutes from the house and charges $4.5 a day for parking, which is $1170/year.
The frustrating bit is that my father isn’t in a rush to renovate the house. He told me today that if we’re not sure we’re renting from him, then he doesn’t mind delaying for a bit. This means that if we can’t find something suitable around May, then it would probably be too late to tell him that we want the house — which would probably leave us in the position of renting a less than great place for a full year.
That would suck.
This entire thing kind of sucks.
I think I’m just going to pray that Mr. P finds a girlfriend soon.
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01.28.10
Posted in Drama Ilamas, Renting with friends tagged speechless at 6:09 pm by kyrias
I noticed that:
- someone had very thoughtfully carefully arranged the mini cupcakes I made on Saturday on top of my laptop. I sure am glad that my housemates thought of me and left me some of the cake.
- someone’s mug and dirty plate sitting on the coffee table.
- a moldy biscuit sitting in the bread box
- the box of tin foil out on the kitchen table I had cleared off and wiped clean on Saturday
- all four burners on the stove occupied with dirty pots with one of them actually having a stack of pots.
- stack of dirty dishes on the kitchen table
- a colander with pasta in it sitting forlornly on the floor
- a pot of dirty water on the kitchen table, presumably because the stove had all four burners occupied
- empty plastic containers sitting on the edge of the sink
- the dishwasher sat open, one rack full and one empty, with no way to tell if the stuff in it is supposed to be clean or not
- the sink half full
- empty food wrapper on top of stack of dirty pyrex lids in front of the microwave.
- the chicken I made on Satuday for general consumption stuck in the fridge, uneaten, with neither foil nor plastic wrap to protect it from the elements
- the kitchen trashcan filled to overflowing
- a dirty bowl sitting on the coffee table with oven mitts in it
- an open bag of rice just sitting out on the kitchen floor
To be honest, I think the rows of mini cupcakes on top of my laptop was the truly w0ndrous bit. I’m sure there’s some meaning in there somewhere.
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09.28.09
Posted in Renting with friends at 4:58 pm by kyrias
Because I feel that a public service announcement might be in order…
On arriving home on Sunday evening:
I note that there’s two pots in the sink is sitting somewhere in the middle of the entrance hall.
Me: ” X, do one of the pots belong to you?”
X: “Yeah, but Y left a pot in the sink also.”
Me: “Why is the recycling bin in the middle of the hallway?”
X: *gives some ridiculous gibberish in response and doesn’t move to put it where it belongs*
*inconsequential jabber that I frankly don’t remember the entirety of because I was seething at that point*
X: “The sink was full when I got home on Saturday night.”
Me: …speechless…
Alright. Looking at Exhibit A above, we can see that there’s a couple of problems:
- When someone points out that you did something wrong or undesirable, it is not appropriate or useful or constructive to point out that someone screwed up the same way you did. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the whole damn world did it too. When someone points out that you did something wrong, the correct thing to do is to either apologize and fix it or come up with a reasonably plausible excuse.
- The correct response to someone asking why something is wrong is not to give some facetious answer and then proceed to leave it in a state of wrong.
- When someone points out that you did something wrong or undesirable, it is extremely inappropriate to sidestep the point by pointing out something that they did wrong in turn. Whatever they did wrong — even if they killed your pet kitten, that is not the issue at hand.
- Further more, choosing to compound the issue by neglecting to fix the problem afterwards is just in poor taste.
So, kiddos, take a good hard look at Exhibit A and try not to do the same, mmkay?
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08.02.09
Posted in Renting with friends at 12:01 am by kyrias
…without wanting to either kill them or dissolve the friendship, and never the twain shall meet style. Of course, I’m talking about living with more than one housemate, so your mileage may vary.
Dishwasher:
Do not, and I repeat, do not move in with friends or anyone really, unless there is a dishwasher in the house. Azora’s parents’ concept of people being dishwashers will not and cannot apply here. I believe that having a dishwasher saved us a ton of drama and having people move out in a huff.
For one thing, I load the dishwasher fully at least once a day with five people in the house. There are often days when I load it twice. We go through a lot of dishes, especially if we’re having people over. I believe there was more than one occasion when we had 7 people in the house.
For the second: people will leave dishes in the sink despite their best intentions. For the matter, people will leave dishes lying around the house. You can either choose to color-code people’s dishes and mandate that they may only use their own dishes for easier tracking of who keeps leaving dishes in the sink — or you can do as we did and just designate someone’s chore as loading the dishwasher.
Personal fridges/freezers:
This is almost a must - have.
Let me put it this way. Once upon a time, people were lovely and generous and often told their friends that they had ice cream in the freezer and it was up for grabs for everyone. Often, someone would buy a half-gallon of ice cream, have a single bowl, and open the freezer to discover that there was less than 6 oz of ice cream left in the container — if any at all.
So. Multiple problems with this scenario, as you can see.
Firstly, there is no room in the average fridge for everyone to have their own container of ice cream, unless you’re intending to store nothing in there but ice cream.
Secondly, there is no way that everyone will be able to store their frozen food in the freezer without being attacked by food tumbling from the freezer when you open it. In fact, even with the previous scenerio, people will still be unable to store enough food in there. For the record, frozen pizzas take up a lot of space. Frozen meals even more space.
Lastly, you probably really want some place to store your beverages and if you’re trying to chill everyone’s milk + juices + soda + yogurt + kefir + water … not enough space. Not nearly enough space.
Not having one of your own probably won’t kill relationships, but it will certainly add to the drama.
Having a comprehensive set of rules and agreements:
This seems painfully obvious — but really, it needs to be done, even with and especially if you’re moving in with friends. What helped us was that we did portion out most of the chores in a semi-sensible fashion.
Couple of key points:
- quiet hours and acceptable noise levels
- agreements about guests / visiting hours
- boyfriend/girlfriends/ relatives sleeping over / moving in / etc
- chores
- level of clutter allowed, and what gets to live in public spaces
- bathroom usage and length of showers ( three people wanting to shower at the same time is not optimal)
- kitchen time (if more than one person is cooking, you’ll probably want to talk about times)
Really, what is even more key is refusing to live with passive-aggressive people. Everything is negotiable, or should be, but things tend to grind to a halt when people refuse to communicate clearly.
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08.01.09
Posted in Renting with friends at 1:17 pm by kyrias
Azora and I were talking about what we might do next year in terms of housing. Personally, I really liked 136 Perkins and it was a great starting point — but I think we’re ready for something new.
Nora and Dochola have both mentioned that they might be up for living with us, and so we’ll need a bigger place. Of course, we’re finding 136 Perkins a bit cramped in terms of storage anyways, so it fits right in with what we had been talking about previously.
List of must-haves for new apartment will follow. It’s a far cry from the very, very short list we had when we graduated. 
List of 2008:
- 3 bedrooms
- hardwood floors
- good natural lighting for all rooms
- large kitchen
- laundry in-house
I think that was it. Short and sweet, isn’t it?
Now that we’re spoiled silly and have a better idea of what we want and need…
List as of 2009:
- 4+ bedrooms
- hardwood floors
- large well-lit, well-ventilated kitchen with adequate cabinetry, counter space and storage space (pantry desired)
- good natural lighting for all rooms
- laundry in-house
- dishwasher
- storage space period. Having a linen closet or something similar would be fantastic
- cat friendly, better if all pets are allowed
- good electric wiring that allows our electronics without tripping the breaker constantly
- decent stove with enough BTUs
- well-lit, well-ventilated bathroom, preferably with a proper bathtub that isn’t gross
- half-bath or second bathroom
- within 10 minutes walking distance to the trains but preferably not right next to it
- better delineation between sleeping areas and public areas
- place to take shoes off before entering the house proper
Preferred but not required:
- garden
- spare bedroom for guests / study / den / Azora’s sewing
- enough direct sunlight for my plants indoors
- slightly larger bedrooms so desks can be put in
Azora and everyone else who might be in on this venture should feel free to add comments / requirements.
What is lovely, is that a cursory glance through Craigslist tells me that we can find 5 bedroom rentals from between 2k to 5k. If we can find a good place for 2k, we’d be living in a cheaper place than we are currently, with more friends and more space.
Wicked lovely, innit?
I think our price range is going to be around $500 per bedroom — effectively coming out to capping rent at about $2500 or at most $3000 if we’re looking for a five bedroom house.
We’ll see…
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06.23.09
Posted in Renting with friends tagged 136 Perkins at 12:01 am by kyrias
I was thinking about this. It appears that when we moved in together, none of us really drew up a housemate agreement — which frankly, might have been a serious oversight on our part.
We mostly did manage to muddle through alright, albeit not without a goodly share of drama along the way. However, I’m rather proud that despite many people going “OMG WTF YOU’RE CRAZY AND YOU’LL ALL KILL EACH OTHER”, four of us are still going to continue living with each other with the addition of Mr. P and one of us will be leaving to construct a love nest with his girlfriend. Not bad at all, IMO.
Of course, I’d like to point out that 4 of us had already had 1 year’s experience of living with each other in the same house, so it’s not like we didn’t know what all we were getting into. Sheesh, a little more credit would have been nice.
Anyways. I think that I’m going to start brainstorming a housemate agreement thing to be tentatively brought up. With adding Mr. P into the mix, who is definitely a more “lively” and *cough*neat-freak challenged*cough* person than Kell…
Housemate agreement 0.1 (All points open to negotiation)
- Quiet hours shall be from 12:00 AM to 8:00 Am on weekdays and 1:00 AM to 10:00 AM on weekends. This means no loud music, talking, or clanking in the kitchen unless it’s for breakfast purposes. Guests who are not staying overnight shall be informed of this. People who have classes / work at ungodly hours may ask for further provisions.
- A person defined as “non-objectionable” is someone who is either a friend of everyone in the house or at the very least, someone who no one in the house would object to seeing. Abbreviated as N.O.P hereafter.
- No guests may be invited to stay the night without explicit permission from housemates or if said person is defined as non-objectionable, notification would be adequate. More than one night requires permission, even for N.O.Ps.
- N.O.Ps may be invited over for a visit that doesn’t extend to staying the night at will. Inviting non-N.O.Ps over would require notification in advance.
- Anyone staying longer than 15 days total out of a month or consecutively will be asked to pay a portion of rent and utilities.
- Chores include:
- Kitchen duty: Washing down stove, and clearing sink of gunk, wiping down kitchen surfaces with a soapy cloth. (bi-weekly or as needed)
- Cat box (bi-weekly at least) (two slots)
- Dishes, loading/unloading dishwasher. This will include all dishes, regardless of who made them. Pots will belong to whoever made them. (Every night, cut off date will be 9:00 PM. Everything past this date will be either left for tomorrow or done by person who brought it out.)
- Taking out trash + recyclables. This will include all trash that is personal, like pizza boxes and Amazon boxes.
- Mopping floor, vacuuming. Scrubbing kitchen floor.
- General pick up, sweeping, and neatening of public areas. (Daily or otherwise)
- Bathroom. Including scrubbing tub, toilet, and dusting. Pouring Draino down drain, etc. (Weekly, at least)
- Cleaning out the fridge (Weekly)
Me:
Caesura:
Zack:
Azora:
Mr. P:
- Utilities shall be shared equally amongst all housemates. This means that if you object to someone using something that will take up more electricity, you need to speak up.
- Everything in the fridge that is un-labeled is up for grabs unless you’re finishing someone else’s package of food.
- People shall share in cost of toilet paper, paper towels, and detergent.
- No pets shall be brought in without express permission from all members.
- No shoes in the living room, kitchen, or personal rooms. Only in the hallways.
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