College is a great time to live with friends and have fun. Living with people who aren’t your family is something that doesn’t usually happen until college. Getting your first apartment with your best friends can be super fun or super scary, it’s a great time to learn if you’re the kind of person who loves to live with other people or would prefer to live alone. This year, I learned that living with roommates is something that is a) super scary b) I am not good at and b) I hope never to do again in a million years. So here’s the list of reasons why living alone will be better than living with roommates from my experiences.
1. You can be as messy or as clean as you want to be
When living with roommates, keeping your apartment clean and doing your dishes, cleaning up your messes, etc, is necessary to a peaceful living situation. Some roommates may not understand this and leave their dirty dishes in the sink for weeks or never clean up after themselves. Maybe you’re the roommate who does this. If you live alone you don’t have to worry about pissing people off by being dirty and you don’t have to get pissed off over your roommates not cleaning up after themselves.
2. You don’t have to wear pants
As far as I’m concerned, this will be the highlight of my 1 bedroom apartment next year. When you live alone, you can walk around naked and nobody will know. You don’t have to wear pants, ever. Your apartment can be declared a pants free zone (think of how much less you’ll have to do laundry).
3. You can stay in all weekend and nobody will ever know your true laziness
Some weekends you just feel like laying in bed and watching Netflix all weekend. In a situation with roommates, you can feel their judgment from afar as you finish up the third season of Grey’s in one sitting while eating your second helping of mac and cheese. If you live alone, nobody has to know that you didn’t leave your apartment once during the weekend. You can relax and enjoy doing absolutely nothing without anybody ever knowing exactly how lazy you actually are.
4. Nobody will eat your food (and you won’t eat anybody else’s food)
I’m guilty of eating my roommates junk food, especially when I try to be healthy and buy absurd things like spinach and raspberries instead of Doritos and Ben & Jerry’s. If you’re trying to eat healthy, you won’t have any tempting junk food to snack on. If you’re a junk food eater, nobody will be there to watch you consume an entire box of Cheez-Its in less than two days. The bottom line is, you won’t have to worry about your leftovers not being in the fridge when you get home from class and you won’t have to panic when you hear the door opening just as you have your hand in your roommates chips.
5. There won’t be any awkward kitchen run-ins when you’re fighting with your roommates
If you’re like me, you lived with friends… and you fought with them. It’s awkward when you’re fighting with your roommates and you’re both in the kitchen at the same time cooking dinner or you’re out in the common areas of your house/apartment and they are too. If you don’t live with your friends, you don’t have this problem. If you live with friends, fighting with them can be extremely awkward and weird. If you live with randoms, it can be less so since you don’t actually want to hang out with them or talk to them about things. When you don’t see the people you’re fighting with every single day in your own apartment, it’s usually easier to get over your fight and apologize. An age-old saying that I didn’t actually believe until this year was “The quickest way to ruin a friendship is by living with your friends,” so do yourself a favor, live alone and invite your girls over for wine/BFF nights to catch up and hang out. Then when you’re done being social, send them on their way and go back to 1 BR bliss. (For tips on how to get over roommate fights, check out this article!)
6. You don’t have to pay for damages/electric bills/fines that you didn’t commit
When living with roommates, a lot of stuff can happen to an apartment that costs everybody money even if everyone isn’t at fault for the costs. You come home from work one day and notice a hole in the wall or a broken bedroom door, nobody will confess to doing it so you have to end up paying for part of the damages cost. Your roommate constantly turns on the air conditioning without shutting windows, that waste of cold air is going straight onto your check at the end of the month. Situations like this can be awkward, especially if you’re paying for things that you have no responsibility for. When you live alone, your $120.00 electric bill is all your own, the broken shades on the window are because of you. You know that all of the costs you’re going to have to pay when you move out are because of things you did, not things your roommates did.
7. You don’t have to worry about weird/annoying roommate friends coming over
Everybody has that one roommate who always has random friends over and there’s always that girls who talks too loud in her raspy voice. She turns up at your apartment a few times a week, you know it’s her just by the sheer volume of her rasp before you even see her. Roommates with annoying friends can be a bother, especially if the guest they have over is unwanted or unwelcome. You don’t like Raspy Voice but you can’t technically do anything to get her out/keep her out of your apartment so you have to listen to her tell skanky bar stories through the thin walls of your apartment.
8. No male visitors or strange noises in the night
You don’t have to hear your roommates having weird sex late at night. You don’t have to watch these guys slip awkwardly out the front door the next morning on their walk of shame. This one goes both ways. If you’re the one with male visitors, you don’t have to worry about your roommates hearing you or walking in on (which I’ve done to a roommate and it was horrifying). You don’t have to worry about being judged for your string of one night stands and you don’t have to worry about running into your roommates one night stands in the hallway. Living alone prevents any awkward situations that arise from boys and sex.
9. No more running into roommates with the bathroom door open
That’s the worst time to run into someone, whether they’re using the toilet or naked after showering and forgot to close the door. It’s just awkward, close the door when you’re busy in the bathroom people!
10. You can dance to Beyonce whenever you want
You can dance and sing as loudly and as stupidly as you want without anyone ever hearing or seeing you act like a fool. You can turn your music up and twerk on the walls, nobody will ever be the wiser. I personally love singing and dancing stupidly, I can’t wait to run around my apartment in my towel pretending that I’m in Jay-Z’s latest music video.
11. You can indulge in all of your weird/loud hobbies
You like to play video games or read sci-fi books, maybe you do yoga or workout videos or you’re learning to play an instrument. No roommates means you don’t have to hide your Game of Thrones books anymore or try to do warrior ll in your tiny bedroom. You can learn to play the guitar without having to bother your roommates with hours of practicing. You shouldn’t ever feel embarrassed or like you need to hide your interests, but if you’re shy about them then living alone allows you to openly do what you love.
12. No one will steal/borrow your stuff
I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked into a roommates room and seen something of mine hanging in their closet. It’s frustrating when roommates borrow your things without asking you or don’t return what they borrow. It can lead to some serious blowouts and awkwardness if you feel like confronting them about it. When you’re by yourself, nobody is going to borrow the dress you were planning on wearing out.
13. You will be forced to make new friends
Living with roommates always guarantees you have someone to go out with or somebody to get dinner with. When you live alone, you almost have to force yourself to make new friends because your roommates aren’t there for you whenever something is going on. Living alone is great for having people over too, you’re more likely to invite friends over if you don’t have to worry about your roommates walking around in towels or hanging out in the living room when you were planning on doing that.
Living with roommates can be fun, but living alone can be just as fun and a lot more comfortable and drama free. Whatever you prefer, you should enjoy your living situation and make the best of it!
If you love living with roommates and want to read more roomie posts on FMGM, check out this article and this article!
Don’t miss a post – FMGM is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!
*Images don’t belong to FMGMoscato. Click images for sources.
14. It goes well with cheese… and cheese is everything.
21. Because, duh.
FMGM 