From Dorm to House: Lessons Learned

Becoming an upperclassman has more than just a few perks. You get to know all the good professors, check those breadth requirements off, take the classes you’re actually interested in, and you’ve finally learned all the ins-and-outs of the social scene. One of the best benefits of putting the previous two years in the rearview is the option to live in an apartment. Gone are the days of eating every meal in the dining hall (and dealing with the awkward encounters that inevitably occur) and trying to gather all your friends in one person’s room for pre-evening activities.
 
It’s easy to grow to love the independent living and larger living space. Even though my Scribner house definitely shows its signs of wear and tear, my housemates and I love being able to decorate the space, have family dinners, and convene in the living room for a much needed study break with “Toddlers and Tiaras.” However, there are a few essential things that I wish had known as I moved away from the convenience and simplicity of dorm life.

1. Expect to do the dishes ten times more often than you even thought possible.

Living with several people means that every time you clean the kitchen, load the dishwasher, and get everything out of the sink, it’s filled again within minutes. Everyone tries to take care of the dishes right away but, with all of you and your housemates preparing food at different times, the woes of washing dishes is inevitable. You may never think you’ll miss the revolving mechanism in D-Hall that takes your dirty dishes away but in the first few weeks of apartment living, you’ll dream of that tray accumulator every time you wrangle with the dishwasher.
 
2. Learning to prepare meals and share food takes a little adjustment. It’s best to talk with your housemates before and during visits to grocery store because there’s never enough space for five of the same item in the refrigerator. If you’re lucky, you and your housemates will like the same foods, so it’s best to rotate buying the essentials so that everyone can enjoy. Also, at the grocery store, try to purchase items that would be good to contribute to larger meals when everyone plans to eat together. It’s more economical for each person to contribute a side or vegetable than for one person to cook an entire meal for the house.
 
3. Other kitchen courtesies: if you get takeout (as you inevitably will; the novelty of home-cooking wears off when the immense workload sets in) or make something for yourself, keep an eye on the leftovers. In other words, don’t let the fridge become a place where food goes to die. It’s easy to lose track of your scraps when the fridge is packed with everyone else’s staples. However, now that you have an oven, a toaster, and even a grill, the food options quadruple; and so does the chance that things will quickly spoil without anyone realizing it. So, don’t leave your housemates to find your molding half of a sandwich that you forgot you ordered two weeks ago.
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4. No matter how much you might not want to, bite the bullet and take out the trash. Unlike in your dorm room, where trash mostly consists of papers and wrappers, the trash that piles up in a house is a lot of food scraps and empty containers, and the subsequent smell can just be disgusting. You and your housemates may be content to try to walk by it and pretend it’s not there, but at some point everyone gives up the fight and takes it to the dumpster.

5. And that’s just the kitchen… Bathroom drains are very sensitive and it’s important to set some ground rules: clean your hair out the drain, no exceptions. Clogs are inevitable and if people are trying to take a shower before class, finding six inches of water in the tub resulting from a hair clog makes people pretty upset. Though living in a house teaches you to get used to living in close quarters with others very quickly, no one wants to clean out someone else’s hair. So before your hair causes a small lake in your communal bathtub, just take the time to clean it out. Trust me, everyone will be appreciative.
 
6. While it’s easy to leave your belongings where they may fall when you get busy, the living room can quickly become unlivable when its filled with an overwhelming amount of stuff. Take some time daily to clean your shared spaces. Scan the area and see if anything that belongs to you is starting to block up the living space. The communal area is a place that everyone should be able to enjoy, so try not to let it become a place of overflow.

7. When you’re cozy in your house, it’s so much harder to get up and hike to the library (or anywhere else for that matter). However, work takes a lot longer when someone is screaming about refusing to go get toilet paper, someone else is complaining about a broken bowl, and another is professing love for a George Foreman grille (…maybe that’s just my house). Make an effort to get your work done by getting out of the house. It’s great to have a comfortable, close place to hunker down, but try not to forget that there is still life happening outside and work still needs to get done.
 
The most important challenges to face are cleaning and communicating. It’s inevitable that a few issues will come up because you’re working out the kinks of cooking, cleaning, and living with others. However, the more you talk about the issues that may come up or what needs to change in the living arrangement, the closer you can become as friends and the more healthy your housing set-up will be. Embrace the learning stretch of maintaining a home for yourself and settle in; these could be the most memorable days of college and you don’t want to take a single moment for granted.