How to make a flatshare work

As a new flatshare it can be difficult getting the every day running smoothly without conflicts, if you have not made any arrangements and agreements about how life and the every day in the flatshare should be.

Get the 3 best advice on how to get a flatshare working

Communication
No matter if you already know the people you are about to move in with or if you are strangers, it can be difficult moving in together. Even if you have your own private room and life, you do share common areas such as bathroom and kitchen. So to avoid conflicts regarding cleaning or the frequency of visitors for example, you have to talk to each other and match expectations of how you want it to work.
If you don't talk about your expectations in advance you might run into issues or irritation over dishes not being washed or who has to clean the toilet. So the most important thing helping a flatshare to work is communication - talking together. Talk before you move into the apartment and talk whenever you feel irritated over something.

Make clear arrangements
In continuation of the first advice about communication, it is a good idea to make clear arrangement and rules from the start, on how the common areas are kept and cleaned. Make a cleaning schema which clearly gives instructions to how the common areas are cleaned and who cleans it when. Then no one can be in doubt and no conflicts will arise.

It can also be a good idea to make a monthly payment to a shared account from where all purchases of toilet paper and other things everyone in the flatshare use are made from. Doing this, there won't be any issues about one person being the one always purchasing these type of things and the others never chipping in. 




Make sure to have fun together and not always just be roommates. If all your interactions are about who takes out the trash or whose dishes this is, it can be tiring living together. So make sure to do something together such as making dinner once in a while, watching a movie or playing a board game. You don't have to be best friends, you don't even have to be friends. Just being social from time to time will help making the mood and atmosphere better in the flatshare and the every day easier.

Updated on: 31/01/2020