It takes Two to Tango!
Tips for Successful Home Shares
A successful home sharing arrangement can be very rewarding for everyone involved. Sharing a home can not only help with practical concerns like housing costs and snow shoveling, but can also enhance each person’s daily life. Since this is a home share, not a conventional rental, both of you will create together your own unique situation, based on what works best for all of you. Naturally, everyone in a home share has to make some adjustments to ensure a successful relationship. Here are some tips that might help both of you navigate this new journey more smoothly:
Embrace change
While this may be a challenging time in some ways, it’s also exciting, because you are trying a new way of life. You have the opportunity to nurture new relationships, while continuing to hold precious what’s most important to you — like staying in your own home. Being open to the opportunities the Home Share way of life offers will serve you well.
Sense of humor
What did the home provider say to the home seeker when it snowed in June? Just kidding. Seriously, a sense of humor will certainly come in handy when people from diverse backgrounds, with different generational and work experience, build a new life together. Two adults learning to share one home are bound to step on each other’s toes once in a while. Laughing about the glitches that are bound to arise might make those stepped-on toes a little less sore!
Flexibility
Unlike a rental situation, both people in a home share may have to adjust some old patterns so everyone is happier under one roof. You may need to turn the tv off a little earlier, or smoke outside. Maybe the home provider will agree to let a new house mate have overnight company, or maybe the home seeker will make arrangements to meet friends elsewhere. Every arrangement is different, and must meet the needs of both people. The more flexible each of you can be during the early transition days, the better.
Patience
You have needs and concerns about this new arrangement - and so does the other person. There’s no place like home - for both of you. Whether you’re opening the doors of your house to a brand-new person or walking in the doors of a house that’s new to you, everyone wants to feel at home. Getting to the point where both of you feel comfortable in this new, shared arrangement will take time, trial and error - and patience!
Speak Up - and Listen
You both have valid concerns. Since neither one of you is a mind reader, it’s important to speak up and share your concerns and questions, large and small. It’s equally important to listen to the other person’s concerns and questions. After you’ve heard each other’s perspectives, a willingness to talk things through together will make solving your problems jointly so much easier.
Be realistic
Each Home Share match is a personalized blend of trading some services and/or money for housing in the context of building a new relationship between two or more adults. It is not meant to take the place of fulltime care, or to provide anyone with a free ride. If you have realistic expectations that are respectful of the other person’s needs, you’re far more likely to be satisfied with your Home Share arrangement.
Making your new Home Share life run smoothly is a bit like learning a new dance together. You may make missteps, but that’s all part of the process. Before you know it, you’ll have developed a rhythm and swing all your own. And remember, it takes two to tango!
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