shared housing

While I'm nowhere near ready to be moving away just yet, I can't help but browse Craigslist Seattle to see what the housing is like up there. Since I plan only to stick around for the school year and spend my summers in the Bay Area, I figured it would be worthwhile to check out shared housing. Now I did that when I first moved down here and it wasn't the best experience in the world. My housemate, we'll call her Viv, was a nice girl. She was, however, a complete nympho. Every weekend morning I'd wake up and see a different man walking around the house despite the fact that she supposedly had a steady boyfriend. Viv shared a room (don't ask me how that worked) with another girl we'll call Martha. Martha was a tempermental self-absorbed arrogant yet emotionally unstable bitch. Martha, age 24, was also madly in love with a heavily bearded middle age man with a wife and kids. She was planning to move away to Texas to stalk him. Viv and I helped her get a headstart on that fantasy by kicking her ass out because we couldn't stand her. That was a glorious day.

After Martha, came a 21-year-old we'll call Rena. Rena seemed sane and pleasant enough. That is, until she came home wearing Viv's clothes, a brand new sweater no less. After a stern talking to, Viv continued to use our lotions and nail polish and one day Viv, who arranged her closet by clothing type, sleeve length and colour, discovered her clothes randomly jammed in her closet. Rena the chronic clothes borrower was at it again. Luckily, she didn't fit into my stuff. What pissed me off about her was that she managed to get food on the damn wall when she was cooking and left it for us to clean up. I could take it no more. I moved into a 1 bedroom by myself in the slums of South San Francisco. I preferred that to shared housing. But, still, I have friends with roomates and it seems to work for them, so I've been looking... you know just out of curiosity. Here are some snippets from shared housing posts I've seen recently (my comments in italics):

We are a CHRISTians who go to a AWSOME church and like to go on missions and crusades and street evangelism and are looking for a couple of CHRISTians who actually WALK the WALK and just don't talk the talk! (Oh my CHRIST, you have no idea how quickly I would turn and run from this place. What is with Christians wanting to live with other Christians? Do you ever see a post like that coming from a Buddhist? Jesus.)

I'm a guy living with a chickfriend. We are both from Eastern WA and figured, "Hey, let's pool our resources in the big city." So we moved in together last July. Soon after that she found a boyfriend and practically moved out. Which was cool for a while but now she is engaged and pregnant. Soooo, I said I would look for a new roommate so she no longer has to pay for an apartment she doesn't live in. Babies are so expensive. They are getting married this April Fools Day (no kidding). (OK, that was just a funny post. Poor guy)

Apartment has Comcast cable internet with wireless router so that I can support my World of Warcraft addiction. (Uh, do you bathe when you're feeding this addiction?)

All the bottled water you can drink from the 3rd deepest aquifer in the U.S. (WTF are you talking about?)

Current residents are 3 men and 2 women, ages 35-75. (I'm sorry, did you say 75? Aren't most people over, I dunno 50, sick of the whole shared housing thing? Do household chores include taking care of the 75-year-old?)

Bill and GNA (pronouced Gina) are looking for a female over 25 to live in domestic bliss (i.e. good communication and conflict resolution skills)with us. (I cannot live with people who speak of themselves in third-person and capitalize all the letters in their name, letters that make no phonetic sense. And "domestic bliss"? Is that a code word for swinger? Yikes.)

Must like cats (I have 3) (Three cats. That's three too many)

A must is that you are a very clean person and actually like to clean. If you know you aren't or are hoping to adjust, then this will not be a good fit for you. (Actually this is something that I would write)