Hello dear followers interested in Flat-sharing communities ! Another week means another topic ! Today your Flacommy team is going to talk about some rules that have been established by students in a shared flat in order to make the community life easier for everyone. For that purpose we asked several flatmates here in Budapest to share their established rules and you will see that similarities and differences appear across communities.  The gathered rules mainly concern the housework, the kitchen and more fun : the parties at the flat.

We start with the flat of Xavier, Alexia, Hugo, Arnaud and Kim. This WG has a large number of students, this is the reason why they have directly decided to set up a rule for the housework so that everyone can invest for the community equitably. Organization is the key word ! They created a board in the living room to assign one particular task to one person and they switch the tasks every weeks. During the week each flatmate has to take care of either the bathroom or either the living room, cleaning the kitchen, the trash or finally to organize a dinner for everyone at the end of the week. The flat of Sophie, Victoria, Solène, Moniek, Pedro, Mario and Aron imagined the same idea.

On the other hand, the flat of Guillaume, Philip, Luisa and Giulia have divided the housework between the boys and the girls instead. Girls take care of the cleaning of the apartment and boys take out the trash and the empty glass bottles. Also smoking inside the flat is forbidden to respect non-smoker flatmates.

This is not the case in the flat of Irene, Alp, François and Marie here in Budapest. They established no rule for the housework as everyone can clean whenever they want. Of course they try to stay clean. However they established another rule at the beginning of their Erasmus. They created a color code with post-it papers in the kitchen to indicate to whom belong the food and glasses. The color code clearly means : “DO NOT TOUCH !” but in a friendly way. This “stealing” problem has also been highlighted in our previous post “The little things that annoy you when living in a shared flat“.

The flat of Xavier also assigned a “treasurer” of the shared flat. He must manage the funds for the community. Everyone gave the contribution of 20€ at the beginning so that he could do the grocery shopping for everyone (toilet paper, salt/pepper, oil,…). The excess of money will go directly in the community savings in order to organize the traditional Swiss raclette during the Christmas dinner that they have decided to share at the end of their Erasmus in Budapest.

Speaking about shared dinners the flat of Clotilde, Lara, Alexia, Clémence and Marine decided that they should at least making a group dinner together every two weeks to discuss the management of the apartment. The rules are discussed during the dinner. This flatmates’ reunion also takes place at Xavier’s flat. It is also the best moment to discuss the spicy stories about last night party.

Because yes, parties are frequent for Erasmus students who want to make the most of their trip. However this can cause some problems within flatmates. Once again the organization and respect of others prevail. In the flat of Clotilde if someone wants to invite some friends for a party she has to ask permission to the others on a Facebook group at least 1 day before. If too many people are disturbed the party is cancelled but it is often possible to find a plan B for those who agree to sleep in a friend’s flat or, of course, to join the party. Besides, the more, the merrier ! Right ?In Xavier’s flat people agreed that everyone can make noise until midnight. After it is “bedtime” !

Many rules apply in a flat but they have to be discussed together to make sure that everyone agrees with them. Sharing tasks and respecting the others make community life much more enjoyable! And you, do you have specific rules in your flat ? Just leave a comment !

Bye guys!!