With housing applications and apartment leases opening up, it’s time to think about who your future roommates and suitemates will be. I know that your automatic response is, “my best friends, duh.” But it’s not that simple. I am only in my second year of college and I have already had one friendship ruined by a housing agreement.

Fortunately, many of the detrimental arguments can be avoided with rules and mutual respect.

Any problem that you encounter with a friend can easily occur with a random roommate. The issue arises with how you deal with the disagreements. It can be difficult to make a friend clean up or to tell a friend that it’s time to start working and stop chatting. But rules are important in college, there is too much work to do and too many stresses. You don’t want your living space to be your biggest stressor.

The problems become slightly more annoying once your personal space and personal items become involved. How do you both feel about sharing personal items? How do you deal with filth? Most of the time you will want to give your friend the benefit of the doubt or you will want to say it’s “no big deal,” but that’s when the problem really gets out of hand.

Instead of hoping that your suitemates don’t leave dirty dishes, just make rules ahead of time! Rules are the key to avoiding conflict. And a real friend will respect your boundaries and your stuff.

But sometimes it’s the case that you really like your friend but you’re not so fond of being with your friend for a majority of the day. It is possible to be exhausted with a person and it is important that you take that into consideration. After living with a person for more than a month, you start to see the real personality shine through.

You will see them deal with stress, pull all-nighters, deal with clutter and maybe even a heart-break. You have to be ready to ride the waves of college life with that person and you have to be compatible on a whole new level. Sure, you have the same sense of humor, but what else?

Although there are so many ways things can go wrong, it is also easy to flourish with your friends! I chose to live with friends again my second year of college and it is, by far, the best option I could have made for housing.

My friends and I started the year off with boundaries and many rules, we made sure that we all knew what was important for a healthy environment.

After living with my friends, we have grown closer in a way that couldn’t have been obtained in any other way. I recommend living with friends but you have to prepare yourself.

First, have a group meeting with your friends in order to determine what you can expect. How many rules will you have and what will they apply to? (Quick tip: try not to share the costs of anything, money has the tendency to make everything complicated!)

Next, make sure you can all agree on what is important to you. Should you expect the apartment/room to be busy or quiet on Friday nights? (Another quick tip: try to set a rule where the apartment/room needs to be quiet by a certain time each night. This rule doesn’t have to be followed strictly but it will be useful when you’re exhausted or when you have three tests the next day.)

Lastly, and sometimes most importantly, what is your food situation? Will you be sharing food and its price? Will you be cooking together? I recommend eating and buying your food separately. You can obviously share food later down the road but it’s important to know who the food belongs to.

Yes, living with friends can be a sticky situation but it can also be amazing! If you want to thrive with your friends, set boundaries and remember to respect their personal space. It’s easy to benefit and enjoy yourself if you’re all on the same page. So grab your friends and get serious so that you can have fun later!