🇬🇧 Challenges of cohabitation

This is a text about living with other people in the same house, whether they are family members or not. In Brazil, when you are moving alone to another city or country, some good housing options are sharing an apartment or renting a room. In these options, you may be able to rely on people who have lived there longer to get some insight into the city and neighbourhood. It is rare to find furnished apartments for rent in the country, so these are also cheaper options. But they bring the challenge of living with an unknown person (or more). How to deal with this situation? What I have learned about this since I moved from my hometown is also helpful in living with family and in the process of self-awareness, of knowing your limits.

In my first experience outside my hometown I shared an apartment with 3 other girls who already lived in the city and from the very beginning we established house rules. Between sweeping the house, cooking, washing dishes, and taking out the trash, we all did some activity each day, alternating what each would do each day. We went to the supermarket together, we shared the cost of common products equally and those who wanted to buy something just for themselves paid for it themselves.

I believe that whenever we live with other people, family members or not, establishing rules on housework and also on life at home are important points.

When I lived in a guesthouse, the landlady set the rules, but I was lucky she made some exceptions for me. She prepared food for everyone and when she realised that I didn't eat cooked meat, she started preparing other meat for me, for example. And even though it was a girls' boarding house, she once or twice agreed to let me meet my male colleagues in the living room in the afternoon to do group work for college.

This sense of respect for individual needs is very important in defining the rules of coexistence.

In another experience I lived with a person who didn't like washing dishes. So we established the cleaning rules as it was in the first apartment I lived in after I left my hometown, but I agreed to wash the dishes every day and the person washed the toilet every day. In Brazil, using a dishwasher is unusual. They exist on the market, but the cheapest ones cost more than two minimum wages, much more than a simple refrigerator, for example. If you are thinking of living in the south of the country, I recommend that you have a budget to buy one. Not all homes have hot tap water and washing dishes in winter can be a hassle. In all of the above examples I lived in the Southeast.

Of course, not all is rosy about socialising with other people and from time to time the negotiation does not work or there is disrespect and even dishonesty, and in some cases, stopping living with certain people is the only possible way. An advantage of cultural nomadism as a way of life is that self-knowledge becomes part of our routine and we learn to face challenges.

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Nycka, the Nomad