I'm very aware of this as is. I mean even on weekend visits, I'm finding hair months out. She hasn't been here since Valentine's Day and I'm still finding hair. I'm not too concerned about it though, I clean all the time anyway. Thanks mya, hence why we're shooting for the 2 bedroom and 2 DVRs. On top of the fact she already has friends here she'll go hangout with and her job will have her pretty engaged even on a social level.
Some things I have learned about living together with someone. Set the expectation of how you are going to spend the time inside your apartment a few weeks after moving in. I've found that if you don't talk about what you are like when you were living alone, people can get resentful when they feel you aren't living up to the idea they have about people living together. Set up a joint account for all household expenses. Not just the big ticket things like rent and utilities, but I'd throw things like food and household items in there as well. One, it naturally helps you budget your money, but it also keeps one person from taking on the bulk of "hidden expenses" that come up from living together. Less is more. Clutter around your place builds up when you mix two people's stuff together, don't add to it by bringing unnecessary things into the apartment. In the same vein, think small with furniture. When my girlfriend and I moved in together we bought a new couch and a new dinning room table. We have moved twice since then, and let me tell you, that awesome reclining couch and granite topped table...fuck that noise. We finally bought a lightweight leather couch and tossed the other one and we are still trying to find someone to pawn the table off to. Decorate smartly. Although it sounds incredibly bourgeois, hire a cleaning service to come clean the apartment once a month. You can find someone for like $50-60 and it's helpful to scrub the whole place even if you keep up with the cleaning on a daily basis. No pets until you are at least 2 years into a place. Receipts receipts receipts. It may sound ridiculous to plan for the demise of your relationship, but one thing you don't want to have to deal with if you happen to break up is your once sane partner now turning into a fucking psycho who hauls you to court to leverage money from you because "you owe $1300 for your share of the electric bill".
Not necessarily. Talk about the expenses, and be sure that everyone is on the same page as to who will pay what, but I know from my experience I usually covered the vast majority of household expenses because the wife made 1/10 of what I did, and I had no issues. Just be clear about expectations, and even put them on paper. Resentment comes from people taking things or other people for granted, so don't. Spell it out, and make sure everyone involved is aware of it.
Parker, you seem to be doing all of this a little bit ahead of me, so thanks for trailblazing. I'm home in June for a month of vacation, and we're going to be visiting a couple places, then getting my (minimal) stuff out of storage in CA and driving it back to her place in MN. Then, I move in when I'm home for good at the end of July. Should be an interesting challenge, and this thread is definitely helping plan stuff out.
Be considerate of your partner's schedule. For example, if your girlfriend has a final the next day, maybe don't invite your obnoxious friends over to smoke/drink/play video games in your tiny studio apartment.
If you aren't getting married and plan on living together, check out the details of common law marriage in your area. Are you willing to gamble with half of your stuff? I know you love him/her now, but what about in a few years? Also, what is worth arguing over? There's a dirty dish in the sink? Who gives a flying fuck? It's a damn dirty dish. Either wash it or shut the hell up. It's not making you die from cancer and emptying your bank account.
I learned this the hard way when humping random sloots, and one the regulars figures out she's not the only one when she notices different color hair on the bedsheets. Its a bigger tell than stripper glitter. When I met my wife she was impressed that I always had clean sheets, years later I broke down and told her that I was just a fastidious whore.
I feel like there is a dose response curve to this, once you get too big the upkeep can break down your sanity. Not saying you should live in a one bedroom place (though the wife and I did it for a few years while saving for a house and were fine) but don't go overboard.
I cleaned my bathtub on Saturday and pulled on a hair that was going down the drain. It turned into a magic scarf situation and what waited for me at the end? A 6 inch log of soap scum and hair. I feel like dealing with stuff like that is sort of like dipping your toe into the toxic waste dump that your house turns into when you become a parent.
The Husband finds my hair pretty much everywhere. I thought it wasn't a big deal until I cut it all off. Now that it's 'long' and touching my shoulders again - I understand why it makes him twitch. Re: hair in the shower drain... There's a long, toothed, plastic tool at Home Depot that costs like $2.78. It's called Zip It or something like that - if you don't have 3 or 4 of those on hand at any given time, you're slacking. Jam that thing down the shower drain, wiggle it around, pull it out and immediately dispose into a garbage bag, repeat from the other side of the drain... Easy peasy.
Well. Yeah. The Husband gags every time. IN MY DEFENSE - Even when my hair was SUUUUPER short - we still had to do this. Because he's hairy. And his body hair is EVERYWHERE. So..I contend that the shower drain clogging issues are a result of his manbearpigness rather than my head hair.
I had to do that for my college shower stall. I used a wire hanger. I am also pretty sure that 1: most of the hair was not mine, and 2: there was probably some cum crusted up in the soapscum ball.
I must perform this operation on our bathroom sink peridoically due to the lousy design of the drain and the stopper thingy. For some reason, the toothpaste caught up in the hair/stopper turns black, while still retaining its minty aroma. 'Sup with that?
My wife and I had one of those odd moments, back while dating, when we realized we had moved in together accidentally. We literally looked around her apartment one day and noticed how much of my stuff was there, how much time I spent there, and how long it had been since I had been "home". We laughed about it and then set about doing the various bits of paperwork to make it official on the lease, the state, etc. Not the way I'd recommend doing it, but it's worked out. When we got married and moved, however, we definitely discussed bills and joint accounts and monetary rules. We already knew living habits via our accidental gradual co-habitation. What's interesting to me is that now, a few years later, we're revisiting the issue as we discuss the possibility of children and how that impacts household chores and the like.
Well I guess Im done eating my oatmeal this morning. Thanks Bewildered. We have a large sink our bathroom. Theres constantly strands of long hair in it. How does this happen and how does she not notice? Does she not care? How does it get there. Its a mystery up there with pubes that are all over urinals in men's rooms. How does that happen???
Some women just lose a lot of hair. They get used to it I guess. We had a roommate in college like that, she thought it was a great idea as she lost them while showering to spread them on the wall of the shower....and then she'd forget them. We'd get in the shower to find all these long strands of hair spread about. Can't help with the pubes question.
I have very long and very thick hair. Just recently I cut off all the hair that wound its way around that brushed rod piece under the vacuum and had a solid wad of hair bigger than a softball. My vacuum works a lot better now. Between me and my extra sheddy doggie friend, I sweep or vacuum every day and there is always more the next time. I have hardwood floors. Think wild west tumbleweed style and you'd be close.
As for advice: make seeing your SO a special thing. When they get home, don't ignore them. Kind of like how your dog is excited to see you when you get home, so should your significant other. It is a great feeling to be greeted happily and hugged or kissed. I like coming home and imagine he feels the same way. Coming home and getting blown off or ignored is sort of a shitty feeling, like even though you haven't seen the other person all day, its nothing special that they're home now. Make it special!