For nearly a year since January 2022, I’ve lived alone. It’s the longest time I’ve been on my own. To be clear, I have housemates, but I reside in a single room. Before that, I lived with roommates in a triple room in a dorm.
When I stayed with my family for three weeks over winter break, I noticed many things in my life were different. My thoughts, feelings, and routine all changed. And just as I was getting used to this “new” life, I returned to Berkeley. My life reverted to how it had been before I left for break.
With two life turnarounds in just a few weeks and having lived with roommates in the past, I’ve felt the contrast between living alone, with roommates, and with family. And I feel compelled to write about it now lest the intensity of the contrast fades with time.
I’ll organize my thoughts into subjects. Within each, I’ll explain the living arrangement’s effect on that topic. Please take my observations with a grain of salt as they come from my experiences, and your experiences will certainly be different.
Mood
When you live alone, your mood is more steady. Others can affect your overall mood, but it takes time for that to happen, and you rarely give it enough time for it to happen.
You’re alone from the moment you wake up to the time you leave the house. You’re alone from the time you come home to the time you go to bed. You’re alone for much of the weekends. You spend more time alone than with any particular person.
Whether someone made you happy or angry, you spend so much time alone that the feeling fades away. Whatever happens in the day, you almost always return to your baseline by the end of the day or the next.
You can more easily regulate your mood when you’re alone. If someone regularly makes you angry, you avoid them. If someone regularly makes you happy, you spend more time with them, and they may even become your roommate.
When you live with others though, your mood is more volatile. Since you’re surrounded by them whenever you’re home, their moods can easily become yours.
Your mood tends to be the most volatile when you live with family (as opposed to roommates). If a family member has something about them you’d like to change, you’ll try to change them as you’ll be close to them for the rest of your life. If a roommate has that same habit, you’ll let it be since you’ll eventually part ways.
And when you try to change your family member and a conflict breaks out, you let it loose. You’re okay with them seeing the ugliest side of you because they won’t damage your reputation and you won’t lose them. But if you did the same with roommates, you may lose your reputation and a great friendship.
On the other hand, when the times are good, the times are really good with family. You’re fully present and completely unrestrained. Even when the times are good with roommates and friends, there’s always a worry that you may do something awkward or out of hand.
You experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows with family. You experience mild highs and lows with roommates and friends. You experience even more mild highs and lows on your own.
What if we averaged out the highs and lows? Which one would have the highest average? I wouldn’t go down this path as it’s not the right approach. It’s not how our minds work.
We tend to remember the good times and forget the bad. Your fondest memories are likely of times spent with others. But those same people almost certainly caused you frustration and anger at another point in time.
There’s no best living arrangement when it comes to mood. It depends on what you value. Fond memories? A steady mood? Highs and lows?
Productivity
Similar to how solitude creates a more steady mood, solitude helps you maintain a steady pace on tasks. There are fewer distractions, interruptions, and reasons to procrastinate. There are fewer people you need to communicate with, so you can spend less time communicating and more time doing.
If you barely did anything with your time, it’s on you and no one else. You take all the responsibility for your action or lack of it.
Whereas, if you live with others, you have more excuses for why you didn’t get things done: there were interpersonal conflicts that preoccupied your mind, so you couldn’t focus; their issues were urgent, so you had to put your tasks on the back burner; they were literally distracting your work environment. Valid or not, these reasons cause you to do less.
And, if others are distracting you, it’s hard to try and change them. If you end up changing them, you create tension in your relationship, which further distracts you. If you don’t change them, their way of living continues to distract you.
For example, let’s say a roommate regularly calls their significant other at night. All the libraries are closed at night, and you have no other area to study but your room. If you succeed in kicking them out of the room, you strain the relationship. But if you don’t, you can’t get work done in your room.
Maybe they can call their significant other at another time. Maybe you can shift your study schedule. Whatever the agreement, someone has to give a little. And whenever someone gives, it makes the relationship a little bit more uneasy.
Being with family is better than being with roommates because family members are typically more accommodating. Living with family also usually means living in a larger space, which results in fewer distractions.
Regardless, all this negotiation and balancing of interests takes time and energy you could’ve spent elsewhere. Were you alone, you could’ve spent all your time and energy on work.
Communication
Negotiating, balancing interests, and communicating isn’t a bad thing though. Learning to manage conflict and communicate your thoughts is a crucial life skill.
Living with roommates builds your communication skills the most. You must get your ideas across without generating resistance or hurting the relationship. Should you be subtle or assertive? Should you compromise? How will you phrase what you say? This style of communication most resembles what you’ll have to do in the workplace and beyond.
With family, you don’t need to refine your communication to the same degree. Though it would be better to do so, you have other things on your mind and refinement doesn’t seem worth your energy. You’re less concerned about hurting the relationship and can be as blunt as you want. Maybe you’ll reconsider when things get messy.
This overly-direct familial communication is rare in the outside world, so you learn less from familial communication than from roommate communication. Still, by living with family, you learn more about communication than if you were living alone.
When you live alone, you have fewer opportunities to be with others which means fewer opportunities to communicate. That doesn’t mean you won’t be a good communicator if you live alone; it just means you have to be more intentional about it. Whereas when you live with others, and especially with roommates, you have built-in opportunities.
Life Skills
Excluding communication skills, you generally gain more life skills when you’re on your own. It’s the small but important things: making appointments, remembering appointments, negotiating with customer service, finding cheap groceries, cooking simple meals, doing basic cleaning, managing money, getting around, planning the day, and more.
If you don’t do it, no one will do it for you. Don’t want to clean? You’ll live in a pigpen. Don’t want to haggle with customer service? You just forfeited a couple hundred bucks. Don’t want to cook? You’ll spend a fortune on takeout food while hurting your health.
You’re forced to take ownership, and as a result, you learn a lot. You don’t have a choice, really. You have to think things through meticulously since no one will be there to rescue you.
For instance, when going on a solo trip, maybe you packed food but no utensils. Tough luck: you’ll have to eat with your hands. Now you need napkins, but you forgot those too. I guess you can use some leaves. Maybe you didn’t even pack food. Hopefully, you can find a restaurant. And that’s just food. What about safety? What about transportation?
While forgetting a few things won’t kill you, it does make life inconvenient. If you forget to check the weather and it starts to rain, it’ll be uncomfortable but nothing life-changing. If you forget to bring food, the worst that can happen is you skip a meal.
On the other hand, when you’re with others, you can rely on them to fill your gaps. You take less ownership because there’s someone to save you.
With roommates, you can’t rely on them all the time, so you’re still forced to gain life skills in some areas. But with family, you can rely on them for nearly everything. And if you do, you’re robbing yourself of many learning opportunities.
However, if you’re proactive, living with others can help you gain even more life skills than had you lived alone. If you’re the leader of your dorm, you may have to delegate cleaning duties or resolve disputes. If you’re the leader of your family, you do even more: cooking, cleaning, making appointments, and managing money for everyone in the family.
In a way, the impact of living arrangements on life skills is similar to its impact on mood. Living in a family can be very helpful or very harmful (and everything in between) to the cultivation of such skills. Living with roommates, to a lesser degree, can be helpful or harmful. And living alone is a middle ground, ensuring you gain a solid baseline of life skills.
Cooking
Some days you just don’t want to practice your life skills, cooking in particular. But you get no day off when you’re alone. You get the kitchen dirty no matter if you’re cooking for one or four. And it takes roughly the same amount of time to cook a meal for one as it does for four. In this sense, cooking alone is less efficient.
However, when you’re alone, you can cook and eat exactly the foods you like. You never have to fear someone eating up your favorite dish. You rarely deal with leftovers because you know just the right amount to make. And you don’t need to wash as many dishes since you don’t use serving dishes, serving utensils, or containers for leftovers.
With a family, you can rotate the cooking job so you don’t need to cook every day. You can buy food in bulk more often. Foods that you wouldn’t have bought on your own are now in your home, so you decide to try them. You eat a wider variety of foods and may even discover a new favorite.
It becomes more practical to create time-intensive dishes since if you put the time in, you might as well make a lot (and only with family are you able to finish it). Foods like lasagna, bone broth, dumplings, bread, casserole, tamales, and pies come to mind.
It’s also easier to make a range of dishes because you have more kitchen appliances: blenders, mixers, deep fryers, and more. Were you living alone, it would be less feasible for you to own all these appliances. But with roommates, you may be able to capitalize on shared kitchen appliances.
There are both advantages and disadvantages when cooking in a family and cooking alone. Cooking when living with roommates is slightly worse than cooking alone though, since you have to share the kitchen space. But besides that, cooking when living with roommates is not much different than when living alone.
Routine
When you’re on your own, you have ultimate control of your routine and how you spend your time. And since there are fewer interruptions from others, it’s easier to stick to a routine. You become more of who you are already. Depending on you, that’s either a blessing or a curse.
By living with others, you limit your freedom in crafting a routine. For example, if your roommates have a completely different sleep schedule than you, you’ll need to compromise on what time is lights out. Family tends to be more understanding of your routine, however.
Even if others don’t create restrictions on your routine, there are bound to be interruptions from them. And you have to attend to these interruptions. If you were just about to go to bed but a sick roommate or family member is asking you to run an errand, of course you would interrupt your routine.
The mere fact that you are living with others invites disruption. With roommates, you are living in close proximity, inviting even more disruption. So, living with roommates is the worst for routine, living with family is better, and living alone is the best.
Convenience
You won’t be disrupted when alone, but that also means you’re less able to disrupt others if you need help. For example: if you’re sick, you must still cook and take care of yourself, and now you have to make a homemade remedy or buy some medication. It’s quite inconvenient.
Even if you’re not sick, it’s still less convenient to be alone. Let’s say you need some wrapping paper last minute. It’s likely your family has it tucked away somewhere. Less likely, your roommate has some. But on your own, you do not have it.
What if you urgently need tweezers? Or bug bite balm? Bandages? Nail clippers? The list goes on. With family, they’re willing to share almost anything with no strings attached. With roommates, they’ll share less, and you’ll feel indebted to them.
Alone, you only have access to what you own, creating the least convenience. Roommates share moderately, creating some convenience. Families share almost everything, creating the most convenience.
Cost
Because you can leverage all the family’s resources when living with them, you don’t need to go out and buy things as often. When you do need to buy things, you can buy in bulk and save.
When living with roommates, you’re also able to utilize their resources, but to a lesser extent than with family. There are fewer chances to buy in bulk because your roommates may not want what you want. At least you can split living expenses, which you cannot do when you live alone.
As fixed living costs like utility bills, internet, and rent or mortgage payments are spread over more people, the per-person cost decreases. Living with family further reduces the cost because of the increased collaboration.
On a per-person basis, living alone is the most expensive, living with roommates is less expensive, and living with family is the least expensive.
You Don’t Need to Choose
There’s no pressure to choose between these living arrangements, for life lets us taste all the options.
Typically, you live in a family from birth to age 18. When you leave the home, you experience both living with roommates and living on your own. And sometime down the road, you may start a family. Your family gets smaller when your kids leave the house, but in a way, you’re still living with family since you’re living with your significant other.
Of course, that quintessential life trajectory doesn’t represent everyone. I doubt it even represents a majority. But it’s a useful starting point.
Life’s Stages
When you’re young, you’re easily influenced and molded by your parents. They instill beliefs, values, and habits in you. These habits form your routine. Hopefully, this way of life serves you. It’ll be harder for you to change when you grow older. As a result, your childhood is of paramount importance.
During young adulthood, when you’re living with roommates or on your own, your mood is more steady and your productivity is high. You accomplish a lot during your prime working years.
When you start a family, your mood fluctuates and so does your productivity. You experience great highs and great lows. You remember the good times and let go of the rough ones. When you’re old, you feel fulfilled, cherishing those beautiful memories.
A Change in Pace
Nowadays, there’s a growing number of people living alone. I can certainly see the appeal: unparalleled freedom, heightened focus, and increased productivity. When I first started living alone, I wanted it to be that way forever.
But when I returned to my family this winter break, I experienced a mood far happier than anything I experienced alone. Having lived alone for nearly a year, I forgot the high that living with others could bring.
To be clear, there were also times during that break I was more frustrated than I ever was when I was alone. But when I think back to winter break, I remember the good times. And what is life but a memory?
I used to wonder why parents bother raising kids. They’re such a hassle, and I was no exception. I sparked countless fights with my brother, forcing my mom to be the arbitrator when all she wanted was some rest. I cried and nagged for hours when my video games were confiscated. I resisted her every word when all she said was for my improvement.
But now that I’m an adult and (hopefully) living a life that makes my mom proud, I can see why people raise children. Among the many reasons, a key reason may be the experience it provides.
Having Kids
If you never have kids, you miss out on what could’ve been the most fulfilling moments of your life. At the same time, you avoid what could’ve been the most stressful and demanding times of your life. But you can’t have the highs without the lows; you can’t have happiness without sadness; you can’t have pleasure without pain.
Don’t you want to experience all that life has to offer, the good and the bad? For you can’t separate the good and the bad. When you’re on your deathbed, what thoughts do you want to be thinking? Do you want to be thinking what-ifs? Or do you want to know you had done it all?
But maybe you value autonomy more than the family experience. Maybe you feel living with a significant other is enough, and that children would be too much. Maybe you don’t believe you could be a good parent. Those are all valid points. Whatever the reason, you know yourself best.
My Plan
One year ago, I wanted to live on my own for the rest of my life. Today, my plan is more sophisticated.
For the next decade or so, I hope to live alone and then with a significant other. During these prime working years, I’ll finish my degree, get a job, climb the corporate ladder, build a financial foundation, expand this blog, and pursue whatever passions I may have. I’ll also work on mastering myself and my emotions, which will come in handy down the line.
When the time comes, I’ll start a family with my significant other. By then, I hope to reach a degree of self-mastery such that I more easily weather the bad times. And by weathering the bad times, I can fully absorb the good times.
My plan fits my aspirations and worldview, so it is right for me. But there is no such thing as the right plan, as everyone’s situation is different. You must find your own plan.
Hopefully reading through this article has got you considering your life plan or, at the very least, provoked some thought within you. As always, thank you for reading.