How old were you when you had your first roommate?

Growing up my sister and I shared a room until I was 9 and she was 6. After that we had our own rooms, but she slept in my room for many years after that.

Next roommate situation was college, when I transferred to a university as a sophomore. I was 19. I had roommates in the dorms. Also, in an apartment my senior year I had my own bedroom, but I shared the apartment with two other girls.

After college I had a roommate (we each had our own bedroom in a very nice townhouse) until I became engaged and eventually moved in with my husband.

Basically, I’ve never really lived alone, even though I’ve lived on my own. However, my husband did do a tremendous amount of business travel the first 5 years of our marriage, and at one point lived outside of the country for ten months while I stayed in America.

I was 3 years & 7 months old when I started sharing a room with my baby brother.

When I was 27, he and I bought our first house together. He was ⅓ owner and I owned the other ⅔.

When I was 33, I bought his share. He then bought his own house and moved out.

I was the only girl in the family, so I got my own room. I got a roommate when I was 20. We shared a two bedroom home. It worked well for almost a year until she started dating. The guy moved in, ate all the food, never cleaned up or pitched in money. I finally moved back in with my mom where she let me live free so I could save up for a house. I loved my mom, but I saved up quickly to get out on my own again.

I’ve never had a roommate come to think of it. I’m an only child, so always had my own room. I then left home when I bought a house and got married.

I’ve always loathed the idea. In fact, when I’ve gone away for work, I always pay extra for a single room, if I can.

The couple times I’ve been stuck in a room with someone else have been awful. I’m really antisocial when it comes to my sleeping/bathing space.

I shared a room with my brother most of my childhood. As a student I had my own room and when I started work i shared a flat with four other guys and a room with one before buying my own flat and moving out.

l was 6 when my little brother was moved into my room, and we were roommates for 12 more years. His room became “the playroom” where my beleaguered parents attempted to confine all of our toys and games.

Four or five, maybe, if you count sleepovers. Worked out pretty well because they were short-term, except for one kid’s sleepover birthday party where the birthday boy snored and I couldn’t get to sleep through it.

Well, and there was the time we were travelling and stayed with friends and they had a bunk bed and the kid wet the bed during the night.

I had a couple of bad times when I was 18, too. One was at a convention where I roomed with three other guys and it was ok until night, when they wanted to have people over at night.

Another was a dorm assignment where I had two roommates, one of whom couldn’t get to sleep unless an annoying talk radio show was on… fortunately that turned out to be a temporary assignment.

Some of these stories remind me of rooming in a hotel with friends of work colleagues. More than once it was four of us in a room with two queens. I always seemed to get lucky and have no problem sleeping next to whomever I was sharing the bed with, and they didn’t kick or steal the covers. Oh, except this one time this chick I didn’t know very well got drunk, and instead of taking a cab home as planned, stripped and got into my bed and crashed. WTH?! I climbed in and went to sleep. She didn’t move all night, it wound up fine, but it was crazy. In the other room was my claw friend and her mom. Her mom is a religious Jehovah’s Witness of all things. She handled it well I have to say.

A room was shared with a sibling from my birth until the oldest sibling went to college. It was fine. She is six years older than me, and we always got along well.

Three summers were spent working at a conference center. All females lived in one massive house with lots of roommates, depending on the size of bedroom we ended up in. Other than one incident the first year, I never had problems with any roommates.

There were four different college dorm roommates over the years. Two were ideal; two were nightmares.

Out in the real world, I’ve shared a dwelling with five different people over 25 years. Four were fantastic. One had a few challenges as it was in her house and she had some quirky rules and habits.

There are plenty of one-off experiences. My favourite was sharing a hotel suite with a co-worker the night before we were to facilitate our first training class while our supervisors observed. Kim and I were so nervous that we couldn’t get to sleep. We started singing, “My FavoriteThings” together, her from the bedroom and me from the sofa bed, until we fell asleep.

I was going to say 18 when I went to college for the first time, but then you mentioned hospital roommates. I was 14 the first time that happened, but I’ve never had a stay longer than 11 days so I’m not sure how much that really counts.

I have not always done well with roommates. In the hospital, they often crammed 3 beds into a room meant for 2, and most of my hospitalizations happened when I was pediatric, so I was often sharing rooms with small children, usually cancer patients. That was always very sad, and often difficult. With hospital roommates of all ages I have had issues sleeping, oftentimes because they left their TVs blaring through the night.

I only shared an actual room with someone in college for one quarter. My first quarter of school, before I dropped out due to health issues. My roommate was a very sweet woman who I never got to know very well. She was very kind but just didn’t seem very interested in becoming close with me.

For the rest of college, I lived in apartments with people but had my own room. I have horror stories of varying degrees about almost all of my housemates, but on a few occasions had a good relationship with them.

I’ve lived with just my boyfriend for about three years now. It’s bliss.

I was just remembering having a roommate at camp. I was in my young teens. I barely remember those roommates, which I find interesting.

I’ve never had a roommate. Not going to unless life really goes South unexpectedly.

I shared a bedroom with my sister ten years older than me. But I am not sure at what age I went from my parent’s bedroom to hers.