Getting Ready and Living Together.
Practical guides for getting yourself and your home ready to share, and for living well together once someone moves in.
Getting Ready
5 guides
Wanting to share a home and being ready to share one are two different questions.
Are You Ready to Share Your Home?
A practical self-check for home providers and home seekers: timing, energy, money, space, and support, plus what "not yet" can look like.
The clearest conversation with a possible match starts with a quieter one: the one you have with yourself.
What Do You Want in a Match? 10 Questions to Ask Yourself
A self-reflection worksheet for home providers and home seekers: 10 questions to answer on paper before you meet a possible match.
Making room is not about staging a house to impress anyone. It is about giving another person real space to live.
Making Room: Decluttering to Share Your Home
How to sort, store, and clear space for someone to live in your home, or decide what to bring to a shared home, plus help with letting go.
The person you share your home with is not your contractor or caregiver.
Making Your Home Safer to Age in and to Share
Grab bars, lighting, alarms, locks, and a safe way out: practical home safety changes for aging in place, and how to handle them when you share your home.
Help exists, but it is scattered across federal, state, local, and nonprofit programs, each with its own rules, limits, and waiting lists.
Paying for Home Safety Changes: Programs That Can Help
Grants, loans, and free programs can help older homeowners pay for grab bars, ramps, and safety repairs. Here is where to look and what to ask first.
Living Together
4 guides
An agreement records what the two of you promised each other. The law may require more.
What Goes in a Home Sharing Agreement
A checklist for a written home sharing agreement: rent, deposits, spaces, entry, repairs, house rules, guests, notice, and move-out.
Most of daily life in a shared home runs on small systems. It helps to decide them together.
Sharing the Kitchen, the Fridge, and the Everyday
Practical ways to share a kitchen, groceries, cleaning, laundry, and household costs in a home share, plus a sample house rules list to adapt.
A careful move-in turns a signed agreement into a shared home, one key and one checklist at a time.
Move-In Day
A before, during, and after checklist for move-in day in a home share: keys, a condition walkthrough, emergency contacts, mail, and the first week.
When someone harms you or keeps ignoring a boundary you have stated, that is their responsibility. It is not a failure of how you raised the problem.
Handling Disagreements and Knowing When to Get Help
How to handle disagreements in a home share: what is a safety issue, check-ins, raising issues early, community mediation, and when a match ends.