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You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Borders

Have a room to rent out or are you looking for a roommate?

September 23, 2007 by Tricia

roomster.jpg

The cost of renting an apartment or a house just seems to keep going up and up doesn’t it? Meanwhile our salaries don’t seem increase at anywhere the same rate. Sometimes the best way to get around the cost of renting is to share your space with a roommate. Whether that be renting out a room or moving in with someone else.

Many years ago when I was single and had my own apartment I decided to started my own business and those first few months were hard. I had to build my client list and start earning money. How was I to cover the rent of my apartment? I got a roommate.

Finding a roommate wasn’t easy. I took out ads in the local paper and interviewed prospective roommates. These days it’s so much easier to find a roommate with the services provided by companies such as roomster.net. I only wish that a website such as this was available all those years ago when I had roommates!

Roomster is an advanced housing rental site. The site provides those who want to rent out rooms, floors, houses, apartments or condos with the ability to list their rental spaces. Those are searching for a room or home to share with another can look through the listings and easily find a place that fits their budget.

How Does Roomster Work?

Well as you can see from this screen shot, there are listings for all of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Roomster has a large and active membership and there’s thousands of listings from which to find a new roommate.

roomster2.jpg

By creating a simple profile on Roomster those looking to rent a room or to sublet an apartment can contact property owners directly through the Roomster service. Likewise, property owners can search for potential tenants and contact them directly.

Of course you can go to the site, select the city you live in or the one that you plan on moving to, and begin looking through the listings without creating a profile. However, you will not be able to see the full details of the listing. Without registering you can only see a short summary such as:

“Respectful Renter/Roommate Wanted!” – woman, 65, San Francisco, CA, $400.00

Once you sign up and create a simple profile you’ll be able to use the search functions to find a room or potential renter:

roomstersearch.jpg

Of course there’s plenty of other ways to search too. You can search through all of the roommate listings, rooms to rent, by rooms that have photos included, search for woman or men that have rooms to rent or who are looking to rent, search by a persons age, by how many rooms are available in the rental and or by price and coolest of all, you can even search for a potential roommate by their zodiac sign.

Additional features of the site include the ability to look at an area where a rental is located by using google maps, as well as the ability to leave quick messages, quick links, IM, and view the profile of last member that logged in.

Roomster offers free and full memberships. Free basic memberships allow members to search, post and contact all registered members absolutely free.

The site seems very easy to use and there’s so many different ways to search for a potential roommate that I’m sure most people will feel quite comfortable on Roomster. I know that if I ever decide to rent out a room in our house I’ll be visiting Roomster.

Check it out for yourself if you are renting out a room or looking for a roommate.





Filed Under: Borders, Home and Lifestyle, Moving or Organizing, Real Estate, Recreation, Services Tagged With: Canada, google maps, home, moving, photos, profiles, Rent, rent a room, rent apartment, rent out room, Renter, roommate, Roomster, search, service, sublet, United Kingdom, United States, visit, website

Blame the border for our desire to go to Brazil!

July 11, 2007 by Tricia

Last year we had a border from Brazil. Our previous borders had been from Vietnam so we didn’t know what to expect when he was moving in. It turned out that he was a very nice, quite guy who absolutely loved his country.

He talked about Brazil all the time, showing us photos, and talking about areas that his family would holiday in and so on.

I’d always thought of visiting Brazil, but actually talking to someone who lives in a country that I was interested in visiting gave me some insight into the country and increased my desire to take a holiday there some time.

I would imagine that it will be a year or more before we visit Brazil, perhaps we’ll even have another border from the country before we go ourselves.

I do know that I’d definitely like to see some of the historic sites, go somewhere to hear traditional Brazilian music, visit the famous Ipanema , and of course while in Rio de Janeiro we’d take a trip down to the Copacabana Beach. I’m sure we’ll have a whole list of things to do and places to see by the time we eventually visit Brazil.

Have you ever been to Brazil? Do you have any suggestions for me?

Filed Under: Borders, Culture, Home and Lifestyle, Music, Vacation and Travel Tagged With: beach, Beaches, border, Brazil, brazilian, Food, holiday, hotel, interest, Music, travel, vacation, visiting

The Brazilian takes his leave

October 6, 2006 by Tricia

I just realized that our Brazilian boarder is going home tomorrow and I haven’t even written a rant post about him. What a change.

It’s not that he’s been a perfect boarder, but he certainly was better than the first two that we had. The first boarder slept all the time and seemed depressed. We just couldn’t connect with him at all. The second boarder was manipulative and lied continuously. I still have nightmares featuring the second boarder. **Shudder**

The only problems that we’ve had with this Brazilian student has been that he goes out with his new friends a lot lately every night. Now that’s not bad, in fact I kind of like it because we have the benefit of having a boarder and the extra income but the boarder isn’t around. No, what bothers me about him being out is that he doesn’t call and let us know whether he’ll be coming home for dinner or not. His room and board includes dinner so I’m obligated to provide a meal for him, but it’s kind of hard to figure out whether I should be planning a meal for two – me and Chris – or for three when he doesn’t let me know whether he’ll be home.

The other complaint is that all of the products he uses are extremely scented from his deodorant to his shaving cream. That’s a problem because I seem to be very sensitive to scented products. I get immediate intense migraines when I’m subjected to scented products like perfume or cologne, and occasionally I start having trouble breathing and have to use my puffer.

By tomorrow evening we’ll have our home back to ourselves. We had wanted to get another short stay boarder but we haven’t had any luck with the “English studies” agencies. None of them seem to be looking for home stay parents right now. I wanted to have another boarder for October and November and then have the house to ourselves for the whole month of December. I really don’t want to have a homesick student around at Christmas time.

Monday is our Canadian Thanks Giving day. On Sunday we’ll be going to my husbands parents house for a Thanks Giving get together, but I’m not sure what we’re doing on Monday. I might invite my sister and her kids over and cook us a nice Turkey with mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes and carrots, and peas. If I do that, I suppose we’ll have a pumpkin pie too. Yum. Yeah I think I’m going to do it.

Are there any other Canadians out there that are going to family gatherings this weekend?

Filed Under: Borders, Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Toronto Tagged With: allergy, asthma, Brazilian boarder, Canadian Thanks Giving, perfume, scented products

The Brazilian Boarder

September 15, 2006 by Tricia

I mentioned earlier that I’d tell you about our third boarder. Well, the time is now.

We’ve taken in few boarders over the last few months to help pay the bills around here. I’ve been off work due to illness for over 9 months now and I have NO income coming in. So we had to come up with a plan to bring some money in or else we’d be in a lot of trouble with bills or rather with not being able to pay the bills.

Since I keep hoping that I’ll get better soon and get back to work, we didn’t want any long term boarders. That’s probably a good thing since the first two, particularly the second, didn’t turn out to be very good boarders. We are “home stay” parents. What does that mean? Well people from other Countries come to Toronto to learn English in a private school. While they are in Canada they stay in English speaking homes so that they are truly immersed in the language that they are here to learn. The students that we “host” could be anything from teenagers to adults of any age. The average stay seems to be two or three months.

Our first two boarders were from South Korea. The first was a male and he was 19, and the second was female and she was 21. The first boarder didn’t talk much – he slept a lot though! – and we couldn’t get a good read on his personality. This made things a little awkward and uncomfortable. The second talked too much and ended up being extremely demanding and lied to us about just about everything. She even told our neighbors that she had three body guards back home. I’m certain that was a lie too.

For our third boarder we decided to switch agencies (Various agencies put students in touch with families willing to house them and teach them English). So now we have a Brazilian man staying in our home.

I was really hoping that our Brazilian guy would be great eye candy. Hey I deserve that after the brutal experience that I went through with the last boarder don’t I? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with his looks, but sigh, he’s not the gorgeous hunk I was hoping for.

Our Boarder is a really nice guy. Very polite and helpful. He arrived last Thursday. I wasn’t feeling very well when he arrived so Chris took him out and showed him a little bit of Toronto. They came back with a case of beer! I didn’t think this was the best start … but it’s worked out ok. The boarder had paid for half the case – something the other two would never have thought of doing.

Chris was off work on Friday and Saturday and I was feeling a little bit better, so we took our boarder out around Toronto again on Friday. Mostly it was just to a few shopping malls because he wanted to pick up a few things. Saturday I had kind of been hoping that we’d go to the Zoo. I haven’t been to the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo for a few years and I really enjoy it. However it was a rainy day, well at least the morning was anyway, and I wasn’t feeling quite as well as I was on Friday. We did end up going to the Toronto beach area and we walked around for a couple of hours on the Beach and in the touristy area nearby.

On Sunday the boarder did his own thing, and then he started his classes on Monday. We’ve fallen into a nice pattern. He must be touring the town on his own because he usually doesn’t come home until about 7 pm. We have dinner shortly after he arrives home, and then he sits with us for a while. He’s usually up in his room studying or preparing for bed by 9 pm or so.

So far so good … but then I thought the other two were doing well in their first week too, so I’ll reserve final judgment for a while. He’s 31, so he’s more mature than our other two boarders were, and he seems to be a generally nice guy. He even tries to do the dishes each night after dinner … at least his own, and he’s been washing his breakfast dishes in the morning too. So no fuss, no mess, and he’s not in our face all the time like our last boarder was.

It is a bit taxing having someone around who’s first language is not your own. It seems that our male boarders haven’t been quite as good at English as our female boarder was. The latest one understands most of what we are saying, but there’s times when we say something and have to try to explain it several different ways before he begins to understand. For the most part this is fine, but when I’m not feeling all that well it can be a bit draining.

At least I’m not ranting this time round!

Filed Under: Borders, Canada, Culture, Fashion, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Shopping, Toronto Tagged With: beautiful, beauty, boarder, brazilian, Canada, Fashion, Home and Lifestyle, home stay, learning english, Money, neighbors, Rent, Saturday, Shopping, style, Toronto

Little princess is driving me Mad!

July 28, 2006 by Tricia

I’m so damn angry right now!

My boarder, a home stay student from Korea, has been driving me nuts all week. I could just break something right now!

I’m not going to get into all the details right now. I’m too pissed to do that. Grrrrrr!

The really short story is that we have to provide three meals for her each day. She does pay for room and board after all. In the past week she’s been switching things around, telling me she doesn’t want the food that we’ve been making for her for the last two months anymore. She wants her Korean food. So she’s been making some of her own lunches this week. Fine. She’s also been pretty much demanding a lot of other things, totally taking advantage of our good nature. Remember her New York trip a couple of weeks ago when she came home two days later than we expected. Shit, we thought something had happened to her.

Earlier today I was cleaning. Sweeping the hardwood floors both on the main floor and upstairs. We put an air conditioner in her room, so it didn’t make sense that I would sweep hallway and the rest of the rooms upstairs and not hers. If I didn’t then any dust in her room would blow out onto the nice clean floors. So I went into her room and swept.

In the process of sweeping her tiny room I accidentally knocked over her garbage can when I moved it. To my surprise out fell the sandwich that she’d made HERSELF last night for lunch today. Huh? She doesn’t want our food so she’s making her own and for some reason she throws it in the garbage before she goes to school? Uhmmm didn’t we tell her that as of last week, we are in a financial bind thanks to my medical unemployment coverage ending? We can’t afford for her to make food and then just throw it away. What a waste! I also found it sneaky. She could have just left it in the fridge and perhaps my husband would have eaten it.

So all week she’s been asking if she can buy the supplies (and be re-embursed by us) so that she can make herself Sushi for lunch. Ah, what does that cost? She said she’d find out and let us know.

While she was telling us this evening that she was going to go to the Korean section of town tomorrow to find out what the cost of the ingredients that she needs is, I decided to tell her that I had accidentally found her sandwich in her garbage and asked her why she did that.

She freaked on me! She accused me of violating her privacy and then got all teary. She said that we’ve been treating her different in the last couple of weeks too.

Well duh! You lied to us about your New York trip. Said it was a school trip then went on your own and met people down there, and then didn’t come home until the Wednesday rather than the Monday when we were expecting you. You also gobbled up a gift that one of our neighbors had given us just before that. We share things in this house. Yeah, no wonder we aren’t treating you with quite the same warmth, you made us lose trust in you.

But violating your privacy? No way princess. I never go in your room except to either turn the air-conditioner on, off or turn it up higher. That’s it and you know I do that. Today was a first, going in to do you a favor and sweep your floor. I didn’t mean to knock over your garbage and discover your deceit.

Speaking of having her privacy violated. I’m the one who’s mail is gone through and who’s cupboards, that you haven’t been given permission to look through, are riffled through. I’m the one who’s computer you jump on without invitation even though you have one that we provided for you upstairs in your room. I’m also the one that’s being stalked by an elderly neighbor so I don’t go outside during the day time unless the coast is clear and have to do most of my gardening in the dark with the raccoons! Geeesh!

Our discussion ended with both she and I in tears, and my husband sitting on the couch looking stressed and perplexed and trying to moderate the discussion. She calmed down and went upstairs to wash her face. She had been supposed to go out with friends but didn’t think she would after that discussion. Ten minutes later she was back downstairs saying she was going out. She’s still not home and I’m wondering if she’ll even come back tonight.

She’s paid up until the 10th of August so I don’t know if she’ll want to leave early or stay or what. As of right now I don’t fucking care. Of all people to accuse of violating her privacy … I respect privacy since I don’t feel like I have any. Does she think I went snooping around in her room? Why would I do that … and why is she so worried I wonder now … hmmm?

I’ve got steam coming out my ears! I’m so damn angry. She’s walked all over us, especially in the last month. When we picked her up at her former homestay the owners of the house told us that she was a handful, that she was a little princess, and they sure weren’t kidding. They wished us luck … guess we needed it. Damn, we should have turned around and left her there when they warned us.

Why in the hell am I doing this boarder thing anyway? Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I’m home, sick, so we need the money.

I don’t need this shit, really I don’t.

Filed Under: Borders, Culture, Home and Lifestyle, Toronto Tagged With: accident, angry, boarder, computer, couch, deceit, Food, garden, General Musings, home, house, lies, violating privacy, walked on

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