“Living with other people always adds energy to everyday life.”

I'm Ameya Patil, and I'm currently pursuing a dual degree in Business and Health Sciences at the Ivey School of Business at Western University. Right now I'm actually living in Seoul, South Korea while on exchange at Korea University. When I'm in Canada, I'm based in Toronto.

Because of that, I've experienced a few different living situations. When I'm back home in Canada, I live with my family. But during the school year, I've also spent time living with roommates — and that experience has shaped how I think about shared spaces.

If I had to describe my current living situation in three words, I'd say dynamic, social, and occasionally chaotic.

One of the things I genuinely love about living with other people is the way it brings energy. There's always something happening — spontaneous late-night conversations, cooking together, or just having someone around to watch a game with. Living with others also means you're constantly picking up new habits and perspectives from the people around you.

“Of course, shared living isn't always perfectly smooth. One challenge is that everyone has different routines and schedules.”

People also have different ideas of what “clean” means, which can sometimes cause small frustrations.
Most of the time, it just takes a lot of communication and compromise to figure things out.

One memorable moment that really sums up shared living happened when a disagreement broke out over the state of the kitchen. Somehow we managed to use almost every single pot and pan in the kitchen. We had turned our goal of cooking a group dinner into something that looked like a restaurant during peak hours.

Instead of stressing about it, it turned into a hilarious group cleanup session where everyone was laughing and joking while blaming each other for the mess. Moments like that are what make shared living so worth it.

In our home, chores usually work through informal agreements. People help out with things based on what they're good at, or what they were last lazy about. It works.

The biggest lesson I've learned from living with other people is this: simple communication makes everything easier. Small things like expectations around cleaning, noise, or shared spaces can turn into bigger problems if nobody talks about them first.

That's probably the one piece of advice I'd give anyone — living together gets much better when you talk about it.