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Living alone in a great, big house doesn’t do the environment any favors. A single tenant living in a house will consume 18.4% more electricity per capita than a two person household and 52.8% more than a three person household. More than one in four households are single-person households. It’s not so much that living alone is bad, it is the size of the houses in which many people choose to dwell solitarily. A ten-room home uses over thirty percent more energy than a seven-room home and a lot of those ten-room homes are occupied by only one person. Therefore, it seems like one of the best ways to conserve energy is to share your household with a friend.
Why not rent out one of those spare rooms and conserve some energy? You can rake in all sorts of extra dough while splitting your power usage. And in a society of increased individualization filled with iPods, home theaters and personal computers, a roommate can be a great way to assuage loneliness and decrease existential angst.
Here are some ways of finding a roommate:
- Put ad in paper
- Put ad on Craigslist.
- Hire a roommate agent
- Join a roommate service.
Remember. You can be as choosy as you want with who you’re going to rent that room to. You don’t have to take the first person who walks into the door. You should also run credit and criminal checks on any potential borders.
The relationship you have with your roommate is up to you. You can slowly develop a friendship based on understanding with your brooding and mysterious border who came to your house in the middle of the night like in a Raymond Carver story, you can be automatic pals and watch football together every day or your can keep it strictly business. ("Like my wife does with me." Rim shot.) It’s up to you.
More on Greening Your Connection:
Join the Top 5 Green Facebook Groups
Choose Eco-friendly Thank You Notes
Be Subtly Green at Work and Persuade Coworkers to Join Your Cause
From ways to green your 40+ hour work week to eco-friendly web sites, ideas and movements, you'll be learning and doing green in no time with Planet Green Work & Connect.
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