The Adventure of Renting My Spare Room

As everyone knows it is very expensive to live in Fort McMurray.  A lot of families live cheque to cheque, not sure what would happen to them if the bottom fell out of this town.  Well when you take away half of that income (go from a couple to a single person) the cost seems to be even higher.  I tried to off set the high cost of rent, gas, food and all of the needed things I feel I need to live normal, by renting out my second room. 

Renting out my second room sounded super easy, I really didn’t have to too anything and I could cut the cost of my rent in half.  It was actually pretty simple at first.  The day before I was moving in to my new place, Stephen (my brother in laws nephew) called.  He heard I was going to rent out the room and wanted to know if it was still available.  WOW! I thought this was just way too easy.  I didn’t know Stephen personally, but I knew off him and knew he wasn’t a crazy murderer or anything.  He stayed with me for two months.  While he didn’t get in my way, and wasn’t a crazy party person or anything like that, it did take a whole month for us to get the financial part of it all straighten out.  He wife was to email me weekly payments, but this didn’t work out so well.  I was always texting her asking for the payments and getting excuses after excuses as a response.  I think we finally got that part all figured out and a good grove going just as he was about to move out.  He was lucky enough to get a job closer to where his wife and family lived.  I didn’t think too much about him moving out, it was a pretty good experience and thought I could do it again.

Before I go any further you need to know that I am not the type of person to let people (especially people I don’t know) into my personal space.  I have only had three “roommates” in my life.  The first person only lasted 9 months, and I asked him to leave, the next was my sister, and the last was my boyfriend.  So I guess you could say I wasn’t experienced or even really wanted some unknown person in MY space.  But because of the need and the pretty good experience I just had with Stephen, I decided to post the room again.  It was posted a couple of weeks before anyone called about it.  At this point I was getting worried that I wouldn't get it rented.  So I made the mistake and rented it to the first person who called about it.  I didn’t know him and I didn’t even ask him his last name.  I was just happy to have some extra money again. 

This experience was NOT a good one at all.  When I met him, he said he had a job; it was a new one, but a job none the less.  After the fact I found out that he has had a LOT of jobs since coming to Fort McMurray in February 2011.  Not a week after moving in he lost his new job.  So for the next four weeks he stayed in my condo as a hermit.  I think he left the condo maybe three times maximum.  For that entire month he sat on the floor and watched TV.  He would sit there just a foot away from the TV until 4am and than sleep half of his day away.  There was no effort at all in finding another job.  While his job situation wasn’t my concern, getting rent each month was.  How was he able to pay me with out any income?  I wasn’t in any mood to deal with some sob story, so I asked him about it.  He said he was holding out for one with Syncrude.  This was when things started to get weird.  He started to get offended if I went out in the evenings.  He would also make food and tell (not ask, but tell) me  I should eat it and get offended when I said no thanks.  I don’t have issues eating, or even eating what someone else made, but I am not into being quilted into eating something you made.  The worst...no wait I will get to the worst in a minute, the second worst thing was that he folded my laundry.  I know I know your thinking, “Fuck I would let someone do my laundry for me any day.”  But really my laundry is my personal stuff and unless you have seen me naked, are closely related to me or I am paying you to do it, you do NOT touch my clothes.  Even worse, this was a load of my underwear, bras and other items no one should see unless I say so.  He didn’t just take it and throw it in a laundry basket so he could use the dryer, no he folded everything very carefully and laid it all out in little organized piles on my bed.  He didn’t even need to use the dryer.  FYI I had made it very clear that my bedroom was OFF LIMITS.  He wasn’t even aloud to walk up to the door.  But for some reason he decided it was ok to go in there to bring in and organize my underwear.  I really just wanted to burn it all.  Because I couldn’t afford to go buy all new stuff, I opted to soak it in steaming hot water for an hour and re washing it.  I told him about it and he looked at me with a deer in the headlights face.  This guy was either really stupid or had balls the size of a bull cow, as he did this a second time.

That was that, I asked him to leave at the end of the month.  I couldn’t take anymore of the creepy things that seemed to be happening more and more everyday.  This is where it gets really creepy for me.  When I asked him to leave, as it wasn’t working out, he said “Well what if we went out on a date.  I think you will like me, if you went out with me and than you would let me stay.”  Yup that’s what he said word for word.  Holy I was about to lose my shit on him and really wanted to punch him in the face and say are you an idiot.  I am very proud of my self control that day.  I didn’t punch his block off.  I did very politely say no thanks and you need to be out by the end of the month.  The end of the month came and he left with no issues.  This was a really nice change to the month he just spent hiding out in my condo.

That experience put a bad taste in my mouth to renting out the room.  I thought I should take a couple of months off from roommates, and look for other ways to cut my cost.  I have started to look for a second part time job and I am learning to be a smart shopper and not to waste anything. 

Keep reading future post to find out about my whole new world of smart shopping.  I am still learning, so feel free to leave advice about how to save everything, even money :O)