Personal Space

Furniture

All rooms are guaranteed to come with a bed/mattress. If your room doesn't have a bed/mattress when you move in, see if your house has any in storage that aren't being used. If you still can't find a bed/mattress, talk to your House Admin and the co-op should be able to buy one for you.

Your room may or may not come with other furniture (dressers, desks, etc.). Any furniture that is in your room when you move in might belong to the co-op, or it might belong to another co-oper. When you move out, please leave any furniture that was there when you arrived. Also, please don't take any furniture or decorations from common areas to put in your room.

Decorations

Check to see what your house's policy is around decorating your room. In general, a good rule of thumb is that as long as you can return your room to its original condition at the end of the year, you can do whatever you want. If you want to make more permanent alternations to your room (e.g., painting walls), talk to your house and/or your house's landlord.

Fire Alarms

You should have a smoke alarm in your room. If you don't, speak to your House Admin right away! If your alarm is making occasional beeps, please don't remove it from the wall; just put a new battery in.

Fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors in common areas should not be removed or turned over. This is a legitimate safety issue. If an alarm is persistently beeping when it shouldn't be, make sure the battery is fresh, and if that doesn't fix the issue, ask your House Admin to talk to the maintenance guy about it.

Guests

Houses have their own rules about when guests are allowed to stay overnight and how people who aren't members of the co-op are allowed to use the co-op's space. Check with other members of your house to see whether there are any rules. Personal guests who are going to stay in your room are almost certainly fine, but if you want to throw a party for an outside group or host a guest overnight in a common area, it's a good idea to ask your house for permission first.

In general, both houses enjoy having dinner guests, and deliberately cook extra food in case they have guests. As of summer 2016, both houses have a policy that guests' first meal is free, and subsequent meals are $3.

If your house doesn't have specific rules about guests, it's recommended that you try to have a discussion as a house at the beginning of the year to come up with community norms around guests. This will help make sure everyone's on the same page and create a space that everyone feels more comfortable living in.

(old guest policy HERE)

Moving Out

When you move out, you must thoroughly clean your room and remove all personal items (or else risk being charged a fine, which would be taken out of your security deposit refund). Each house has its own specific move-out policy; check with your house to see what the policy is. If you can't find your house's specific policy, the old Room Clean and Move-Out Policy provides some good guidelines for cleaning your room.