I’m paying half the rent but my roommate takes up most of the house
I’m trying to figure out a solution that feels fair and sustainable, but my roommate and I split the rent and utilities 50/50; however, she takes up most of the space. It’s a three bedroom, two bathroom house and it’s just the two of us. She lived here first before I moved in so I thought nothing of her taking the larger bedroom. I’m finding that I’m running out of storage or am unable to use certain shared spaces because she’s taken up most of it. Here’s the current situation:
She has the largest bedroom and the larger, newer bathroom
We have a garage that only fits one car (my car is too large anyway) and only she stores things in there. I can only park on the street.
We have a sizable kitchen but she takes up 77% of the cabinet storage (yes I did the math)
We have a spare room that we use as a shared office. It used to be more evenly split but she’s spread out to the point where I often am unable to use the space for my own work other than to sit at my desk surrounded by her stuff. We used to use it as a home workout space as well but that’s not possible now.
I’m writing this now because I’ve tried to broach the subject with my roommate in smaller more digestible pieces. Today, I asked about the spare room/office, suggesting that we find a more efficient use of the space and explaining to her why it was unusable for me currently. She immediately stiffened up and visibly seemed uncomfortable and only said “oh…umm…” and nothing else. I’m worried that she won’t be open to making space for a fair split so I’m considering suggesting a non 50/50 split as an alternative but I’m not sure what percentage split would be fair to suggest.
Suggestions?