Friend moving in - how to make it work for us all

[snooterfloofer]

One of my best friends is moving in to live with us for a few months after splitting with her partner. She is relocating to the area we live in up north from London and will be working for my DH and staying with us until she saves enough and finds somewhere to rent. We don't need any financial contribution from her so that's not an issue.

We live in a small-ish terrace and have a small spare room for her to have as a bedroom, and can store her furniture etc at our business premises. Spare room is currently junk room so we are going to get that sorted out and will need to do an ikea trip for a bed etc.

She won't be here for a few weeks yet so I'm going to take the opportunity to declutter the whole house as well as the spare room. I'm hoping to free up a kitchen cupboard for her to keep any food bits she wants to keep separate (she will join in with dinner etc most of the time). We only have one bathroom but I'll get an extra basket for her to store her stuff in.

I just want to make her feel comfortable and welcomed. Is there anything I can do to make it easier for us all? We get on very well but haven't lived together before!

Thanks, we will have a chat about a contribution then, probably towards the food shopping each week. She's also happy to help with the school run and little jobs like that which will be helpful.

My DH works 7 days a week at the moment and is only around for a few hours in the evening so I'll be glad for the adult company to be honest! There's only so much 9 year old chat I can take

I managed to furnish an entire house with the only new things I bought being beds for my room and my spare room. Over time I replaced bits I didn't like with some new to me but still second hand pieces.

I've now been here 7 years, have plenty of money and I still only own 2 additional bits of new indoor furniture. If you/she can locate and store nice bits as they come up over a couple of months (which was what I was able to do, was a massive bonus compared to having to get only the stuff available in the week or two before she leaves) then I think that will make a massive difference in terms of both how nice an arrangement she has and how long she needs to stay.

e.g. I have solid pine bedroom furniture, solid pine chests of drawers, solid pine sideboard, really decent sofas, a TV, solid wood table and chairs - all second hand - I think I paid £350 in total for the lot and £200 of that was for a TV in such mint condition it still had the plastic round the edge of the screen.

Hope it all works out well!

Yes I'm definitely going to scour FB marketplace etc. It's silly I hadn't thought of it really as we do have the space to store stuff! She's very much into second hand and vintage so definitely not fussy about stuff being new at all.

Reading between the lines, your friend will have much to be grateful for

You may need to ensure that she feels safe voicing her opinions if they are different to yours or your husbands. She will be very dependent on you and your goodwill for employment and housing and may end up stewing on things, rather than bringing them into the open which could damage your relationship.

There will be an imbalance in your relationship for a while, and this may need to be mitigated.

We welcomed a friend to our spare room in our late twenties when her life took a bad turn. We had no children and no ground rules. She brought one night stands home, but it was actually no problem for us at the time. Looking back I can’t believe that we were so chilled put about it all. It was a lovely time, and we were happy to help out.

Now, 25 years later, I am much more antisocial and would not feel as enthusiastic at doing the same again…although I would of course do so to help my friend.

You are a good person. It is a great thing that you are doing.

Sorry to be negative but from experience I can pretty much guarantee that your friendship won't survive this.

Yes 100% – couldn’t have put it better.

This was my feeling about the free food, bills etc. It makes her the poor relation in the friendship and creates a sense of indebtedness.

Years back a friend put me up when I moved to a new country and this was definitely an issue. I actually felt rather vulnerable and not very independent in the situation, and even things like because I was in her place I felt like I had to be ‘on’ as a friend all the time, and - exactly as you say - did not feel like I had an equal voice in the friendship during that time.

We were very good friends, always there for each other, however I also found this was difficult to sustain on a FT basis (I think our expectations of the friendship were quite high, which worked when we had our own homes!) and it was difficult to assert my own separate needs (or need for space). It was like being a long-term guest ministering to my friend rather than living with a housemate and to be honest our friendship dwindled for a long time (many years) after. We went from being best mates to more like acquaintances, which was a real regret.

It’s honestly a very tricky setup to navigate! More so than you’d think.

She sounds very helpless or perhaps you are over helpful. Does she not want to stand on her own 2 feet and make her own choices about furniture?

Who is making choices about furniture? If I see something locally, I'm not just going to get it without sending it to her and seeing if she's interested. I'm not a weirdo!