We mainly addressed the practical issues, such as finding a new roommate, figuring out security deposits (more on that as it develops) and trying to decide whether or not to move out or recruit new roommates.

Sometimes, however, that decision is made for you. Make sure, when you are signing your lease to note whether you are a subtenant or master tenant. An unaware subtenant can be faced with an expired lease and landlords eager to raise rents. (more on subtenant and master tenant information later)

So what do you do when all of your roommates have moved out and you have the apartment to yourself for a few weeks, like a bird without a song?

Before you start roller skating around your apartment in your underwear, let's examine the things you should take care of.

photo courtesy of Laura June Kirsch

Prepare for your move and final walk through:

1. Start to pack things for your final move
2. Arrange for the removal of bulky items that have somehow accumulated in your apartment that nobody wants
3. Repair holes in the wall and chipped paint
4. Arrange for a cleaning service to make that apartment sparkle and shine

Ideally, you will do the final clean just a few days before the final walk through. Depending on how much your security deposit is, you may either want to clean the apartment yourself or hire a cleaning service.

You've probably got mounds of frozen vegetables and other unidentifiable yet potentially edible foodstuffs all up in there. For every frozen bag of vegetables you will need on box of Kraft Mac-N-Cheese. Steam up the veggies and mix them up with the macaroni and cheese. Now, you are cooking and cleaning simultaneously.

It is activities such as these which will be necessary to keep your sanity. Also, a recommended purchase for an empty 4 bedroom apartment is a nightlight. You never know what kind of childhood fear will be lurking about in one of the vacated rooms.

These tasks included:

• Finding a new roommate
• Figuring out what to do with everything in the apartment (furniture, electronics, kitchenware)
• Determining how to deal with the security deposit
• Finding out from the landlord how your lease will change

(photo courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

There are usually not as many legal or official actions with which to deal when only one roommate is leaving, as the lease remains intact, but it is best to plan ahead to make sure that your roommate can move out smoothly and you can avoid paying extra rent for an open room.

Finding a new roommate can sometimes be difficult, but many people, especially now, are looking to rent a room to save on rent as well as divides utility costs among a great amount of people. Sharing water, electricity, cable and internet costs is quite an attractive prospect.

The first thing to do, which can usually be pretty tricky, is figuring out when your roommate will be moving out; usually someone will end up having to pay two rents for at least a week or so, but cutting this down with open communications about plans can keep this unwanted cost from getting too ridiculous.

For example, your roommate will probably let you know that they are looking for an apartment before they actually sign a new lease. This is helpful so you can begin looking around for roommates amongst friends and acquaintances. Usually the best way is to send out a mass email to friends advertising that there will be a room opening up at the apartment and to pass it along to anyone who may be interested.

This can work out well because your acquaintance with the potential roommates can replace the awkward, getting to know someone's personality questions that roommate interviewees are subjected to. As if a brief overview of entertainment options can really tell you about how someone will be as a roommate.

Figuring out what to do with all those things in the apartment can be tricky. In our case, our departing roommate is the owner of all the furniture and a large portion of the kitchenware.

So, what is the best case scenario here? The furnishings of a 4 bedroom apartment won't fit into a studio apartment and the 4 bedroom apartment needs a couch. Selling the couch to the remaining roommates will cut down on moving expenses and hassles.

Kitchenware is another story; there are so many things that you need to get for your kitchen when you first move in, that the thought of buying them all over again is less desirable than retaking the SATs.

Figuring out the charges for the security deposit is a bit tricky and we'll have to get back to everyone on that. That seems like the stickiest of situations and a final answer on who owes for what damages is most likely postponed until the lease expires.

It is important to contact your landlord to let them know that you will be leaving and someone else will be taking your spot, whether or not ‘the who' has been determined yet. The landlord may want to take an active role in selecting the new tenant, or may leave the process up to you.

This, to us, reveals that most people who live with one or more roommates are looking for a somewhat social apartment life, but nothing that detracts from the apartment still being a pleasant sanctuary for its residents.

However, it is common, even for apartments of up to four people, especially during the week, to not see their friends and neighbors as much as they would like. It can be difficult to get people together because long office hours, living in different neighborhoods and early commute times tend to undermine motivation.

Just like after school, when your neighbors came by, rang the doorbell to see if you wanted to come out and run around the woods or play basketball, how nice would it be for friends to pop in after work to say hello, hang out for a bit and then head back to their own apartment. You don't want the precious few hours of relaxation that you have before you go to bed to look as painfully listless as this:

(photo courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

These two look as though they have almost completely transformed into their respective couches. They need some serious help.

In order to help keep your apartment living pleasantly exciting by bringing friends in the same city closer together, we are going to outline ways to get people over to your apartment that satisfies the aforementioned criteria of contained conviviality.

Thus, ThanksChristmas is hereby established to be the second Sunday following Thanksgiving; you may have missed it this year, but make sure you mark your calendars for Sunday, December 5, 2009.

Not only will ThanksChristmas Day fall on Repeal Day next year, but it will also share the day with the birth of notable Connecticut resident Richard DiChiara, who reportedly once “hit a guy so hard during a football game that he saw green for the rest of the day."

ThanksChristmas marks the official transition between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While the prevailing notion of appoints the ever popular Black Friday as the official beginning of the Christmas season, merrymakers would be advised delay their embrace for at least a week.

If we were Thanksgiving, we'd be a little put off to wake up the next morning and realize that those who had feasted in our name just the night before were now off pursuing more important holidays. Also, we are sure that Christmas is not too fond of its seasonal inception being the single most dangerous day of the year to be a consumer.

A proper celebration requires that Thanksgiving feast was so abundant, that its leftovers be edible for ten days. This will allow for the second Sunday to consist of finishing Thanksgiving leftovers and watching Christmas movies. This achieves a dual purpose: homage to the gluttony of Thanksgiving and an ushering in of festive Christmas season. A suitable desert would, of course, be the first 5 chocolates from an advent calendar.

This would be a great little holiday to recognize at your apartment. There will not be too many people to accommodate, no need to prepare food, and it's a good excuse to invite some friends over for a nice cozy evening of low key holiday appreciation.

Some people want to live with roommates and some people need to live with roommates. Whatever the case may be, we added this functionality in order to help you move into the apartment you want as efficiently as possible.

Renters who are looking for apartments and roommates can easily use the Roommates tab to search for potential roommates in a given city.

Here is a rundown of how the new Roommates Tab works:

When you search for apartments in a given city, Roomster will automatically search its database for roommate profiles in that city. When you click on the Roommates tab, you will be able to view potential roommates who are also looking for apartments in that city.

You can then search and browse through profiles according to age, gender and even zodiac sign. If you find someone who you think would make a good roommate, you will be prompted to create a Roomster profile through which you can contact that person.

With this new functionality, lone renters will have the ability to conduct searches for apartments with more than one bedroom all at MyNewPlace. So, you can look for apartments AND roommates at the same time, which greatly expands rental options.

Suppose you are looking at Columbia Heights apartments, a popular neighborhood for Washington, D.C. rentals. It is located close to the Green line metro station, there is a grocery store nearby and the area nightlife has a great many restaurants and the Mount Pleasant bars are quite close, but rents for 1 bedroom and studio apartments are too high.

Now, you will be able to add “possible roommates" as criteria in your apartment search. You can prioritize having a roommate just as you would “desired area," “rent," or any apartment amenities.

Let us know what you think of the new feature in the comments section!

As renters move out of studios and 1 bedroom apartments and into 3 bedroom apartments and homes for rent, one question to be considered is how many bathrooms you will need to accommodate the morning routines of residents.

Most apartments that have at least 3 bedrooms have at least 1 full bathroom and one half bathroom. This is usually adequate for 3-4 people at most times of the day, but in the morning, things can get pretty busy, especially if there is only one shower available and everyone has to be at work around the same time.

It's usually stressful enough waking up in the morning and dealing with the treacheries of the morning commute, be they waiting for intermittent buses, crowded subways, excruciating traffic or bad weather for those who rely on our legs to get to work. Everything must be perfectly timed to balance the maximization of available sleep with a timely work arrival.

These People All Share One Shower

Given the goal, or rather, necessity of an efficient at home morning routine, the ratio of bathrooms to renters is not as crucial as the ratio of showers per rent.

Taking this all into consideration, it is an absolute amazement that a San Francisco apartment with 5 permanent, employed residents are able to share only one shower and all manage to simultaneously remain hygienic and punctual in the mornings.

Not only do these 5 permanent residents share one shower, but their apartment typically hosts a wide variety of “friends in transition," which of course can also mean lovable scamp or delightful vagabond. This apartment has been known to house up to 8 people simultaneously, all during the working week.

How is all this even possible? Perhaps they have all lived in hostels and are accustomed to communal living. If I had to share one shower with my three other roommates, riding the bus would be an absolute pleasure compared to the shower line. There would also probably be upwards of 25 bottles of what appear to be the same thing in one shower.

What are your experiences with the shower to bedroom ratio and the morning routine?

Would you move into an apartment with 3 or more bedrooms with only one shower?

This innovation in improving sedentary and complacent lifestyles however, will not guarantee total television freedom. The fact that none of my three roommates will be home allows me to look forward to at least a few hours of unquestioned authority over the remote control.

However, our expansive cable plan also includes the DVR or recording ability. This sounds great, since we can record anything on television, save it, and watch it whenever. You can also record one program and watch another. You cannot, however, record two things and watch anything else.

So when I go home tonight and “America's Best Dance Crew" and “So You Think You Can Dance" are both being recorded, my options become severely limited. I could try to flip back and forth between the two shows, hoping that I can deftly avoid the programming and only see commercials, but inevitably I'll be forced to actually watch one of these shows.

The only other option is to view shows that have already been recorded. Of course, all that has been recorded are ten episodes each of reality dance competitions and about 25 episodes of “Scrubs". So that's great.

One would think that the DVR would make it easier for 4 roommates to share a communal television, and it should, but when you don't plan your TV viewing schedule a week ahead of time then it becomes pretty difficult.

How do other people solve this impasse between roommates? Do you end up sharing the roommate? What if the roommate itself is being controlled remotely, as in the scenario described above?

I've found that writing about it on the internet works wonders, but I am sure some other people have more proactive solutions for roommate issues like this, the perpetual pursuit of remote control hegemony.

Do TV preferences come up when you are interviewing a potential roommate to move into your apartment?

Has anyone ever moved out of an apartment for rent due to a trivial matter such as this?

Let us know in the comments!

I had lived with girls before and I knew what I was doing at the outset of my apartment search; when I first graduated and moved to Washington, D.C. and found the experience of living with girls to have advantage over living with 40 guys in a frat house.

(photo courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

The most salient benefit of female roommates is the apartment's cleanliness. When I lived with guys, it was a constant struggle to keep the apartment half way decent. I could straighten up and even embark on some large scale cleaning projects (with the appropriate musical accompaniment), but at the end of the day, it only took about 30 minutes of neglect for the apartment to return to its natural, sordid state.

But now that my roommates are female, the opposite seems true. It is almost a challenge to really mess the place up. A messy girl never really seems to rival the havoc that a guy can create. In an all male household, it was perfectly acceptable to deposit dirty dishes under the couch while the coffee table gradually transformed into a game of beer bottle and Styrofoam container Jenga (the loser being required to throw everything away)

Perhaps an even more important benefit of my current living situation is the level of respect my current roommates and I have for our apartment. Living with other guys, all sorts of disgusting and offensive behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged to the point of competition. If you live with girls, however, you are much more likely to behave as a normal, decent member of society who takes pride in where and how they live. And some of us need all the help that we can get.

Also, just having diverse perspectives can be helpful. There are some things that I would normally completely take for granted if not for the input of my female roommates. I am pretty sure that this is true, and am confident that I'll think of an example at some point.

Living with girls is ideal, but it's not perfect. Quite often, there are certain chores that seem fall into the lone male roommate's jurisdiction. This includes, but is definitely not limited to, anything of or relating to the disposal of garbage, plumbing and electricity issues, and any heavy lifting.

We plan to revisit this topic in upcoming blog posts and expanding on some of the advantages and disadvantages (such as the almost supernatural ability of girls to detect when something has spilled.) In the interest of remaining fair and balanced, (like FOXNEWS) we will also entertain commentary from Erin Leonard, who will offer her input on the situation.

Let us know how you have fared in your various roommate situations!

I have found that musical motivation is the best method to get everyone to pitch in and do their share. The proper auditory accompaniment can transform a reluctant bunch of roommates into Del Fontaine and the Cleaning Fontones. Perhaps that's a bit exaggerated, but I've found that certain songs just bring people together and make cleaning the apartment less of a chore and a bit closer to being a therapeutic exercise.

photo courtesty of Mia Mabanta

Now, it is difficult to find a single album that truly encapsulates and drives an apartment cleaning. Thus, I have taken the liberty to recommend some songs that match up particularly well with some of the more common chores.

Your first task will be to get everyone up and ready. If it is Saturday morning, you'll have to get everyone off the couch or out of their rooms. Put on I've Got a Feeling by the Beatles. The version from Anthology 3 is the best, but the Let it Be version will suffice. This song is perfect for opening up the windows, letting in some fresh air and dance-walk-gliding over to the cleaning cabinet under the sink. You'll be so excited that you will take out every product available, thus ensuring the thorough use of each.

Other choices that also build initiative for joint cleaning ventures are Thank You by Barry and the Remains or Can You Get to That by Funkadelic.

Most cleaning starts in the kitchen; as the center of food preparation, it is advisable to keep this room as hygienic as possible, and since it is a communal area it is likely to be the messiest. When doing the dishes, you are going to need a song to which you can sing and subtly groove, since dancing is constrained when you are washing the pots and pans. Put on Oh Yoko by John Lennon or Roberta Flack's Reverend Lee.

Once you start mopping the kitchen you can really let loose. I've personally found that a mop makes a great dance partner, especially to such gems as Take your Mama Out by the Scissor Sisters, The Bar-Kays' Too Hot to Stop, or if you are really into mopping, Midnight Voyage by Ghostland Observatory. Be careful with this song, as it may result in the destruction, rather than the cleaning of your kitchen. This song has a notorious and well documented history of engendering spontaneous parties and rerouting good intentions.

There are absolutely no songs that are good for cleaning the bathroom. This should not be taken as an excuse to avoid cleaning the bathroom.

During vacuuming, listen to Close to Me by the Cure or This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads. Vacuuming, in some inchoate and vague way, reminds me of the eighties and these tracks represent the best of that decade's musical output.

With this list of songs at your disposal, you'll be able to transform yourself and your roommates from complacent couch potatoes into a whirlwind of melodic cleaning activity.

Do you have suggestions for the list? Get back to us with what tunes you listen to while you do your chores. Also, your feedback on the above list is appreciated. For more tips on cleaning your apartment, especially before you landlord does a walk through, check out the MyNewPlace apartment guide!

The reception you receive from your roommates, however, is less ‘chicken noodles and pillows' and more ‘gas masks and complaints'. When one roommate gets the flu, it is almost certain that at least one of the other members of the apartment will eventually come down with the same symptoms. This is bad for roommate morale; for about a month, each roommate basically waits to see if they too will get sick.

So, how does one avoid spreading disease and contempt among roommates? It is very unlikely that you will be able to find an apartment with separate wings, that you could use to quarantine your sick roommate.

This is definitely not an easy task. It certainly requires the sick roommate to spend some pro-active time trying to disinfect the apartment and keep it as clean as possible.

Here are some tips on how a sick roommate can keep their roommates healthy.

In your living room, wash the couch by lightly spraying Lysol Disinfectant or by washing pillow covers in the laundry in a gentle cycle. This is probably the most communal spot in the house and should be cleaned a few times while you are sick, especially if that is where you plan to spend the bulk of your recovery.

In your own bedroom, increasing the frequency with which you wash your sheets, pillow cases, towels as well as keeping the room ventilated can prevent you from keeping yourself sick.

In your bathroom, disinfect your shower, sink and toilet and keep your toiletries far away from your roommates' items.

In your kitchen, be sure to wash the glasses, pots, pans and dishes a few times, wipe down your countertops and mop the floor. Shared dishware can easily lead to the spread of germs and this is another room that is used by everyone.

Make sure to air out your apartment as much as you can. Keeping your apartment sufficiently ventilated will mitigate the spread of airborne germs and bacteria.

Prepare for the inevitable. It is very likely that your roommates will indeed come down with a cold or flu. So, when you are buying cold medicine, orange juice, chicken noodle soup or whatever other home remedies you have concocted, (I personally rely on large portions of huevos rancheros early in the morning and Vietnamese soup called pho for supper to get over a cold) you should have enough for your roommates.

If/when they get sick, they may blame you, but they will be appreciative of the efforts and thought you have taken to help all the members of your apartment.

What have your experiences been with sick roommates? Do you have any tips or is it just an inevitable one of life's valleys?

Finding an apartment is just one part of the equation, if you have opted to live with someone else, your apartment search should include finding a roommate that will complement your lifestyle and acquiesce to your needs and expectations. Having a nice little family to come home to at night is great, but it does take some preparatory legwork to make it happen.

picture courtesy of mia mabanta

When a room becomes available in my apartment, my roommates and I advertise and open house. Renters looking for an apartment will come to check out the apartment, meet the roommates and determine if they would be interested in the room for rent. Open houses allow for the current tenants to meet possible roommates and vice versa.

Sometimes a first impression is not enough, however. Open houses are usually crammed in to people's busy schedules and it is hard to get a sense of how someone will be as a roommate from such a brief meeting. Social network websites such as Facebook and MySpace, which are extremely popular, especially among recent graduates and college students, provides a great resource for you to take a closer look at what life may be like with your new roommate.

A quick browse of a potential roommate's photos and comments can give you more of a 360 degree view. Of course, it is not very common to have pictures of yourself cleaning an apartment or cooking dinner, or contrarily, abusing the possessions of others and not doing the dishes, as it were, but having a quick glimpse at someone's profile when considering that person as a roommate will probably either make you smile or cringe.

Someone who goes out most nights, would probably not be a good fit for a nice, tidy retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city just as a reserved person may not want to move into a more socially dynamic apartment that tends to have lots of guests.

Typically, when you are looking for a roommate, they will be in the same ‘network' (facebook categorical term most often denoting geographical area but may also refer to common bond amongst a large group of people such as an employer or university) as you, which allows you to look at that person's profile. If that person is not in your network, you can change your network affiliation and then change it back.

Your Facebook or MySpace profile can be a very informative vehicle for people to get to know you. One should be wary of the information that is posted on the internet. Even employers are beginning to employ this tool to inform their hiring decisions.

I have known individuals to delete or censor their accounts when applying for jobs with the government or running for public office. It is not so mysterious when a friend's profile becomes noticeably void of previous content in correlation with a FBI application or a run for public office.

Recently, we saw this Gawker article, which exhibits how Facebook accounts can really give you a pretty good idea about what to expect from a potential roommate and whether you would want to share an apartment with said person for an extended period of time. (The linked article shows facebook photos of some of the younger superdelegates who will be serving an influential role in deciding the presidential nominee)

Have you ever used Facebook to inform a decision, whether for roommate or employee purposes? Do you wish that you had? Have you ever gotten into trouble over your posted photos?