Julia and I are starting to think about housing again. We've tried four different arangements since leaving college:

• An 8x10 cabin while working at a dance and music camp. No plumbing, heating, or internet, but it was summer and there were nearby standalone bathrooms and socializing space. Communal food, with people paid to cook (Julia) and clean up (me). No other housemates, but ~20 crewmates and ~140 rotating campermates.
• A room in my parents' house in West Medford. Communal food (usually Rick or Julia cooking) with communal dinner most nights. Two to five other people over the course of the year.
• A 23x16 studio apartment near Porter Square with just the two of us.
• The third floor of a Somerville triple decker, with another couple and their baby. Communal food, communal dinner about half the time.

Our lease is up here at the end of February, at which point we're planning to live chaotically for a few months and then, perhaps September 1st, move into something more stable. Probably another situation kind of like our current one, but maybe closer to the red line and with a saner landlord. So we're looking for housemates. Julia put together a list of things you should know about us and what we're looking for:

• We assume September 1st is a good moving date, but we can be flexible.
• We would like to be near the north end of the Red Line or at least on bus routes to there. [Julia's] graduating in the spring and won't know where [her] job will be until spring or summer. Jeff works near Kendall.
• We're currently paying $900 a month for utilities, one bedroom, and use of the apartment's common spaces. We would like to keep our cost in this range, going up to maybe $1050.
• We're aiming for two to five other housemates.
• We don't have a car, so location is quite important to us.
• This year we lived with two other adults and their baby. This went pretty well, and we would be open to living with kids again.
• We like the idea of living with preexisting friends, but this year we met our housemates through an email list and that worked fine also.
• [Julia] like[s] to cook and eat. [Julia] would like to live with people who also enjoy these things.
• We currently rotate cooking duties with our housemates. We usually all eat dinner together. This is working well for us.
• We eat some meat but not a lot. We would be willing to have communal meals be vegetarian, but not vegan.
• We'd like to have mostly communally bought groceries, as we find this is cheaper and easier. People can certainly keep their own stashes if they want.
• In food we tend to optimize for low cost rather than ethics, but if we lived with people who really wanted more local/organic/etc. we could compromise.
• This past year we had four adults and a baby sharing one bathroom. It worked fine. Any more than four adults to one bathroom might be dicey, though.
• Jeff plays folk music. Music sessions sometimes happen at our house at reasonable hours. If you can't tolerate accordions, we are not your ideal housemates.
• We like to have groups of people over for dinner around once a month.
• Maybe twice a year we have larger parties with (folk) dancing and music.
• We like games, particularly German board games. If you do too, we could play.
• We're not dog people. Cats are fine with us, though they do make it a bit harder to find an apartment.
• We don't currently have a dishwasher or laundry in our building, and we would be okay doing without these again (though strongly prefer laundry in the building).
• We're both used to living with other people - Julia lived in a co-op in college, we lived with Jeff's parents and assorted other people for a year and a half, and we're finishing a year with three housemates in an apartment.
• If you'd like to speak with our current housemates, we're happy to provide their contact information.
• We would probably live in this arrangement for between one and three years.