A huge part of being a good roommate is negotiating the shared space.

If you can’t figure out how to share your space, then you’ve failed as a roommate. That’s kind of the whole gig. You do your best to keep your mess to your quarters and pick up after yourself. You do your dishes in a timely manner and don’t have guests over without asking first. You try to initiate fun roommate activities together, but you respect each other’s privacy. And you make sure that you’re not hogging any of the shared resources. Nobody wants to feel like they’re fighting for space in their own apartment. The kitchen is a huge part of that. Odds are, you’re all using the kitchen. You all have to feed yourselves, and thus need to get in there every once in a while. And it’s hard to use the kitchen at the same time as someone else. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Chopped, but there’s a reason they give them all their own workstations. You don’t want to be wielding a knife around your roommate, trying to stir a soup, especially in small quarters. But usually, this can be solved by staggering your kitchen use. Maybe you have different schedules, especially in college, so you try to take your meals at different times. And when you’re cooking something, you try to get in and out of there as quickly as possible so your roommates can use it.