<p>I rented a fridge from the school and my roommate brought a microwave. I told her that I’d be willing to share the fridge if she’d share the microwave. The school had a program where if one person opted to rent the fridge, they paid the full price per semester for rental and if the roommate selected that option too, they split the cost. Our arrangement worked out for about two weeks when I found out she complained obsessively that I was taking up the entire fridge (which wasn’t true, but I damn well tried to when I found that out).</p>
<p>If you know who your roommate is, you can start coordinating stuff as soon as you can. When I would read last year on here about how small dorm rooms are, I didn’t necessarily believe it but lo and behold…when I got there, there was barely enough room for the rented fridge and it had to block the heater (which was typically not allowed for safety reasons, but there was literally no other place for it). If you’re going to set “ground rules” do so gingerly. Don’t just assume that your roommate will be Satan and will eat all of your food and be awfulawfulawful. Just tell him/her that you’re bringing the fridge and they’d be welcome to share it. It’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to be cooking gourmet meals in your dorm kitchen anyway so it’ll probably be just water, juice, fruit, leftovers and the like. The kitchen in my dorm was disgusting and the oven stopped working about two or three weeks in. I wouldn’t boil water in that thing, let alone cook food.</p>