In this hectic day and age, most people don’t follow the traditional nine to five workday any longer, which can make communicating with your roommate difficult, especially if one of you works nights and the other works days. Here are a few failsafe tips for keeping in contact with your roommate.

Try to avoid leaving notes and emails unless you absolutely have to. Face to face communication is absolutely key to keeping your relationship with your roommate positive and on the up and up. When people are left notes, they tend to think they are being talked down to or that they are being lectured. Notes and emails can’t accurately convey tone or if you are joking or not, so it is best to wait to speak face to face if at all possible.

If the two of you are always missing each other and are often out of food that you both like, set up a grease board or a magnet list for food shopping so that you can always be sure that you have your favorite foods in the house. Be sure to communicate, however, so that both of you don’t go out on the same day and pick up the same thing.

Finally, if you have any problems with each other, it is important for the two of you to talk about them as soon as possible. Letting things fester for weeks or even months is never a good thing, and it can ruin what was an otherwise solid friendship.