I started living alone, then with 3 other friends (ran into problems in 3 - 4 months) and now with only 1 other friend.

My current flat-mate is a reasonable person, not much chit-chat but a cat helped to warm the intra-house athmosphere.

Before this, we lived in a really beautiful house (nice terrace, BBQ potential etc) but the whole thing went sour when one person decided to change his lifestyle in a couple of days. It certainly wasn't fun, but the house was nice. We all had large space to ourselves, but with only 2 people a smaller house still gives enough space per person.

When I lived completely alone, I slacked and became productive in a cyclic pattern, upping productivity come midterm times, slacking at the ends of exams etc.

In all those times (except a few months in a tense house last year) I had weekly visitors, a trio of people plus whomever else I know occasionaly. I really like visitors, but this whole series of living "at my home" made me a kind of recluse. I'd rather have people in the house, rather than go out to meet them.

I'd love to try out the kind of environment Vika talked about, a rationalist house sounds like a pretty nice place to change things about myself with the help of socially helpful people having (hopefully) less than average inferential distances between.