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Robin Hartung was excited when she moved out of her dorm room and into an apartment. She was finally free from the rules and restrictions of living in a dorm — no more signing in guests or dealing with annoying dorm assistants.

Cleanliness was a huge issue for Hartung, of Coopersburg, Pa., who will be a senior at Shippensburg University this fall. Ants began invading her new apartment as dirty dishes piled up in the sink.

Hartung eventually got so fed up with getting stuck washing pots and pans before and after every meal that she finally packed them all up and took them home.

Almost every college student who has moved from a dorm to an apartment probably has a horror story to tell about messy roommates, unavailable landlords or complicated financial problems.

The problems may have seemed unavoidable, but with a little planning, sticky financial, roommate and landlord situations can be avoided or their effects minimized.

Sit down with your roommates before moving in and write down every single expectation and detail, advisers say. That includes making decisions about grocery shopping, cleaning, having visitors or "significant others" spend the night, how the bills will be paid, when and how loud you can play music and addressing any issues unique to your roommates. It may sound cheesy and a little bit nerdy, but it will save a lot of stress and potential fights down the road.

"Leave nothing to chance, even if it makes you squirm to have to discuss it," Masini says. "Just keep telling yourself that whatever the level of discomfort is now, it's guaranteed to be 10 times worse if left to fester."

But even with the best planning, problems and disagreements are sure to arise. Keeping a cool head and leaving emotions out of the problem-solving will help resolve issues in a responsible and mature way.

"When you're young, youth and stupidity go hand in hand," says Boyce Watkins, a Syracuse University professor and author of the book "Everything You Wanted to Know About College." "If a student wants to move off campus, prepare as best as you can in advance. You're going to pay tuition in the school of life. Life's most valuable lessons come from our most costly experiences. You're never going to learn about life if you don't live it."

Your apartment-mates are going to be so much better; they are your three best friends. Everything goes along perfectly until Sally stops taking out the trash and Joe doesn't wash the dishes. It doesn't bother you the first few times. But one day it gets to be too much, and you explode at your lazy, sloppy friends.

Too many friendships have been squandered away because people think living with their best friends will be problem-free because they will automatically make great roommates.

Oftentimes the exact opposite is true. Friends usually don't make the best roommates because it's hard to do business with friends, and paying rent and utility bills are the business of roommates.

"It gets into an interpersonal issue and causes anxiety about being assertive," says Roger Danchise, the director of counseling and student development at Bentley College in Boston.

Setting guidelines in advance can help eliminate some of the problems. If everyone knows what is expected of them and the rules are written down, people are more likely to follow through on their responsibilities.

"If you have explicit conversations before you get into that situation, you're going to have a much healthier and happier living environment," says Brendon Burchard, the CEO of College Success Bootcamp.

So set the limits in advance. Make a list of chores that explicitly says who is responsible for what. If one person does the dishes, then another can vacuum and a third can take out the trash.

If a problem arises and one person doesn't do his share of the work, have a meeting — immediately. The longer a problem is left to fester, the harder it will be to confront the person about it.

It's important to agree in advance that if a problem does arise, all parties involved will lay the friendship aside and approach the issue as business partners. Nothing said in the problem-solving meetings is meant to attack another person on a personal level. Everything is strictly business.

A huge cause of tension between roommates is significant others. When setting advance guidelines for dealing with such visits, common sense should come into play.

"If one of you is having a lot of sex, try to have the sex at your date's house or a hotel instead of yours and your roommate's house when possible," Masini says. "If you are having sex at your house, have it in your room, with the door shut and locked, not common space."

If the situation seems hopeless no matter how much you try to work out the problems, distance can be a good solution. Not necessarily geographical distance, Masini says, but rather emotional distance.

It's important to decide how the bills will be paid before they start pouring in. That way everyone knows their financial expectations and can plan accordingly.

Most experts recommend paying for everything separately except for the rent and utilities. That means everyone should be buying their own food, laundry soap and toothpaste.

"Every college student in the country breaks that rule," Burchard says. "And that's where the trouble begins. It's a no-contest rule in my mind. Don't share finances."

Breakfast and lunch are easy meals to keep separate, but at dinnertime, roommates tend to eat the same meal together using one roommate's food supply.

One solution Burchard offers is to operate like a restaurant. If you or a roommate cooks dinner, everyone else who eats that food pays at the table. The cook should collect that day. Putting payment off until the end of the week makes it too easy for people to forget how much they owe.

Students looking to rent apartments also should realize that no matter how much they crunch the numbers, they should be prepared to spend more than their initial calculations.

Boyce Watkins, a Syracuse University professor and author of the book "Everything You Wanted to Know about College," says students usually don't end up saving quite as much money as expected when moving from a dorm to an apartment.

However, Kara Duggan of Coopersburg, Pa., who will be a senior at Bloomsburg University in the fall, didn't have such good luck with her landlord.

Usino's case is rare. Most landlords aren't friendly with their student tenants, largely because they aren't in the business to make new friends.

No tenants want to be on their landlord's bad side, so there are a few simple steps you can take to build a solid landlord/tenant relationship.

Finding a good landlord takes research. Talking with previous residents of a potential apartment is one of the best ways to get input on the quality of the landlord.

1. Everyone who signed the lease — that should be everyone who will be living in the apartment — should meet the landlord face to face.

2. If a landlord only meets one of the tenants, when a problem arises and is reported by a different tenant, the landlord may move slowly to remedy it.

Following the rules of the lease is the second thing you can do to foster good relationships with your landlord. The last thing is report problems immediately, even if you are the ones who caused them.

Students often don't like to report problems they caused for fear they will get in trouble. But the sooner the problem is reported, the sooner the landlord can fix it.

When dealing with an impossible landlord, it's important that you know your legal rights within your community, which can determine what action needs to be taken.

Finally, no college student wants to be renting an apartment where the large majority of his neighbors are senior citizens. But that's the situation former Allentonian Usino found himself in when he moved into his first off-campus abode while attending Temple University.

"Our days were peppered with steps taken to prevent a knock on our door," Usino recalls, adding he paid close attention to where he parked, how clean their sidewalk was and when it was acceptable to put out their trash.

In some cases, if you're a college student shopping for an apartment, financial situations severely limit options. But if you have more financial flexibility, careful hunting can help avoid the type of awkward neighbor situation Usino and his roommates faced.

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