Mortgage hitting 50% of take-home pay - anyone else moved from living alone to having a housemate? - Hi all,

Familiar story I'm sure -- bought a 2br apartment in Melbourne in 2021 (first home owner, in my late 20's, used the govt first home loan deposit scheme to buy with a 10% deposit without paying LMI). Most of my loan has been fixed @ 1.99% but that's becoming un-fixed in November. Once it becomes un-fixed, my repayments will exceed $2400, which is slightly over 50% of my take-home pay (roughly 30% of my gross pay). I'm single and live alone (with my two cats), and do a mixture of WFH and work from office. I'm on just under 100k but with a pretty sizeable HECS debt so that eats into things. I work for a university with defined pay grades so I can't negotiate a pay rise.

To prepare for my loan becoming un-fixed, the last couple months I've been living as if my repayments are already $2400 and just putting the excess payments as redraw in my variable portion of my loan. It's manageable but only just, and getting pretty difficult -- after my standard groceries/transport/bills/pet food/insurance payments, I've only got a couple hundred dollars per week max as buffer/entertainment/potential savings. Living alone that does make it a bit harder to have a good social life, to go on dates (especially since the early stages of dating are so expensive with coffee or drinks, food, activities), and just save for things like future travel or repairs for my apartment (essentially 6 months after I moved in, body corp found out lots of the balconies are water-damaged and need to be replaced, so I need to pay my contribution of 8k start of next year for my portion of the cost - I want to pay upfront as otherwise they put me on a 7-year loan with 10% interest). Plus my savings have taken a hit the last year with some surgeries I've had to have.

My apartment needs to remain owner-occupied until LVR < 80% (probably another 2 years at least) due to the terms of the first home loan deposit scheme, otherwise I'd be liable for paying LMI now.

With all that context, I'm considering getting a housemate to at least cover some of my costs and wanted to know if anyone has done similar or is considering doing similar? I'm hesitant because my apartment isn't massive so it's definitely going to feel cramped with another person here -- I think it would be different if it was a couple sharing this apartment versus two single people sharing this apartment just on the way that couples use space vs two single people use space. Like, I meal prep on the weekends since I play a lot of sport on weeknights so don't have time to cook during the week, so my fridge is always pretty full -- it's hard to imagine how a second person could fit in with this. That, and having to move my desk into my bedroom as well which is going to be a strain on my work/life balance.

That said it might be something that needs to be done for my financial wellbeing at least for the short-term, so my question is -- if you've done similar, how did it go and any learnings that you can share? Or any other suggestions/advice for things I can look into?