On my way to not being the creepy guy who lives in his parents basement, I'm learning shit I'll need when I move out in a few months - namingly after ruining a few shirts I have no idea how to do laundry Focus: Funny stories about the transition to leaving the parents place to college or your own place Alt-Focus: Any 'gotchas' people living on their own often forget/don't notice?
Laundry and cooking were chores of ours early on in life, but I never learned how to sew, a skill that comes in handy...especially when you're on a business trip and you lose a button the morning of the presentation/sales call.
Buy a crock-pot. Cook with it at least twice a week. Stews, chili, soup, casserole...you name it. Clean one room a day. If your place is small enough, it should stay at a reasonable level of disaster and never seriously deteriorate. Keep an emergency list of numbers on your door for when some appliance breaks or some part of the apartment goes down. Borrow a Sam's card and stock up on things like detergent, toilet paper, and other stuff that doesn't expire. It will actually cut down on your grocery bills and you don't want to run out of that stuff. Don't cook naked, especially not pancakes.
Two words: V8 Fusion Focus: I had no idea how to properly clean a shower. At first I figured, "I'm covered in soap, the soap bounces off of me and onto certain parts of the shower, thus cleaning the entire thing eventually. This idea is fullproof." Wrong. Mold spots appeared within maybe 2 weeks. Then, I graduated to spraying down the shower (walls, curatin, everything) with Tilex about once a week and thought that was perfect. Wrong. Mold gets to where the Tilex doesn't. Underneath all of the bottles of soap was a grime unclassifiable by modern science. Then I broke out the gloves and brush and did it right. Took me almost 2 years to get to that point. Do the fucking dishes. Cheese becomes concrete, ketchup changes physical properties, and tiny bugs will appear from nowhere to dine on your leftovers. Do the dishes after you're done eating--or, if you're lucky enough, put them in a dishwasher--and you'll avoid a bunch of hassle later on. Plus, you'll actually be able to refill the Brita in your sink (that actually used to be my gauge for deciding when it was time to do the dishes. If the Brita didn't fit, it was time to take care of business) Hamburger Helper is easy, but it's not good As others have said, a Sam's Club or BJ's card is king. Buy a bunch of pasta, ground beef, and pasta sauce and make your own "hamburger helper" without all the garbage that's in it. Plus, if you cook a pound of pasta and a good deal of ground beef, you have easy leftovers for at least a couple more meals.
Abso-positively. Even if the cost is a bit much for you, you will learn more and grow more doing the starving artist thing in a loft apartment than you will with a support group. This is primarily family, roommates aren't bad if that's your thing but you should still live alone for a period to know what it's like. Focus: Get Organized: This is bills, cleaning supplies, belongings - whatever. Keep a calendar, if you have a job interview on Thursday you don't want to be frantically febreezing your one wrinkled up pair of dress pants after Cabo Wabo Wednesday at the local dive. If your electric bill is due on the 21st and the little slip gets lost in your pile of bathroom reading material it's going to suck when they tack on late fees - or worse cut the power while you're trying to microwave bake some tasty pizza rolls. Be Clean: This is a big one, when you bring a girl over it's not enough to have all the Playboys shoved under the couch, and all of the fast food wrappers in the vicinity of the kitchen trash. Yes, cleaning takes a bit of time - but not that much. Yeah, it takes some effort but do it - and then thank your Mother for the last however many years she's been picking up after you. If you pick up after yourself cleaning a standard 3 bedroom apartment shouldn't take more than 45 minutes a week. This will pay off once you are living with someone again too - nobody likes living with a slob. Aside from that eat well, party hard, explore your hobbies - or get some, learning to live alone isn't just the actual day to day grind it's a set of mind.
This isn't really funny, but my mom made me do all sorts of chores growing up knowing I'd be on my own someday. I had to mow the lawn and all that jazz, but the stuff that really helped me down the road was all the indoor stuff. I had to help not only clean my room but cleaning the bathrooms, kitchen ext. She made me learn how to do laundry and iron my clothes. She also got me interested in learning how to cook. I can't sew any fancy shit, but I was at least shown how to thread a needle and close holes and put buttons back on. Very helpful. Now, I'm not saying I'm really great at any of these, but I make do. It all really came in handy when I left for college. It's amazing how many people had no idea how to boil water or do a lick of laundry. I was clean and was self proficient. Was pretty helpful in many aspects of life. One thing that I wished I learned more at an early age is proper money management. Took me a long time to get that one down and could have helped a bit earlier on. I'm alright now, but I wish some more was instilled at an earlier age.
Get into a routine with the chores. The clean one room a day trick works great, but have a day where you are scheduled to do laundry or clean the bathroom(s). And by cleaning the bathrooms, don't just buy the scrubbing bubble spray and hope it works, get down on your hands and knees and scrub. Have a system for laundry as well. Nothing makes you look like more of slob than having clothes all over the floor. Get a hamper (preferably one with light and darks labeled) and use it. Having dirty clothes in one spot will make the place look a lot better and it will be easier to tidy up if someone is coming over.
I'm undecided on cable. I need a TV anyway for my multiple consoles + bluray collection, but as for cable the main thing I watch is hockey... that said my favourite team is out of market so I'll likely need to pony up for that. I'm fairly sure NHL Gamecentre doesn't let me watch my team anyway because theyre still on french TV in my market.
Yeah, this makes no sense, especially if you're not financially capable of affording a place on your own. If you're the kind of person who likes their personal space, live by yourself. If you aren't, don't. Simple as that. As long as you're not a leech who's going to treat your roommate like your mother, you don't have to be by yourself to 'grow'. You're not proving anything to anyone by living alone, and you'll have plenty of time to learn 'what it's like' when your kids move out and your wife is dead.
How about just working smarter? The other side of the coin is learning how to do certain things yourself and save money--which, incidentally, has nothing to do with feeling more manly. In college, I helped a few people do repairs in their place--as well as my own--and made a deal with the landlord that the repairs that we did, so long as they were approved by them, would come off of the rent. In those cases, you can actually make your place nicer without increasing your costs.
I'm curious, is this just an American thing? I wasn't born here and I've been here most of my life, but I've noticed most people who were born here do not know how to do a lot of these basic things vs people who were not born here seem to find them normal necessary things to learn. Is this normal or is this just common with the people around me?
I didn't know that my ATM card from my bank could also be used to purchase things at stores directly out of my debit account. I think my mom eventually clued me in after mentioning how I was always buying groceries with cash.
Depends on the type of household one was raised in. Both of my parents worked, so laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. were all shared responsibilities among all of us. My first college roommate had a stay-at-home mom who did everything, so he had no clue about doing laundry (first time he did it, he asked me to show him how to operate the washing machine). As a parent, I'm all for providing my kids with every advantage I can, and I include teaching them self-sufficiency as part of that. I think not doing so is doing them a disservice.
I dont know, when I was in college at least half of the foreigners I knew, smelled like they had never taken a bath, let alone washed their clothes. So if they knew how to wash themselves/there shit, it certainly did not show.
I'm amazed at the people who don't do the one thing that will make their lives a lot easier "CLEAN WHILE YOU COOK." Don't put something in the oven and then sit down and do nothing, fucking wash everything so you don't have to do it after you eat.
Don't put eggs on to boil and then go to the laundrymat, forgetting about the eggs. Luckily I was going to pick up my already in the dryer and dry clothes so I wasn't gone that long but, by the time I got back there was billowing smoke, bad smells and a burned up enamel pan. Not good. I do love hard boiled eggs and egg salad is my favorite sandwich, plus eggs are cheap so there's that, a two fer.
Here's another one that may seem silly and I'm just now getting good at it and I've been on my own for a good long time now. Learn to shop wisely for food and other essentials. Learn how to use coupons and how to find good deals. Also, learn how to cook and eat healthy. It's amazing how much money can be saved by using coupons, knowing where in your area is the best place to get what you need. Costco/BJ's/Sam's Club are great, but you can find deals at other places as well. We've got a couple Wal-Marts here, one is a grimy dump, but one is pretty new and one of the Super Wal-Marts. Their prices are pretty insane most of the time across the board. We now go through the Sunday paper and find out what's on sale where. We have a few grocery stores in out area along with Target/Wal-Mart, drug stores, etc. We're clipping coupons, strategizing about what we'll get where, and planning meals ahead of time and saving a shit load doing it. It's expensive on your own and every little thing adds up. I wish I would have done more of this back in college and very shortly afterwards. I would have had so much more drinking money. We save enough now to essentially offset a good portion of our new diaper and formula costs. Seriously, I wish I did this so much earlier. It costs the Sunday paper and a little bit of time.
Im lucky in that my employer is a major grocery chain and I get 10% off anything that isn't a prescription General home-repair stuff is a complete failing for me, but I'm looking into it with google-fu; spending $300 to fix the sink seems frivolous if I can do it myself and not wait for a guy.