A lot of you have been asking me how I’m doing now that I’m finally living on my own. For the most part I’ve been responding, “Oh, I can’t complain!”, and this is true. I really can’t complain. Other than dealing with the periodic bouts of existential crisis that seem to be typical of young adults my age, I am doing very well, and according to an internet article I read earlier this week complaining rewires your brain to be more negative, so that’s something I’d rather not get started doing anytime soon.
Anyway, living in an apartment has been mostly as expected, though I’ve noted a few interesting things from the experience so far.
Cooking a nice meal for myself is really satisfying. It also takes a very very long time.
When you consider time spent planning, looking up recipes, setup and cleanup, hunting for groceries and, like, waiting for stuff to cook, making yourself food takes quite a while. I’ve stopped silently judging when I read articles about people who eat out nearly every meal, and I’ve stopped feeling inwardly prideful at my frugality when I hear that people spend more at restaurants these days than they do at grocery stores. Time is money, and when you’re young you gotta be working as hard as you can while you have the energy and stamina to learn things faster and do things quicker.
I don’t know how people who live by themselves keep up with houses.
I spend enough time cleaning and maintaining a 1-bedroom apartment that I shudder to think what people would have to do if they worked full time, had any sort of active social life or hobbies, and try to fix all their things and mow all their own grass and clean three times as much space on a weekly basis and keep up with all the extra insurance and bills and still get some sleep at the end of the day! You guys are clearly nuts lol.
Moving out is going to be much harder than moving in.
When I moved out of my parents house, I barely had any furniture to take with me to put in my apartment. I had a bed, a beanbag, a card table and a folding chair, and that was about it. Over the past two months I have procured numerous appliances and furnishings necessary to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, and along with them a grim realization that some day this whole ‘renting’ thing is going to come to an end and I’m going to have to rent a moving truck. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there though.
Doing pretty much everything in my underwear is really satisfying!
Why? Because I can! 😀 From the time I’ve been three until now society has told me to put some clothes on at the beginning of the day, but if I’m living in my own place I can do whatever I want and not only does nobody care, nobody even knows! The only reason I don’t run around my place naked is because I don’t want to get any stray butt crud all over my furniture. I’m definitely not about that life.
As a bonus, it also saves money during the summer since I can keep my air conditioner up a couple degrees.
It’s a really mixed bag as to if I like living on my own or liked living with my parents more.
This is a good thing though! I purposefully stayed living at home with my parents for as long as I could, knowing that living on my own was going to be more expensive and a lot more work. I thought when I had to move out that, while I would be responsible enough to take care of myself, I wouldn’t ever enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the lesser responsibilities of living with my parents. While I wasn’t wrong that it is more work, I didn’t anticipate quite how rewarding it would feel to be living on my own and no longer dependent on them. If the situation had been a little bit different I would have gladly kept on staying with my parents, but living on my own has been a lot more fun at times than I thought it would be.
So all in all I’m doing very well! The rent is very competitive, especially considering the area, size of the apartment, included utilities and temperament of the landlord, and I like the way that I have furniture set up.