By Emily • 8 Comments
When you live by yourself, you learn a lot of things, including lots about yourself. The first time I moved out, I thought I had everything about being an adult mastered. Living alone created plenty of opportunities for me to learn about myself, my abilities, and my limits. And it really taught be responsibility. Here are some of the things that you might learn when you live by yourself:
When you live by yourself, there is no one looking over your shoulder. You have to make sure that your bills are paid. Responsibility kicks in when you’ve living in the dark because you forgot to pay the electricity bill a few days ago. Lots of companies will work with you to find the best due dates so it’ll be easier for you!
My biggest fear when I moved into my own place was that I would be alone. Living alone scared me! I even had extra keys made for my parents and a few sorority sisters and a back-up plan for emergencies. If no one heard from me in 20 hours, they were allowed to come over to check on me.
Spiders don’t ever get better with time, but you’ll get better at dealing with them. I will never forget the phone call I made to my best friend to come over. It involved him driving across town to kill the spider in my bathtub. Now, my cowboy boots or Hunters are my go-to tool.
I didn’t use most of my storage cabinets. Why? Because I couldn’t reach. I ended up getting storage boxes to store my stuff under my bed. I seriously considered writing my landlord asking if I could pay half of my rent, since I could only reach half of my apartment.
When you lived by yourself, did you sleep with a light on? Sleeping in a huge apartment by myself was hard to transition to. It’s a strange combo of total silence and creepy noises. I’m getting better, though! I’m to a point where I no longer have to run to my bed to avoid the monsters…but that doesn’t mean that they’re not out there.
I gained 8 pounds the first month I lived alone. I like to think that it is because there was nobody there to judge me or my consistent 2 AM snacking habit. I would stay in bed over the weekends and not clean the house, since no one else has to deal with my pigsty. But then, fast-forward three weeks later, and you have dishes overloading the sink.
Living alone is an experimental lesson. When I had a roommate, it was rude for my guy to come over all the time, so he didn’t. This let me have more personal time. But now that I live alone and have a more serious boyfriend, it’s a lot less play…it’s a lot more like playing house.
So those were some of the things that I learned when I first lived by myself. And I’m still learning so much! What were some things that you learned about yourself when you first moved out?