Some Things to Expect When You Move Out

After three months of living alone, the initial thrill of freedom and excitement of getting my own place and receiving new furniture and parcel deliveries has faded. In its place is this more subdued joy of ownership, along with all the responsibilities and chores of living alone.

Chores

My friend remarked how shocked she was when she first faced the never-ending barrage of chores after she first moved out. My colleague echoed her sentiments, saying that even a relatively brief chore of washing the dishes can be difficult to do when all you want to do is rest after a day at work. For most people whose parents did the household chores, or at least had other family members to split the duties with, keeping everything in order at home on your own can prove to be quite a huge time sink.

Personally, I have found chores to be rather manageable. It’s even therapeutic, since I now take a much greater sense of pride in keeping my own place neat and tidy. I find that how well you keep to doing your chores properly depend highly on how convenient you make it to be, and how good your tools are for the job at hand.

I’ve kept my place as minimal as I can. When I lived at my parents’ place, I had minor issues with hoarding. A cluttered place isn’t just untidy; it makes cleaning up a lot more troublesome which results in it being done a lot less frequently.

Also, I have found great tools to make chores a lot more painless. I love the feeling of clean floors beneath my feet, which means frequent vacuuming and mopping of the floors. It’s time-consuming, even with my modest apartment, and I’m glad I found a great robot vacuum for the job. With it, my floors are cleaned daily, and I only have to do some manual cleaning every now and then. I feel like it deserves a full written review, but trust me: at this price point, it is perhaps the best robot vacuum you can buy.

Bills

Having more bills is obvious, but it’s still quite a thing to be experiencing. Being saddled with a six-digit mortgage makes that fantasy of simply quitting a job you no longer enjoy an even more unrealistic dream.

Having your actions solely affect the utility bills also means that leaving on the TV for white noise doesn’t seem like a very innocuous activity any more. Also, having to pay for a quarterly maintenance fee really gets me in the mood to swim more often.

The new Apple Watch that just got released? Not so attractive any more when I think of the bills that matches its price tag. Habits start to shift, and I guess I’m just becoming my parents.

Meals and groceries

This is where I find my biggest pain point to be. I am terrible at cooking, which means I have to buy food from nearby eateries or order food delivery. Coupled with work-from-home arrangements, I have come to discover that meals are really a pick-two-of-three conundrum between cost, convenience, and nutrition. Throw in “I’m sick of eating this for the third time this week” into the mix and food has become an absolute annoyance to me.

Groceries are troublesome too. A loaf of bread can be eaten while fresh for a family of three to four people, but I have thrown out uneaten bread that has turned stale enough times in the past three months that I am never going to buy bread again.

This is an ongoing problem to be solved, and I wonder if anyone has some advice for me here.

Home sweet home

And of course, the whole point of moving out in the first place – the feeling of having a place to call your own is extremely liberating. I get along with my folks well, but even then having my own space is very important. There is no nagging if I stay up to 5AM writing this piece, and I can host friends without disturbing anyone. I can do the dishes whenever I want, and I can decide where everything.

Okay, actually the cat decides.

In this short period of time, I have somehow gotten so used to having my own place that I honestly can’t remember what it was like not living alone. It just feels right, and the way it should be, and a rite of passage in adulting that I am glad to have accomplished.

Are you looking forward to moving out? Or have you done so and face similar or different challenges? Let me know in the comments below!

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