The week before I moved out of my parent's house, I realized I had been using fabric softener to wash my clothes, and that's the moment I knew this new journey was going to be difficult. Since then, I have been living on my own for about one year. Visiting home only four times was a huge change when I had been living with my parents full time up to that point. Living on your own is comprised of trying to cook three meals a day with no groceries, remembering to dust and change your sheets, attempting to keep up on laundry and calling home with stupid questions way more often than you thought you ever would. Here are five of the things I learned during my first year without my parents.
1. I have zero cooking skills.
"Hey mom. Uh, how do I make chicken?" was one of the first phone calls I had to make. Yes, chicken is a very common food and used in plenty of dishes, but I realized that, even though I had cooked with my parents before, I never knew how long chicken actually took to cook all the way through. After my mom laughed at me and helped me out, I only had to Google it a few more times. Better safe than salmonella, right?
2. Putting bathroom mats in the washing machine does not end well.
One Saturday morning about a month ago, I decided to clean my bathroom rugs, so I put them in the washing machine. About 10 minutes later, we had a small flood in our kitchen and water rushing out of the machine. Maintenance came and they were not the least bit impressed. Turns out cheap appliances can't clean bath mats!
3. I am drowning in laundry and laundry detergent.
These two issues went hand in hand. My mom would send me home with 568 tide pods to do laundry (duh), but I would end up wearing every single thing I owned before doing laundry. This would result in five loads of laundry all over my room along with Tide Pods stored all over the place. Add the fact that I lived in a literal shoe box with three other girls (all of whom also never did laundry) and laundry and detergent slowly took over my life.
4. Apartment buildings are built much cheaper than my parents' house.
We had some interesting neighbors around our little shoebox. The first weird thing to note was the fact that, until the eighth month I lived in my apartment, I never saw a single person on my floor except for my roommates, which is even more strange when considering that our room faced the elevator. Not only was it a little creepy, but the four boys who lived below us were the bane of my existence due to some thin walls and shared vents. I woke up one morning to one of them eating cereal; we both had windows cracked, and I could hear his little spoon banging against his bowl, which was all very strange and not exactly how I wanted to get to know my neighbors. Now not only could we overhear every meal they ate, I could also hear any interesting videos they watched, smell anything they decided to inhale (April 20th was VERY potent) and, believe it or not, this summer we could even uh...feel activities that they enjoyed doing (this sounds crazy, but I have Snapchat videos as proof, of course).
5. Vegetables go bad.
While shopping, I try to buy healthy items such as lettuce, grapes, apples and avocados. The funny thing about buying these items is that they seem to last ten times longer (but don't stay fresh near as long) as pizza rolls, sandwiches and all of my snack foods. I am convinced they just go bad too fast before I actually get around to eating them and that I don't just forget about everything in the crisper drawer.
After the longest 12-month lease to ever be signed was over, I was more than happy to pack my things up and go visit home for a little bit. It is safe to say that I will never take thick walls, free Tide Pods, my parents buying vegetables and chicken recipes on Google for granted ever again.
man running in forestPhoto by 
