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Moving into your own place can be both exciting and a little scary. While you may be excited to have extra space and more freedom, you soon realize there are a few unexpected problems you hadn’t considered before.
Who’s going to stop you from buying those double stuff Oreos every week? How do you keep the unexpected loneliness at bay?
These are four challenges you might face now that you’ve finally got your own pad.
A lack of someone else’s presence can cause you to become lonely. Not having anybody to vent to at the dinner table or accompany you as you watch the latest episode of “The Bachelorette” may have you start wishing for a roommate. This feeling of loneliness can diminish if you have friends over regularly, spend more time outside of the house or even get a pet.
Erin Harpur, who recently graduated from University of Southern California, tells ENTITY that she combats loneliness by spending time with her friends. “The great thing about living alone is that you don’t need permission to invite company over,” she says. “I’ll invite friends over for dinners or movie nights whenever I’m feeling a little lonely.”
In addition, if you find yourself becoming bored easily, you can always take up a new hobby such as knitting or painting.
READ MORE: New Year, New Hobby
You should be able to get up and going in the morning. But if you are a heavy sleeper, sometimes having another person watch out for you can be beneficial, especially if he or she is a morning person. It’s easy to sleep through an alarm or press the snooze button ten times while being half asleep. You don’t realize what happened until you wake up 15 minutes before you have to leave.
“In college my alarms never used to wake me up, no matter how many I set,” says Angelica Pronto, recent graduate of UC San Diego. “So it’s definitely dangerous to live without roommates.”
It is especially not fun if you’re just shopping for yourself. When you were a kid, you may have enjoyed strolling along with your parents and begging them for all the snacks you saw. It’s difficult to plan out meals during the week while staying within budget. You end up seeing items you don’t need and nobody is there to talk you out of buying them.
Erin Harpur agrees, saying, “It’s not as difficult to stay in budget when you’re paying your own rent. You are almost forced to be frugal.”
READ MORE: How to Cultivate Healthier and Financially Savvy Shopping Habits
If you were used to having someone to tell you to pick up after yourself or wash the dishes, it’s time to start pushing yourself. The motivation to do things won’t be as easy as you might think, especially after an exhausting day of work or school. If you don’t want your place to start smelling and molding, you will have to clean everything at once.
Harpur recommends inviting people over as a motivation. “If I know that I’m the only one who will be seeing the inside of my apartment, it will be a disaster,” she says. “It’s also about maintaining. I usually spend one full day every week organizing and cleaning my place until it looks exactly how I want it to look – then I’m motivated to keep it tidy.”
