What Should You Know Before Moving Out of Your Parents' House?

Posted on 28/01/2016

Finally, you are free. Or at least you will be, once you find a proper moving van to take all the things on the moving checklist from your parents’ house to your new flat. You got a job, you are off to college – no matter the reason, you are finally leaving the nest and you will start building your own as soon as the removal van takes you there. But don’t be so hasty to start enjoying that newfound freedom of yours. Being away from your parents means more responsibilities and nobody to spoil you. Do you know what that entails? Well, here are the things you need to know before you move out and start living that free life.

•    Grocery shopping doesn’t mean waiting for the groceries to appear in your fridge.
Up until now you always woke up to a full fridge, filled by the magical fridge fairy. You will notice, though, that the fridge fairy stops visiting you once you move house. So now you have to enter the magical land of grocery shopping, unless you want to be disappointed – and hungry – every time you open your fridge door. And yes, grocery shopping is tedious. Deal with it.

•    Generic products are amazing!
With your lowered finances and bigger outcome, you will have a limited budget to work with. The grace of that budget is that you will finally see that generic products are just as fine as brand ones. They will be sufficient for your every need, and they are cheap and available in every store.

•    The house doesn’t clean itself.
Up until now you might have had the notion that besides a fridge fairy there was possibly a cleaning fairy as well. Maybe it’s about time you grow up and figure out that said fairy was your mother, and now that you volunteered to move away from her, it’s time you took her responsibilities. Vacuuming will become your best friend unless you want to swim in dirt and dust. You will learn the art of mopping and window cleaning, and how to do the rest of the house chores that you successfully avoided up to this point.

•    Organising parties is not a good idea.
Bet you couldn’t wait to leave your home and have your own crib where you can arrange all kinds of night-long parties for you and your mates. Right after the first one you will find out a few things: parties are a hassle, you spend too much money of preparing for them and on the aftermath, cleaning up after the party is utterly not worth having the party. You will only need to clean up three people’s vomit off your sofa while suffering from a hangover before you realise that you will never do that mistake again.

•    You will hate landlords.
First of all, always read the full lease agreement. Miss no word, no comma, no full stop. Not every landlord is a nice person and some of them will find ways taking money from you just to repair their property. Others will do regular checkups on your place even if you are not there. Others will completely ignore you till except for rent and when your lease expires. But most of them will demand you take good care of the place and every time they catch you with a messy flat, you will get the riot act.

If you now feel educated enough, you can proceed with the relocation plans and start packing. Soon the movers will come and will take you to the magical place called freedom-with-a-price. Listen to Emerson, learn to be self-reliant and you will not have any problems there.