How to find your home sweet home

Gold Coin Theory

Target reader: college students moving into their first apartment

As a college student there are many things to juggle during these four or more years. A key aspect of keeping things balanced is your living situation, where you end your days and begin each morning will have a huge impact on your headspace. 

I remember mid February sophomore year vividly mainly because of the push it gave me to make the move out of the dorms. I had tripped one weekend at my friends dorm and hit my head pretty hard, I felt the familiar ringing and knew I had a concussion; how I manage to be more clumsy sober than most intoxicated I’ll never know. That Monday the health center confirmed it, ordering me lots of sleep, quiet, and no stress. This was the same week my inconsiderate roommate had decided to perform her own- very loud- concerts every night despite many polite texts asking her to stop. 

Living in dorms meant looking past incidents like singing until 1am the night before my 8 a.m. class. Even looking past that same roommate getting a cat without consulting me, or anyone else, one who would bite or scratch me anytime I left my room. I know the kind of balance I need in order to succeed and I living space causing anxiety was not it. This final act of consideration was the push I needed to start looking at apartments. 

Now in my junior year of college I live off campus in a nearby apartment by myself, I didn’t fully realize what a negative affect my prior living situation was having. However, 

moving into an apartment is no small task there was a lot of stress, money, and time spent trying to organize things.

The best thing to doing when moving off campus fresh from campus housing is to make sure you’re not cutting the end of your housing and start of your lease. Problems can occur my advice would be plan for the unthinkable. I can’t imagine many situations worse than having collected things for your apartment and no place to stay in-between your leases. 

Another problem I faced was looking at things organized with logic when moving in reality will almost always be chaos. If you don’t believe me; imagine a 19 year old girl running around the outside of an apartment building, shouting into a phone that no, the mattress that was supposed to be here a week ago is not only missing, but not on the street corner the UPS driver supposedly dumped it. 

Everything that could go wrong is something to come out on the other side of having learned from. You’ll need the numbers to your maintenance people and you’ll need at least a little tool box just in case. These things will help you take responsibility for yourself which may not be fun but it will be something to be proud of. Getting in the habit of having a bill drawer or file and writing down payment dates will be crucial to keeping in order. 

Moving into your first apartment will mean sleeping on air mattresses, no longer having a magic endless supply of toilet paper, realizing when you’re out of food there’s no hall full of 30+ options waiting for you. However, moving into your first apartment will give you something to be proud of even if it takes time. You’re making this huge step into adulthood that should be acknowledged no matter how many toilets won’t flush or dishes in the sink you encounter. 

Use this as a time to continue on the over all learning experience that is college because these routines now have the possibility to sticking with you into adulthood. As cheesy as it sounds the things we look at as impossible now could be saving us from having to encounter this completely unprepared in adulthood.