3 Essential College Apartment Living Adjustments

Living in a college apartment is a massive change to a college student’s lifestyle. Cooking, finances and cleaning are three aspects of college apartment living that you will have to manage, most likely for the first time.

Going away to college is already a big deal. You have to learn to be on your own a lot. You’re not going to have your family members around you.

Once you’ve adjusted to being at college, you might decide to make the move off campus. In this case, you’re going to have to adjust even more. Don’t worry. This can be exciting as well as challenging at the same time. You’re becoming independent and gaining more privacy. It’s just that it might take you awhile to get used to living alone. Here are a few tips to help you start adjusting to living in student apartments.

Adjusting to Cooking

One of the main challenges of living off campus is going to be cooking for yourself. You might prefer to order in most of the time, but you’ll find that your food is healthier and cheaper if you learn how to cook.

The best thing to do is get a simple cookbook. If you’re referring to the internet, check out Cooking Light’s Five Ingredient Cookbook in which you only need to remember to have five ingredients per recipe in your kitchen. Studentrecipes.com also has some great, simple recipes for students, some of which are quite inventive. If you love your mom’s recipes, get her to write them down for you and try them out on the weekend.

You can also cook a couple of dishes when you have the time and then freeze them so that you can eat them whenever you want. Just don’t keep food lying around for longer than a week. Chopping vegetables and meat in advance and then stir-frying everything with some spices when you want to eat is also a good option.

Adjusting to Cleaning

It’s not that hard to learn to keep your things organized. Check out this article from Apartment Therapy, which talks about making the best use of the space you have, no matter how small it may be. You’ll be surprised at how well you can decorate and organize a small apartment with a few tips and tricks.

Once you’ve unpacked everything and bought all the furniture you need, you just need to clean for half an hour a day. Your dishes should take about 15 minutes to do and putting away your things every morning should take another 15 minutes.

Plus, you will have to take out a couple of hours every week to do laundry and sweep and mop your apartment. It’s best to get all this cleaning done at one go and then you don’t have to think about it for another week.

Adjusting to Maintaining Your own Finances

You need to learn to manage your finances when you live in off-campus housing. First of all, you’ll need to have a bank account. If you have a part-time job, it’s best to get direct deposit so that you don’t have to go to the ATM or a bank to deposit your money. If your parents are paying for your off-campus apartment, you can either have them send the rent check directly or just deposit money in your account.

You’ll need to pay the rent and utilities every month. Keep track of how much money there is in your account after you make each payment. You don’t want to get stuck with overdraft fees which can be quite hefty, even if the amount is small. You can also set Google alerts to remind you to pay your bills on time.

Read this great article from Huffington Post, which will help you to manage what they call the “Financial 15.” Student debt can turn into a real problem unless you take steps to avoid it from the beginning. So read the fine print on your student loan documents and start using your student id to get discounts wherever possible.

Do you have any tips or stories on how you started adjusting to cooking, cleaning or keeping up with your finances in your first student apartment? Perhaps there are some other big adjustments that students should be aware of when moving off campus? Share your tips with us below in the comment section.