Most of those chores that you hated doing as a child were just preparing you for living on your own with these pertinent life skills. If you did not have the opportunity to practice their skills here are the ones that you are going to need before you are out on your own.
Taking care of yourself can means more than hygiene, dressing well, and eating. It is a life skill that encompass all the following life skills that you need in order to live on your own successfully.
Time management is definitely a life skill that you need to know before you leave home. When you are outside of your parents and guardians’ home all those responsibilities that you may have passed off to someone else will now be your responsibility. If you can manage your time, you’re on your way to master adulting. Just like you need a schedule for school, you need a schedule for your personal life to keep yourself on track in order to run your life successful. Put on the schedule when you are going to do laundry? when your bills are due? when do I have time to clean? When do I have time do go to the gym? What time do I have available to eat? When should I go grocery shopping? How to manage my work schedule with classes and homework? I think that you get the idea, you can fill in the blanks with whatever you have interest in doing that you are going to have to manage on your own.
When you go to college you will meet a lot of different people with a lot of different beliefs and people who do not always agree with you or what you believe. A life skill that is essential is to know how to communicate. It is easy to talk to someone that you get along with, but it takes a real talent to communicate with some who is difficult. Remember what you have to say is important just like what the other person has to say is important. The best thing that you can do is to hear the other person out and use an “I” statement to voice your feelings and concerns. It sounds very simple to do, but there are a lot of people that struggle with this. This is not the only way form of communication that you have to master as a life skill. You need to know how to speak to other people respectfully and the right way through different communication channels (email, phone, social media, etc.). Mastering communication will help you for the rest of your life.
You need to know how to do your own laundry before you leave your parents’ home. It is not that hard but you do have to have your time management skills to make sure that you have clean clothes. It is not a good feeling to wake up and realize that you do not have any clean clothes to wear. Or that you have so many assignments due that you do not have any time to even go to the laundry mat. Doing laundry is really simple, but there are different combinations that you can do to wash your clothes, so just find the right way that works for you. If you are wonder what do I mean by combinations in doing laundry, I mean some people prefer to place the clothes into the washer put soap on top of the clothes and turn on the washer. Other people prefer to start the washer and put in detergent and wait for the water to become soapy. Then add the clothes. Some people prefer to separate the color clothes from the white clothes. Others prefer to just throw all the clothes in to the washer together. Some people prefer to use bleach, fabric softer, or drier sheets. It all depends on what you want to do.
No matter where you live you are going to have to clean something. It is not the funniest thing that you are going to want to do, but a clean environment is good for your healthy. This life skill can take up a bit of time to do right, but you can make the activity fun by turning up some music and get to cleaning. If you work on some of it daily. It may seem like a headache at first, but it will save you time in the long run. Go ahead and get yourself a broom, mop, mop bucket, cleaning supplies, and gloves (you want gloves so it does not damage your hands from the cleaning chemicals). Most importantly when you are cleaning is to not mix cleaning solutions. It could cause respiratory problems, damage your nervous system, and death. Use your cleaning solutions carefully.
Money is essential to purchasing the different things that you need to survive making it a life skill that will require you to be diligent in your spending habits. There are many ways to begin managing your money. One way is to open a bank account. A good place to bank when you are starting out is a credit union because they place member interest into your account. Unlike some banks that take out money from your account. When you are weighing out your options remember that credit unions are not available all over the US and are limited to using the service only in your state. The best place to start is to create a budget. It will help you to see what exactly you are spending your money on consistently, and help you to see where you can cut back. Remember that just because you have money you do not have to spend all of it. You need to also save money. One thing about adulting is unexpected expenses do come up and you need to know how to bail yourself out.
The life skill that you definitely need to know before move out is how to cook. If you live on campus then you might not have the opportunity to cook, but you still need to know how. The best place to begin is to ask your parents to teach you some simple recipes. If that is not an options then you can always look up some recipes or even look up how to do something on YouTube.
If you have not left home yet you can go ahead and start practicing these life skills now.
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