When you start living on your own for the first time, in rooms or on your own floor, you are suddenly faced with a lot of changes. Of course, there are also many fun aspects to it, such as furnishing your living space and the independence and freedom that you may experience once you leave home. But there are also some bottlenecks that you have to take into account. After a short period of living on your own, you can experience a dip.
Rooms for the first time. What should you take into account?
When you live in a room for the first time, a lot of things come your way. If you really have to manage completely independently, you suddenly have to cook yourself, wash your own laundry, pay your rent and other fixed costs on time, ensure that you remain insured against illness and accidents. Be careful not to leave your key. lost, get your own groceries on time, make sure you get your monthly payment, keep your living space clean, and so on.
Cook yourself
Cooking yourself can be a lot of fun. Eating alone is not very pleasant. If you live with several people in a building where rooms are rented, it can be nice to agree to cook and eat together (regularly). If you live with several people in a unit, the kitchen, shower, toilet and washing machine are usually used together. You are therefore expected to always leave communal areas clean and to adhere to your chore agreements. You are also usually expected to help pay for items that you use together, such as washing powder and toilet paper.
Benefits of living on your own
The advantages of living independently in a room are usually related to having more freedom and being able to make independent decisions about how you spend your income and which friends you invite to visit and when. Of course, you can also determine the furnishings of your house or room yourself, decide what you eat, go to sleep when you feel like it and clean up your mess when it suits you best.
Disadvantages of living on your own
Depending on your home situation before you started living on your own, there are also disadvantages to living on your own. There are many things coming your way that you are responsible for and that are new to you, and if you neglect those things you can get into quite a bit of trouble. Paying rent, insurance, other costs and obligations if you do not pay your bills on time or do not handle your money properly, debts can quickly increase or you can run out of money halfway through the month, which is no fun either. You prevent this by calculating all costs and reserving that money monthly in your bank or giro account. Reserve your fixed costs every month and calculate how much you can spend per week on food and other things. Also try to save a little bit every month. It is useful to have amounts that you have to pay every month, such as rent and subscriptions, automatically debited from your account.
Households
Another disadvantage of living on your own can be that you are on your own. From now on you will have to do every dish yourself and if your house or room is full of rubbish you will have to clean it yourself. Practical matters such as changing your bed and making sure there is shampoo, bread and spreads in the house, all those kinds of things are now your own responsibility and you have to develop a certain routine for that. One is faster and more convenient at this than the other.
Loneliness
Living alone can sometimes be disappointing if you are often alone. It is important that you try to make it a bit pleasant for yourself and it is of course wise not to neglect your social contacts. If at any time you find it very lonely to be home alone, call someone to talk or invite someone over. If that doesn’t work, watch a cheerful program on TV or turn on the radio.
Cleaning up, quickly and effectively
If you have just moved into a room, you may discover that you have never really learned to tidy up. The dishes are piling up, there is rubbish everywhere and you get tired just looking at it. Yet ten minutes a day is enough to keep an overview of your room. If you don’t know where to start, follow these steps:
- First, clear out any clothes lying around by collecting laundry and stacking or hanging clothes that don’t need to be put in the wash in your closet.
- The clothes are gone now. Now walk around the trash. Anything that can be thrown away, throw it in the trash can or in a garbage bag while walking around.
- All waste is now gone. Now walk around crockery. Collect everything related to crockery, food and/or drinks and put it on the counter.
- All dishes are now gone. Now walk around a piece of paper. You collect everything made of paper. Important mail goes in a pile, and magazines in another pile, paper that can be thrown away can be thrown away.
- All paper is now gone. Now walk around the leftovers and put everything that you see lying around and that needs to be cleaned up in a fixed place. Make sure all tables are empty after this.
- Water the plants if you have them.
- Then you walk past your furniture and wipe the tables and cupboards with a cloth.
- Your room now looks neater and at least livable. Empty tables give a room a lot of peace. If you still have time, sweep the floor or use a vacuum cleaner.
- Also straighten the covers on your bed.
- Finally, you water the plants and do the dishes.
Living in rooms, when?
Only move into a room if you are really sure that you can afford it and if you can handle all the extra jobs that you will have to do when you live independently. Think carefully because you usually can’t move back that quickly, and once you live on your own there will be no one to cook for you, do the dishes, tidy up, make your room cozy and clean it and be there if you want to be with someone. to talk. Many young people only discover how much was done for them while they were still living at home, once they live on their own.
How much does living in a room cost?
- Once you have found accommodation, a deposit is often required. Deposit is usually the amount you will pay monthly in rent. The deposit is a kind of insurance for the owner/landlord of the living space. If a lot of damage is caused to the living space, this will be deducted from the deposit by the time you move again. So if your room rent is 250 euros, you often have to pay the same amount as a deposit. If you are a decent tenant and there is no damage at the end of your rental period, you will get the deposit back at the end of the rental period.
- If you are going to live in rooms, a room is often already furnished, which means that it has carpet and curtains
- the windows hang. If the upholstery is to your taste, that’s a bonus. If you want different floor coverings, you must take into account an amount of at least 50 euros for a coupon, up to a few hundred euros for a larger piece of floor covering, depending on the size of your room.
- If you have a budget to furnish your room, consider purchasing second-hand furniture. It really saves hundreds of euros and if you look carefully you will be able to find really nice stuff to your taste. Take a look at online stores such as Marktplaats and in local newspapers for offers. If you are moving into a room , you will need at least: a bed, mattress, bedding, table + chairs, crockery, glasses, cutlery, pan set, a bookcase and wardrobe, things to make coffee and tea, a kettle. If there is no refrigerator and/or TV for shared use, you also need a refrigerator and possibly a TV.
- Maybe you can still do your laundry at home for the time being, if not, you will either need a washing machine or use the expensive laundromat. In that case, try to do laundry for an acquaintance or family member at least once a week. If you buy your things second-hand and are not too critical, spending a few hundred euros on furnishings will go a long way. You have to be handy and look critically for nice second-hand items. Also look at the ‘free collection’ section in (local) newspapers.
Living in rooms and earning money
If you live in a room and are having trouble making ends meet financially, you want to earn some extra money. I assume that you study during the day or already have a job. So you already have an income, it’s just not enough to make ends meet. If you have time, you can of course take a regular newspaper route or leaflet district. You then kill two birds with one stone: you don’t have to pay for expensive sports because you have to walk around the paper route, and you earn something while you’re moving. The disadvantage is that you are tied to fixed times and often have to get out of bed very early to walk your neighborhood. Another way to earn extra money and even generate a lasting income (an income that grows but continues to pay, even after you stop working) is to write online articles. The principle is simple but effective. You write an article about a topic that contains information. This can be about anything, as long as it contains information. So you can also cut papers, book reports and theses into pieces and turn them into small articles. Google will then add appropriate advertisements for every 400 words and because you place the article on this site, which is ranked high in the search engines, you will quickly attract many visitors. Through Google you can then (if you write a few articles every day, for example) build up a very nice monthly additional income. If you were to post two articles per day (more is even more fun and profitable of course) then after a month you would quickly reach an average of $60 in income per month, with 60 articles. If you increase the number of articles to 100, 300 or 500, or more… then assume an average income of about $1 per month per article. The more relevant information your article contains for visitors, the more often the article will be visited and the more income you will generate. It is therefore never possible to predict exactly what your income will be.
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