Studying is a very exciting prospect for many people, and it’s not just because of the new challenge you get to tackle. Studying for many people means moving out of home, whether it be due to a need to move closer to campus, a desire to move in with friends or even due to someone coming from halfway across the world to study! Although it is exciting, it can also be nerve-wracking – there are a lot of skills that need to be learned to function well in a share house, and not having these skills can cause a lot of strain within your accommodation, particularly if everyone else has already developed these skills. No need to worry, though – in this article, we take a look at a few great skills you can familiarise yourself with before the big move!
Understand money and maintenance
It can certainly be intimidating moving into student housing in Sydney when you’ve only ever lived with your parents, but it also represents a very exciting opportunity to learn a lot of important responsibilities and some great life skills. Perhaps the best place to start is money management – living with parents doesn’t really give you the opportunity to understand the intricacies of bills and the need to be financially savvy, and this can very quickly lead to disaster for someone who is trying to scrape by on limited funds. To ensure you can get by, create a budget that includes things like rent, bills, groceries and anything related to study, and the rest you know you can use on recreation (then you won’t unwittingly blow your month’s rent at the pub on a Friday). In addition to understanding money better, moving into a new home will afford you the opportunity to get familiar with all the home maintenance bits that help with general accommodation upkeep. This doesn’t necessarily mean the big stuff, necessarily – it’s the responsibility of a landlord or service provider to work these out – but just little things like checking smoke alarms and deep cleans of the oven every now and then.
Become a household cleaning whizz
Most people would have to do some basic chores while they were living at home, but moving into a new home means those responsibilities are expanded quite considerably. Because you’re now living with other people, you’ll have to take extra special care to clean up after yourself as you can’t assume someone else will do it on your behalf. Being in shared spaces is all about common courtesies and just as you shouldn’t leave dishes unwashed for a week, neither should your housemates – if they do, it might be time for a house meeting. If everyone in the house is struggling to a degree, working out a cleaning roster can keep everyone in check and ensure that everyone does their part and knows when to do it.
You’ve got to start somewhere
Picking up all the necessary skills to be the perfect housemate might not necessarily come straight away, but by demonstrating that you’re constantly trying and improving your housemates will naturally cut you a lot of slack. For you all you know they’re doing a lot of learning themselves!
Daryl Green