My job is an 'Accommodation Liaison Student', basically I am there as a sort of welfare and discipline student for first year students. I do 2-3 nights a week and get every 4th week off, so the workload isn't too bad. There are four first year accommodations on my University campus and there are 4 ALS's in every building. So me and three others work in my building, each of us having our own flat. As a group of 16 we all get on reasonably well and am very god friends with a few of them, I also have my friends who I know from my first year of uni and then new friends I have made this year. So I am never alone, I always have friends to go and hang out with, but, living on my own can get awfully lonely.
As I said I do have friends who I go out and hang out with so I am not alone, I am just lonely. All my life I have lived with someone; up until I was 18 I lived with my Mum my Dad and my sister and then when I was in my first year of university I shared kitchen and bathroom spaces with 17 other people, but now there is just me. It is weird waking up to an empty flat and coming home at night to an empty flat and something to this day I still find hard to cope with.
I go out and see my friends when we are all free, but sometimes I have uni work or they have uni work and having friends who have similar work patterns to you it is hard to find a day when a few of us are free to just chill or go out and have a drink. Before Christmas I don't think I tried as hard as I probably should have done to see everyone when I could have but that was my own fault really. So when I go back to uni I am going to try and follow these tips on how to live on my own successfully.
Top Tips on How to Live on Your Own
- Food
Shopping for food was something it took me a while to get used to, as I was used to buying food that I could share with other people that I was living with and at the start of the year I was throwing away a lot of food. But what I found is that if I specifically buy more food than needed, I can make my meals and freeze them for use another night. If it suits you then have the same meal every day for a week and if you don't want to do that have the same 4/5 meals over the space of a few weeks and spread them all in. Buying in bulk can help to cut the costs and doing this will help to cut down on your weekly shopping bill. - Keep Yourself Busy
Always try to have something planned for everyday. If you have a plan of what you want to do that day you can just get about doing it. Even if your plan is to have a lazy day in your PJ's and do nothing that is what you planned to do that day and you don't feel like you are wasting your day. Try to plan days or nights out with people in advance so if you do unexpectantly have nothing to do one day you have something to look forward to that night. Or if you do find you have nothing to do do not be afraid to call up and see if anyone else is free to have a casual drink or watch a movie. - Don't Watch TV During the Day
One of the things I hated most about living on my own is when you wake up, or come home from seeing friends I was always alone in my flat with nothing to do. But if you can get your favourite television series 'on demand' wait until those nights you come home with nothing to do and watch them then. If you are sticking to Tip 2 and you are keeping yourself busy then you will be grateful to have something to do late at night when everyone has gone home and you are in your flat alone or you have just woken up and are waiting to go to class or work. - Take Yourself off Somewhere New
If you want to spend the day relaxing by reading a book or if you have some work to do for your class or exams to revise for, leave your flat and do it elsewhere. Go to the library to study or down to the pub and have a drink and read but just try to get out of your flat. Living alone can get frustrating with having nothing but those same four walls to look at, but getting a change of scenery can be a great help, more than you realise. Being somewhere different can keep you away from feeling like you are trapped and alone and can actually relax you. - Yes All That Mess is Yours
I never realised how messy I could actually be until I lived on my own. Living with other people you can often rely on someone else to wash up that breakfast bowl you forgot about or replace the toilet roll that is nearly running out. Living on your own you have to do everything yourself, do not leave it all until the last minute. Take a day every week, for me it is a Friday, and make that your cleaning day. Go about the flat, dust it, hoover it, tidy it all up, do your laundry and make sure you are not running out of toilet roll and toothpaste. This day is also a good day to do a small weekly shop of anything you are running out of and will save a huge bill when you do your 'Big Shop'
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