21 Things You Suddenly Start Doing When You Get Your Own Apartment

1. Treating trips to IKEA with a deep amount of caution because striking the balance between “having the same IKEA apartment as everyone else” and “spending a billion dollars on chairs” is a fine art.

2. Repeatedly declaring “I’m going to get my favorite pictures of my friends printed so I can hang them” and then never doing it.

3. Keeping a collection of precisely three 12-dollar bottles of wine in an unused cabinet and casually referring to it as your “wine collection.”

4. Inviting people over specifically because you have a couch, and now the idea of “sitting on my couch and drinking wine” is the most fun thing your brain can possibly imagine.

5. Talking about how you’re going to hit up the flea market/thrift store because you’re looking for “the right table for the corner of the room,” and spending all your time looking at hilariously ugly salt and pepper shakers.

6. Exercising your ability to walk around naked to your heart’s content, but still feeling semi-guilty, because you’re a functional adult who should probably be putting clothes on out of principle.

7. Debating whether or not to order two sets of utensils when you get your takeout delivered because you don’t want the guy to look at you with that “let’s hope for both our sakes this isn’t all for you” look.

8. Re-arranging the four knick knacks you have on your dresser for maximum calming effect.

9. Hosting parties at your house and feeling the profound, almost transcendent joy of not having to check with anyone else if it’s okay.

10. Getting really excited about purchasing yourself flowers, and then leaving them in the vase way past the point where they should have been taken out, until you basically have a vase full of dried flowers on your table.

11. Realizing that “having no one around to judge your food purchases or eating schedule” is simultaneously the biggest gift and curse one can receive.

12. Looking forward to laundry day more than could be considered normal, because it means you get to wash your sheets, and therefore that night get to roll around in fresh, perfect-smelling sheets without anyone being around to judge you.

13. Arguing with yourself for an entire day about whether or not you’re going to order a pizza for yourself, knowing full well the entire time that you’re definitely going to get a pizza, and you’re definitely going to eat the whole thing.

14. Deciding it’s time to “rearrange your closet” on a regular basis, and spending a whole afternoon listening to music, spreading out your stuff everywhere, and then slowly putting it back together like a jigsaw puzzle (for it to look exactly the same).

15. Showering with the door wide open, blaring your music on your phone placed on the bathroom counter.

16. Inviting people over specifically because you know it will force you to do some serious cleaning, and make you go to the grocery store for more than three items at a time.

17. Having what you think is a highly organized system of boxes and/or bags where you keep all of your important things, but which are just totally random, incoherent boxes and/or bags of things scattered around your apartment.

18. Getting a relatively nice set of glasses and immediately inviting people over to have drinks specifically to appreciate the sweet glasses.

19. Constantly talking about the idea of getting a pet “to keep you company,” but deciding that it ultimately “wouldn’t be fair to the pet,” because you’re not in the right place in your life for one yet.

20. Talking to other people with their own apartments for hours on end at a party about all things living-alone-in-an-apartment-related (i.e., complaining about utilities and square footage), and feeling like you’ve found a kindred spirit.

21. Stating “I’m sorry this place is such a mess” regardless of circumstance, and regardless of actual messiness levels, whenever someone walks into your apartment.