On your bedroom wall, there is a 5×7 foot poster of the entire High School Musical cast. It’s framed. Zac Efron grins out from behind his man bang at you, seeming to say, “Hey girl. It’s been a while. You look different.” All manner of plush fluffy stuffed things crowd the space at the foot of your bed. You remember that you used to sleep curled up in a ball, so you wouldn’t mess them up. You were also shorter then.
Maybe you’ve just grown, but there seems to be less space now than there was before. You jostle around your mom’s StairMaster 4000, which is gathering dust where your desk used to be, so you can get to your closet, but nothing on the hangers is something you would wear anymore anyway.
There you are, a twentysomething post-grad, standing in the center of your childhood bedroom where you’ve moved back after four incredible, crazy, and completed college years, surrounded again by all the remnants of your former self, and all you can think is: a) Thank God Zac Efron grew out that man bang and b) What am I getting myself into?
We understand. Let Her Campus help you navigate the labyrinth of moving back home after college and how to readjust to life with your parents as roommates. Step one? Give Troy Bolton one final peck, and tear down that poster for good. (Sorry Zac, baby!).
“I’m not your baby anymore.”
For the first decade or so of your life, you relied on your parents for just about everything. Never mind the fact that it’s been another decade or so since this was the case; your parents will likely never emerge from mom-and-dad-mode. You’re their baby, and it may take a little time to convince them not to treat you as one once you move back into their home.
Beth, a graduate of University of Toronto, moved back in with her parents for four months before she started her first teaching post the fall after graduation. “My mom was constantly reminding me to put on a coat or bring a sweater, and my dad was always asking if I’d checked the oil in my car lately, did I have enough gas, et cetera. They were so well-meaning, but I asked them to give me three weeks of no reminders as a test. When the weeks went by without me suffering hypothermia or becoming stranded on a dark deserted road in a broken-down car, they relaxed, and then so could I.”
Your parents do mean well, but their well-meaning may get lost in the delivery. Brian, a graduate of University of Calgary, knows this after living with his mom periodically after graduating from school. “If I said I was going to be awake by 7:20 a.m., I could expect my mom to be knocking on my door at 7:19 a.m. I appreciated the sentiment and knew that she just didn’t want me to be late for anything, but at the same time, an alarm clock was enough to keep me from running late for four years— and an alarm clock alone still did the trick.”
Ask your parents for a grace period of one week to prove to them you can handle yourself independently. It may feel childish—kind of like when you wanted a Bichon Frise at age 10 and proved to your parents first that you could keep your Tamagotchi alive longer than a fortnight—but a trial period of a week free of parental pestering, nagging, and “friendly reminders” will prove you capable of managing your own daily routine without two personal assistants.
“I haven’t had to answer to anyone but me for four years.”
When you’re in college, running out the door is a simple routine. If you’re being especially conscientious, you might stick a Post-it that says “Out” on the fridge in your kitchen for your roommates. It truly takes a kick in the head to remember to tell someone you’re leaving the house now that you’re back home home, but you can’t really just take off anymore without mentioning where you’re headed and when you’ll be back—especially if you’re taking the family car along for the ride.
Brian found the transition from living with roommates to living with parents again a tricky one to navigate. “At school you have your own routine. You get up, brush your teeth, get dressed. No one else is keeping track of you because all your roommates are doing their own routines. You try and treat your parents like roommates, but they’re still trying to be a parent.”
Dylan, a graduate of McGill University, found that a little consistency was all it took to quell his parents’ concerns about his whereabouts when he was out on the town with friends. “In order to curry favor with my parents (my mom in particular), I would send friendly, periodic texts, typically when I knew I would be out late. This provided peace of mind, and starting from the outset of my stint at home, (it) established independence, in my case to the point where my parents didn’t require those texts anymore.”
Negotiating your independence with your parents is as difficult or as simple as proving to them that you are reliable and trustworthy in your independent activities. Taking a hard stand against them and denying their requests for an ETA whenever you’re out will only exacerbate their concern over your well-being. As satisfying as resistance may be, antagonizing your parents is never the way to win favor with them. How would you feel if your parents never told you when or where they were going out? You’d be all, “Seriously mom and dad? Call me!” too.
“Aunt Kim’s Tupperware party? Really?”
You love your family. We know. They are the absolute best and you wouldn’t trade them even for the chance to sit front row at every Marc Jacobs runway show for the rest of time (which is arguably the next most important thing after family). But, dear God, if you have to attend one more holiday show for your mom’s cousin’s daughter’s elementary school or whatever, you may run away to the circus.
Your parents aren’t trying to be demanding of your time. They’re just trying to be inclusive. You’ve come home to stay with them, and they want to make sure you feel like you fit right back into the mix. On top of that, they’re proud of you. You’re their successful college-educated daughter and they’re probably going to want to parade you a bit in front of the extended family.
That being said, where your time is concerned, there is a balance to be struck. Just because you’ve come home to live with your parents doesn’t mean that your schedules are now one and the same—as in, just because mom is invited to Aunt Kim’s biweekly cocktails-and-Tupperware hour doesn’t mean you should have to feign an interest in it out of filial duty.
Beth notes, “I did attend one or two events at the very beginning of my time home because I wanted to see my extended family, too. I missed them! But then I made it clear that plans shouldn’t be made on my account without asking. I reminded my folks I valued family just as much as they did, but I also had to have time for work commitments, friends, and down time.”
Dylan found the case was similar at his house. “Given that my nuclear family is pretty tight-knit, I didn’t have too much trouble in this realm. When we started moving into the territory of four-year-old cousins’ birthdays who won’t notice whether I’m in attendance or not, I began to put my foot down and tell my parents to send my well-wishes to little Marshall, instead.”
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“I’m broke as an ‘80s has-been right now.”
It is a rare breed of post-grad who emerges totally debt-free from four years of tuition, rent, grocery bills, spontaneous spring break trips, and a generous serving of nights out. In fact, if this is the case for you, I would love to meet you and be your personal one-woman applause track for the rest of time. For those of you who are moving back home for a cocktail of financial reasons such as, most centrally, not having to pay rent, money is likely the topic du jour any day of the week: how you’re spending, how you’re saving, how you’re contributing to the household financially, et cetera.
Debby Fowles, author of The Everything Personal Finance in Your 20s and 30s Book, reminds collegiettes that their stint back home coincides with the repayment of any loans taken out to pay for tuition. “The day after you graduate, your six-month grace period begins (some types of loans have different grace periods). Your first loan payment will be due approximately 30 to 45 days after the end of your grace period.” With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to have your financial situation in order to prepare for the road ahead to student debt freedom.
At the heart of it, you’re at home, at least to some extent, to save money. Depending on the agreement with your parents, this post-grad savings crash course might vary anywhere from free rent (but that’s it), to free rent, free groceries, free gas in the car, free shirt-you-saw-at-J.Crew-that-you-had-had-had-to-have.
It’s important to bear in mind, however, that none of these things are actually free. Someone is paying for everything that you don’t pay for—and that someone is your parental unit. Of course, they’re happy to have their daughter back home staying with them, and in the ways of loving moms and dads worldwide, they would probably argue that your presence is payback enough.
For Dylan, however, borrowing money from his parents is not something to be done scot-free. “I have friends who have no issues accepting money from their parents and subsequently spending it in one fell swoop, reigniting the vicious cycle of what I call ‘The Replenishable Mom and Dad Supplementary Trust’.”
Fowles encourages collegiettes to “review the status of your student loans to see if you’re taking advantage of all the benefits offered by lenders and if the plan you’re in still suits your changing financial situation. Just because the terms of your student loans include a particular repayment plan doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it; if it isn’t working for you, you can apply for a change.”
Beth knows that there are few discussions more important than the financial one after returning home to live with your parents. “This was an important discussion to have right away after moving home. I had a summer job and I wanted to contribute at home, too, so I was open about my earnings, how long I expected to be home, and how much was reasonable to contribute while leaving me enough money to have some independence—which included the money I used to travel for career job interviews. It was good for my parents and for me to know I had a time frame—and a budget—in mind for how long I’d be home; that I had an end goal.”
Are you going to contribute to the grocery bill? Will you chip in on gas in the car? If your parents ask you to pick something up at the store, will you pay with your own Visa or theirs? What is your budget? What is your saving plan? These are all significant questions to work out on your own and with your parents before moving back in.
“Let’s hang out at my (parents’) place”
It used to be that you loved having people over at your place. Your mom would be all “cool mom” à la Mrs. George from Mean Girls and pop her head into the rec room periodically to be like, “You girls want some fresh-baked cookies? Party mix? Pop? Delivery pizza? Tell me how many. Are any of you vegetarian? Should I ask for no pepperoni?” Now that you’re back at home, you want to be able to mingle with your friends without feeling like your parents are going to bust in on you at any moment and be all, “Okay guys. Fun’s over. It’s a school night. Everybody get on home.” Or perhaps more confusingly now that you’re older, “What’cha guys talking about? Can I join?”
It’s not about gratefulness; of course you’re grateful to your parents for everything they’re doing for you. But just like you know when to leave your mom and her bridge ladies alone on Sunday afternoons to gossip and eat scones, and when to let your dad watch the game and yell at the TV with his buddies on Friday evenings, you want the same treatment from them when you bring a friend or two back to your place to hang.
Beth found it easier to simply meet up with her friends elsewhere. “Luckily my parents had a family room separate from the living room where they usually hung out, so my friends and I could have a little privacy, but 90% of the time I preferred to go out.”
Dylan, however, saw it another way; not wanting to impose on his parents, he found ways to peacefully share the space when entertaining friends. “My parents have a decent-sized patio, so I would typically host my friends outside. It’s all about respect of your parents’ space, but striking a balance in the ‘shared space.’”
Talk to your parents about what’s cool as far as having people over. Making it clear that you value their feelings on having company over from the beginning will make it easier to get the green light for hosting a wild rager down the line.
“P-R-I-V-A-C-Y”
When you’re living with roommates, the realm of privacy is easy enough to negotiate. The sacred oath of privacy is practically unsaid between housemates, and all it takes is a sock on the door handle, or a screening of this video featuring Leighton Meester, to drive the point home. When your housemates are your parents, however, this is a point of potential contention.
Beth found it difficult initially to break her mom of the habit of treating her bedroom like just another room under the roof. “When I first moved back, I returned home one afternoon to see that my mom had made my bed, put my dirty clothes in a hamper, and stacked my books including my journal on the night stand. I knew she meant well buuut… I made an agreement with her to stay out of my room completely and that I would dust, vacuum weekly, and return dirty dishes to the kitchen daily in return.”
While it’s important to set certain boundaries with your parents upon moving home, you also don’t need to close off one wing of the house to achieve the privacy you desire. Despite how it may seem, any parental invasions of your space are probably not intentional and can be worked out through a discussion of the difference between checking in on you every so often and being a total helicopter parent.
“OMG, don’t come in!”
The question of privacy is tricky enough when you’re negotiating it only for yourself, but what about when you’re looking for privacy for both yourself and a guy you’re seeing? In high school, it’s possible your parents instituted a strict no-bedroom-doors-closed policy, but since you’ve moved back, this archaic rule has become seriously outdated.
Depending on your mom and dad’s views toward dating, drawing the line between what’s okay and what’s not might feel like delineating territory in a war zone. But if you’re mature enough to expect to be able to bring a guy back to your home, you’re mature enough to diplomatically handle the conversation that comes along with that allowance.
You may find that your parents are actually far more lenient than you expected them to be about the whole “are boys allowed?” question, and they’ll respect that you were mature enough to take it up with them and not simply assume their position on the subject. Don’t wait to be caught with your pants down (literally) to have the conversation. It’ll be far more difficult to make a case for your trustworthiness after your dad wakes up at 3 a.m. on a work night because, whoops, Romeo broke the trellis off the side of your house scaling the wall up to your balcony.
Be cognizant of this fact and remember that even if you’re comfortable staying over at a guy’s place sometimes, your parents probably don’t need to watch your walk of shame up the driveway the next afternoon. Your parents are fully aware you haven’t spent the last four years of your life in a nunnery, but they also probably don’t want it pushed in their face that you’re not the innocent child who thinks boys are gross anymore.
Moving back home is both a blessing and a curse. After four years, you’ve decided to take the step of returning back home to your mom, dad, and Zac Efron, and there are a great many points to be clarified in how exactly to go about coming home. It may seem like the simplest thing in the world to cross the threshold of your old front door and step back into the familiar place you’ve grown up in and returned to periodically over your undergraduate career, but not only have you changed a lot in four years, home will have changed a little in your absence, too. Negotiating a positive dynamic with your parents is key to flourishing over the course of your post-grad stay—oh, and carting the StairMaster 4000 out of your room.
Photo Credits:
http://livingwithteens.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/istock_000004337210me…
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http://mudahmenikah.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/parents-house3001.jpg
http://www.justcolleges.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/paying-off-s…
http://thistimeimeanit.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/familyreunion.jpg
http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l543/hercampusphoto/People/Other%20m…