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A Guide To Moving Back In With Your Parents
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 8, 2015
Modified Jan 4, 2016
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 8, 2015
Modified Jan 4, 2016
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I was recently forced to move back in with my parents, thanks to an unfortunate fire situation in my apartment in Brooklyn. I am 26, I have a full-time job, and I have not lived at home for more than two months since I started college eight years ago. To slightly complicate matters, my sister graduated from college in May and boomeranged right back home. I have been sharing a bedroom with her since mid-October. I get up at 6:15 to run, because I am old and have a real job. She comes home at 4 a.m. and snores. We are a modern American family.
In my time at home, I have learned a lot about living with parents. Here are some tips to help you if you ever find yourself rooming with the two people who raised you.
Yes, you ARE in high school again. You will have a curfew, or at the very least you’ll be guilted into coming home early, since your parents “don’t sleep well when you’re out.” You will run weird errands. You will tell at least one member of your family that they “don’t understand” you. You will listen to your old Linkin Park CDs when you are angry, and you will listen to Dashboard Confessional when you are sad. When you can’t find your adult sneakers, you will wear a pair of purple Converse on which you wrote Pride & Prejudice quotes in ninth grade English.
Learn to close doors quietly. See above, r.e.: curfew.
Say goodbye to your organizational skills. Remember when you got bedbugs in your first adult apartment and learned to keep all your clothes in drawers instead of throwing them around your room? All that will go out the window as soon as you set foot in your childhood bedroom. Keep your sweaters on your desk chair and hide excess jeans and leggings behind your stuffed animal collection so your mother doesn’t yell at you when she comes in to clean. Speaking of:
Someone will clean up after you. The person who does this is most likely your mother and you will be chastised for making a mess, but it will be done. Someone will make your bed if you leave it mussed for a week. Someone will dust. Someone will take the dishes out of the dishwasher for you. There is a dishwasher.
Find other places to sleep. These places include friends’ couches, homes of people for whom you are cat-sitting, homes of Tinder dates, etc. Pick up men/women in bars, go home with them, stretch out in their full-sized beds when they get up to go to the bathroom and pretend you are alone for a few minutes of blissful solitude.
Use that saved rent money for good, not evil. If you’re living at home because you don’t have a job, savor this brief period of rent and utilities-free life. If you do have a job and haven’t moved back out because your apartment burned down and NYC real estate is a hive of scum and villainy, do not take this opportunity to purchase a $2K rug at Anthropologie. You will need that cash to pay for therapy after you walk in on Mom & Dad having sex in the living room.
Expect to develop a strong attachment to reality television. Your parents need to watch the 10 p.m. news, so they pay for real cable. This means you will spend less time re-watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix and more time enjoying all that old school TV has to offer—and it turns out that reality shows are the only thing on television these days. There is a show called Are You The One?, in which drunk people try to find their perfect matches. There is a show called Married At First Sight in which lonely people get married to strangers and try to make it work. There is a show called Say Yes To The Dress in which unhinged women try to find wedding dresses. There is a show called The Voice in which people sing and Adam Levine says stuff to them. TV is weird but also great.
Take advantage of the free food. Though your diet usually consists of deli sandwiches and pizza, when you are living at home, someone will force-feed you brown rice and vegetables. This is a good thing. Do not gag.
And last but not least:
You will survive. I asked a coworker what advice she thought she would need if forced to move back in with her parents, and she suggested the suicide hotline number. You will not die. You will be fed and clothed and smothered, and it will feel nice, because there are only so many people who love you unconditionally and you love them too, even if you do repeatedly have to explain to them how to add an App to their iPhone.
Rebecca Fishbein recently found a new home in an entirely different borough than the one her parents occupy.
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