Life Skills You Need Before You Go To College

Leaving the house and striking out on your own is exciting.  It is also hard.

You are on your own.  Everything that needs to be done is on you.  Your family is not there anymore to help with domestic tasks.  

There are certain life skills you should master before you leave the house.  Neglecting any one of these skills will make your young adult life unnecessarily difficult.

Here is what you need to know.

How to Cook

Probably the most important thing on this list.  You need to know how to feed yourself, and you won’t have enough money to go out for every meal.  

You need to know how to cook healthy, cheap meals.  

Start by paying attention to what your family eats and makes.  Learn those recipes and then branch out.  Look up recipes online and learn to make all manner of good, cheap food.

If you can cook well, it won’t feel like a hardship when you can’t go out to eat.  

How to Meal Plan

Meal planning often gets a bad rap, but it is vital when living on a small budget.  Food is expensive and wasted food is a sin you can’t afford.

There are a ton of ways to meal plan.  The important thing is consistency.  You should regularly be ending the week with no fresh food in the fridge.  Do it right and you will have virtually no food waste.

If your family meal plans, see if you can’t meal plan and cook for a few weeks.  But if they don’t, ask your family if they would be happy to let you try for a week or two.

For my family, I create a flexible meal plan.  I choose 2 lunch recipes and 3-4 dinner recipes (at least 2 of which take less than 30 minutes to make).  Then I pre-make the lunch recipes and pick from the dinner recipes based on how the family is feeling and what needs to be cooked in the fridge.  

A flexible meal plan makes it easier for my family to follow it.  And every week we end with next to nothing in the fridge.  It keeps our food bill down and all but eliminates food waste.

Financial Literacy

If you don’t know how to make a budget, control your spending, and manage credit cards, you run the risk of spending your entire adult life in debt.

Start making a budget for yourself now.  Look into how much rent, food, Transportation (including insurance), and college costs in your desired areas.  Make budgets for those expenses.  See if what you could be paid in the area will cover your expenses.  If they can’t how much debt will you be taking on?

Learn how to use credit cards and avoid over-drafting your bank account.  Shop for a bank that works with your area and lifestyle.  

Household Maintenance and Chores

Can you clean?  Do you know how to keep your room tidy?  Did you know you need to change the house filters?  How do you fix a fuze?  Can you change a faucet or plunge a toilet?

Knowing how to do basic household tasks will save you time and money in the long run.  

If your parents own or live in a house they must maintain, start helping them with household maintenance.  Change filters, and learn how to winterize the sprinkler system.  Help them with any household project you can so you can learn how to do the task yourself.

Beyond the quarterly tasks and projects, you should also know how to do daily tasks.  Learn to do the dishes, pick up after yourself, clean the bathroom, and keep your room clean and tidy.  Know how to do your laundry and fold clothing. 

The more you know about how to care for yourself and your environment, the better off you will be.

How to Study

We don’t teach students how to study, and I think that is the single greatest failing of our school system.  We should be teaching you how to study from the moment you arrive on your first day in kindergarten.

Instead, we hide the study techniques during our teaching and hope kids pick them up.  But they don’t without conscious effort.

Spend that effort now.  Learn how to study each subject.  The best study techniques are different for each.  And once you know what works best for you, you will be much more successful in college.

Researching

If you give me a topic, like “how do we fix the ice maker,” I can look it up with very little fanfare and have the ice maker fixed in an hour with no frustration.

But if you give my brother the same task, he gets frustrated and shuts down.  Eventually he either calls me to find the steps for him or he just calls someone else to fix it.

Don’t be like my brother.  Get comfortable searching the web for the answers you need– both academic and not.  As an adult you should be able to research what computer you want next, if you should get the next phone, or how to replace the silicone in your shower on your own. 

Basic Emergency Repair

What happens if your tire bursts on the way to school?  If your water heater bursts, what should you do?  

These are common “emergency” situations that you should know how to handle.  Things you should know how to fix/ call for help include:

• How to change a tire
• How to turn off the water to a fixture (like a sink) or the whole house
• How to change a fuze
• How to turn off the electricity to the whole house
• How to stop a kitchen fire and a fire in another part of the house
• What an electrical fire smells like
• How to use a fire extinguisher 
• When to call 911 vs. when to take a friend to the ER
• What falls into each emergency services purview (should you call the police, fire department, etc)
• Poison control number
• When you should go to the doctor

Clothing Maintenance

Did you know different types of clothing last longer if you wash them differently?

Learn to read the tags and wash things as they are supposed to be washed.  They will last longer.

You also need to know how to make basic repairs like sew a ripped seam, hem some pants or shirts, and sew on a button.  

Knowing how to iron is a bonus, but not entirely necessary.

Correspondance

Once you turn 18 you are viewed as an adult.  As such you are expected to correspond like an adult.  You need to learn how to send adult emails, write a thank you note, and how to make adult phone calls.

How (and When) to Ask For Help

On the first day of my first job after college, my boss said “If you are struggling with something, ask for help right away!  This isn’t college.  You need to get your work done fast, not struggle to learn the job.”

And you know what?  He was right!  You can’t be expected to know everything, and not everything you are learning will be easy.  Struggling with anything is unnecessary. 

Ask for help before it becomes too difficult and you burn out.

Getting help isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength!  If asking for hlep means you understand your homework and finish it in half the time, well, that only helps you.  

If you get stuck on anything, start by searching the internet.  When that doesn’t clear up your problem, find an expert and ask for help.

Once you ask for help, take the advice you are given.  Give your helper your full attention and learn as much as you can so you don’t have to ask the same questions a second time.  Then sincerly thank the person.

It is important to thank anyone who helped you in any way.  The clerk who directed you to the item in the store you couldn’t find deserves thanks as much as your professor who took a minute clear your confusion.  No deed is too small and no person too unimportant to be thanked for assisting you.

If you are rude or ungrateful to people who help you, you will find the help no longer available.  People don’t like helping ungrateful and rude people.  But someone who is greatful and polite often has more help available to them. 

Bringing it all together

Your family does a lot for you, but soon you will need to do everything on your own.  Learning how to take care of yourself is a challenge but it is easier to learn while you still have support.

This series will cover how to learn these basic life skills if you don’t have them already.  What are some things you are concerned about being able to do when you graduate.  Leave them in the comments below.  

And don’t forget to like and share!

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