What items did you waste money on after moving out for the first time?

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1. I got one of the cheapest vacuums at target for my apartment and it was awful. I ended up buying one of the more expensive ones, should’ve just done that in the first place.

2. A water filter that attached to the faucet. It wouldn’t work on our sink and we wound up just buying a regular Brita pitcher after all

3. My boyfriend

4. For me it’s those cube organizers. They’re just cardboard and fabric so of course they warped

5. If I learned from it, it wasn’t a waste of money. All education is funded, after all. But here are some of my expensive lessons.

   + Bought an organizational system I couldn’t maintain. Had to buy a new organizational system that I could maintain after initially deploying the “couldn’t maintain” one and taking note of how it failed. If I were to do it again in the modern era, I’d follow the Clutterbug Podcast’s recommendations for staging an organizational system before investing in components.

   + Food. I bought the food I though I was supposed to have instead of buying what I’d actually eat. So much food waste. Start where I ended up: treat the first few months of solo living as if the grocery store is your personal food pantry and buy ingredients each day as necessary. (Yes, this means daily trips to the grocery store.) Keep a journal of what you buy. Find the most commonly purchased items in this journal. Those are your staples. They are the only things you should pick up at the grocery store out of habit. For everything else, meal plan and buy only according to the meal plan.

   + An ineffective vacuum. If it is petting the floor rather than inhaling the floor, you paid for a sculpture and not a cleaning robot. And I did.

   + Scrubber sponges and other kitchen consumables. Start with dish rags and flour sack towels and a chainmail scrubber.

   + Non-washable shower curtain liners and curtains. They make these great curtains that are waterproof but fabric and have built in circles at the top that just clip over your shower bar. Get that. Put it in the washing machine. Hang. You don’t even need to buy shower curtain rings. Nonwashable liners are consumables and you’ll keep having to rebuy as they reach their end of life. Ain’t nobody got the money for that.

   + New kitchenware. Go to the thrift store. Lots of great stuff to be found there.

   + Aesthetic jars for pantry storage. Just be patient and in time you’ll amass enough jars from your own food consumption.

6. Fast food

7. Weed and food delivery.

8. Buying so much clothes, and shoes that I don’t use and forget about after buying it. So bad. But you live and you learn.