I’m thinking of a young-ish adult moving out of wherever they consider to be their familial/parental home into their own place (alone or with other/s) and establishing your own household. Not just going away to college where you still get mail at your parents’ address, but being out on your own permanently or at least for an extended period (years). I realize your situation may not fit this model, but tell us about your experience anyway. Maybe it happened later in life or earlier… under serene or troubling circumstances.
I lived at home during college in San Antonio, but the summer after I graduated (1970), I met a guy… and I went with some girlfriends up to the Dallas area where he lived with his parents. I just intended it to be a visit, but one of the girls (and we were girls back then) lived there and was looking for a roommate. So on the spur of the moment, I called my mother and said I’d decided to stay. She was not surprised, and I have no idea what she or my father thought of the idea. I had $400 to my name in a bank account. My boyfriend and I drove down to San Antonio, and all my personal possessions fit in half of the bed of his father’s pickup truck.
I was out and on my own, a fact that was made clear to me when I called my father a couple of months later and asked if I could borrow $50 for a utility deposit. He said no, “You’re on your own now.” I never asked anything of my parents again. (This was typical for them.)
I got a job in a family-owned department store and eventually became a Graduate Teaching Assistant in English at the local university. My boyfriend worked in a body shop, and we also drove a 60-mile motor paper route every day (Dallas Times Herald, of blessed memory). Things were cheap-- we managed.
For me it was college. I was still home in summer for the first few years, but by the summer between my 3rd and 4th year, IIRC, I stayed in the apartment I had near the school (which was only about 45 minutes from home). By that point I had long since started using my address there as my regular address.
As the last year of school came to an end, I moved into an apartment with my then girlfriend. Since I was about 21 or so, I think I’ve spent the night at my parent’s house once.
So, basically moving out for college and never really looking back.
I’m the complete opposite (but you did say it was OK to post here!)
I had a well-paid job (computer programmer) in my 20s (so this was the 1970s) and decided to save up for a house.
My parents were happy for me to stay at home (I paid them a decent sum as housekeeping/rent.)
Also building societies* (I’m in the UK) were paying fantastic interest (8-10%) at the time.
So when I had enough for a deposit, I moved out and bought a house.
I did it twice. At 18 I joined the Navy, post Navy I moved back home for 2 years and then my fiancé and I got an apartment together.
I had plenty of money saved that second time, so I didn’t need any help from them to move out. Though I did go back over and carefully organized the stuff I was storing in their basement plus stuff my brother was storing.
I was working full time and going to school at night when I moved back home post Navy, so they only charged my I think $50 per month. That seemed more than fair to me. They were never well off.
2 years later we bought a house and I got the rest of my stuff out of their basement and my wife got the stuff out she still had her parents house.
Got pregnant, which my parents knew about but was discovered spending the night with my fiance and was subsequently ordered out of the house the same day by my father and my mother and sisters packed up all my shit and dropped me off at his apartment. Age seventeen, just barely.
I went off to college at 18, then after getting my bachelor’s degree at 22, went directly into graduate school to get an MBA, which I received at age 24. All throughout that period, my permanent mailing address was still at my parents’ house.
As I was finishing up my MBA, I got a job in Chicago, and moved there (well, here, I suppose, as I never left) after completing my degree. That’s when I officially moved out of my parents’ house, though I still had some stuff in their basement. Once I got married and bought a home, a few years later, every time I went “home” to visit my parents, my mom made sure I took back with me a few boxes of my stuff that had still been in their basement.
Mid 20s. Moved in with a guy my friend introduced me to. He was Different, and I identified with Different people. I wasnt working, so my parents gave me spending money and brought food over. Not really a boyfriend, and when I met my husband, I moved out to be with him.
For me it was related to college, but that wasn’t the actual reason. I entered McGill University at quite a young age and was still living at home, and could have continued to do so. But after the first year a number of factors convinced me to move out on my own. My (much) older brother had just started his professorship at a major Ontario university, I wanted to move to Ontario and be on my own, and he offered to help in all kinds of ways, so I transferred.
Being on your own for the first time can be tough, but I was lucky because just that year the university student council had purchased and renovated an apartment building and set it up as a really nice off-campus student residence. It was a fairly painless way to get started on my own, especially with my older brother in the same town and being faculty at the same school. I was never in any of his classes so there was no conflict of interest, but he did help me get my first part-time job at the university which ultimately led to my career.
I grew up just outside of Austin, Texas. In high school I decided I wanted to attend UT, and my parents started in with a lecture about how “part of going to college is moving out of the house and…” I interrupted and said, “oh yeah, I’ll move out to the dorms the second they let me in.” I don’t think I spent a night back at home until Thanksgiving break.
I did live at home my first summer of college. Coming up on my second summer, I was planning to move home, but then some friends and I got a house, and the lease would start at the end of the spring semester, but not exactly at the end.
A series of phone calls went:
I’ll be moving home in a week.
Actually, I’ll be moving into a house near campus in a week.
Turns out the lease doesn’t start right when the dorms close, so I’ll be moving home for two weeks.
Also, I’ll be bringing two of my future roommates home, because they don’t have anywhere else local to stay.
I really like my parents so much better after I didn’t have to live with them.
I graduated high school in June of 1979. I had enlisted in the U.S. Army but then had a (what later turned out to be minor) medical issue that kept me from being inducted.
I continued to live with my parents while working what few jobs there were at the time and applying and testing for police departments. I also took classes at the local technical college which cost next to nothing at the time.
I met my wife in December of that year and we married in January of 1980. And no, she wasn’t pregnant. We just knew.
That’s when I moved out of my parents home and into a dumpy little apartment with Doll. I was a little over 19.
Had I gotten into the service I never would have even met her.
I lived at home while I was in college. I worked parttime during the school year and nearly fulltime in the summer, but my money went to schooling and meals (I rarely ate at home partly due to my irregular schedule). As soon as I graduated and got a better fulltime job, I moved out and got an apartment.
A few years later, my mom and dad retired to AZ, and my younger sister and my brother had to find a place to live really quickly!
Went to college at 18, fucked up the first semester and lived at home for a semester while I went to night school to get my GPA up. Back to college for a year and then joined the Navy at age 20.
Was back home between my four years and college and two master’s years doing various jobs. Just before my first year in the PhD program, I got married. I haven’t lived at home since then apart from sleeping there on various visits. In fact I haven’t lived in the same state since then.
Two of my best friends from high school were twins. Their mother had died some years before and they lived with their father. But he wasn’t around much. He had built a room off the den that had its own entrance and he was either in there or at his girlfriend’s house down the street. I moved in with them the spring semester of my junior year in '75. They never asked me to pay for anything even though I also ate the food their father provided. He really wasn’t interested in being a father and just gave them money or whatever they needed. I lived there for four or five months and I think I saw him twice. We had a lot of fun and it was a great way to get the experience of being on my own without monetary responsibilities.
I was working part time in the evenings and saved enough for a deposit on an apartment. I moved into a complex (affectionately known as Mushroom Manor) off campus with another friend at the end of the summer and started the journey of becoming a real adult.
My earliest memory was playing with my Chinese siblings. I am Caucasian Canadian. The memory is of my Caucasian Mother picking me up from the Chinese household that I was being boarded at. My Father was also Caucasian according to my pale skin and red hair. But I never met him. I guess I may have realized at that time or soon after that I was not Chinese. The story of my life repeats as such. With so many interesting varied household situations that I was boarded out into.
I was never at home.
Though I did live with my Mother for various short amounts of time.
I finally left “Home” at 15. I did happen to be living with Mom at that time. I was also invited to leave high school at that time. They were annoyed that I seldom showed up, but continued to pass. I went into the local Child and Family Services system shortly after that.
I ended up in a group home that was actually very good. The den mother had four adopted children and also took in us strays. I only stayed for a year. At sixteen I started working full time and left.
So I guess I left something resembling home at Sixteen. Things didn’t settle down much after that either. But I was facing it on my own from then on.
I wasn’t that young, 20-1/2. I had been away to college for 2 years but couldn’t cut it there so I came home before the 2nd year was over. Lots of tension over that. Then I enrolled at a pretty good school locally. About 5 months in, my mother and I were having a discussion over dinner about how important it was for me to greet their friends in the living room when I came home in the evening, when my father decided it was a good time for a 10-minute lecture on how it was his house (or just possibly “their” house) and if they wanted me to greet their friends that’s what I was going to do and I should shut up and obey orders. That was, I think, a Friday night. Monday I moved out without telling them I was going (they were both at work), after borrowing some money from a friend and finding a cheap apartment. Next day I got a job parking cars, and quit school. I didn’t see them for about 6 months, but my sister brokered a truce for my birthday. After that there was coolness for a long time, but eventually I guess we got back to normal.
Another one who lived at home as a college student while going to an urban, mostly commuter university. Full-time student and worked part-time at a variety of jobs. Paid my own tuition (back in the days when that was not too onerous at a state school), books, transportation and entertainment expenses…but got free room and board, which was a big deal even back then in our area. Rent wasn’t cheap.
After a few years of this I landed a good-paying full-time job and flipped over from being a full-time student, part-time worker to the converse. After that I paid a little rent at home for a couple of months while I looked for a place, then moved into an in-law apartment being vacated by a college friend in a small house shared with two other students. And my folks promptly moved out of state (they were very long-term renters - they own a place now, but never did when I was growing up).
