Apartment Essentials - What You Need in your New Apartment

Now that you have officially settled into to your new apartment, succeeded with a crazy moving day and finally unpacked all of your boxes, it is only now that you realized you forgot to buy a pot to boil water. Although you thought about many different things, specifically when you are going to host your first housewarming, now you are stuck with trying to get the essentials for your apartment.

But what are the essentials? How many pots and pans do you truly need? If you are living alone, do you really need more than just a couple of forks and knives? Now, before you go ahead and start buying that beautiful "insert the unnecessary item that you think is necessary", remember that moving out into your very first apartment means that you are officially an independent adult and you get the benefit, or the drawback, of living/enjoying the outcomes of all of your decisions. Before going online and buying all these new items for your apartment to impress your friends, here is a first apartment checklist for all of the essentials that you need to buy Week 1: 

• Mattress: I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of not having a good mattress. The average person will spend 1/3 of their life sleeping, imagine sleeping on a mattress that is not comfortable, it might be too soft or too hard but if it is not comfortable for you, you will start everyday aching and groaning about having to change it. A mattress, compared to most of the items on this list, is very expensive. Even if you go to buy a mattress at Costco or another wholesaler, it will still run you about 350-550$. This is why it’s very important, especially if you just moved into your first apartment and didn’t account for all the hidden expenses, to buy a mattress that is comfortable for you and that is good enough quality to last you a couple of years. If you buy the right mattress, it is an incredible investment as it will last for 10 years and your body and mind will thank you for it.
  

• Couch/Sofa: So now that you have your own apartment, you are definitely going to want to start hosting friends, families, strangers, anybody just to show off how happy you are to have taken that first big step to independence. Now when it comes to couches, like mattresses, they are expensive and you need to make sure that you find one that is just the right amount of comfort for you. My advice is to buy a futon; a futon is simply a sofa that has an adjustable frame where you can unhook the back of the sofa to make a makeshift bed. Trust me, although a regular sofa might be more comfortable, if you are dealing with invited or uninvited guests who decide to sleep over, they will definitely appreciate the fact that your sofa can turn into a quick bed for them to sleep in. In addition, futons are a bit cheaper than a couch so if you are on a budget, both Walmart and Ikea have excellent deals on futons that range from 220-350$.
  

• Frying pan: So now that we have covered the big-ticket items, it is important to concentrate a bit on the food that you will be cooking! Now that mom and dad are not around to magically make food whenever you are hungry, it is important to know the secret of basic cooking: a good quality frying pan. Now you might be wondering why I said frying pan rather than a good pot, well you are going to realize rather quickly that a lot of your messy cooking will be done with a frying pan and there is nothing more annoying that will turn you off to cooking than having to clean a cheap and dirty frying pan that has leftover food on it. Please learn from my mistake and buy yourself a good non-stick frying pan, usually will cost you anywhere from 35-55$ but is worth every penny. I remember after I bought my first good quality frying pan, I had made my food and I had put the frying pan in the sink out of habit because I didn’t have the energy to clean it right than and there. To my surprise, there was no food stuck on it as it was a non-stick and the food slid right off. Since that day, every time I have a friend who moves into their new apartment, my housewarming gift is always a good frying pan.
  

•  Kitchen supplies: I grew up in a family of 5 people so when I decided to move out and explore the world, when it came to my kitchen, I had bought 5 forks, 5 spoons, 5 knives… I think you get the picture. So when it comes to kitchen supplies, I think you have to be realistic and figure out what the maximum number of people you expect to host in a given night and then buy an extra 1-2 of each of your kitchen supplies (just in case something breaks) so that you can be sure that you have enough supplies for everyone. Trust me; it is not fun to eat soup without a spoon!
  

Although there are so many more items that I could have put on this list, especially a television or a vacuum cleaner, I believe from personal experience that these items are truly essential and will help you in achieving independence and learning to live alone.

On that note, if you believe that there are any other essentials that I should add to this list, please feel free to comment below and I will make the update!