Living on my own 1

Today I wanted to tell everyone what I have learned from living on my own at my apartment. Some things may sound simple and no brainers, but until you have to do it yourself, you don't realize the little things that happen.

Please don't be afraid to leave a comment, as I am still learning, and welcome any lessons.

1. The disposal can smell bad! I came home one night, and smelled a foul smell. I thought it might be the trash as I hadn't taken it out for a couple of days (I don't want to waste a trash bag.) I took it out, and sprayed febreeze (yes it really works). But when I came back home the next day, still the foul odor was there, and getting worse. A friend suggested taking out the black rim of my disposal and cleaning it out. When I started to clean it; a gross nasty black film that was stuck to the underside of the black rim came out. I cleaned as much as I could, and then poured some lemon juice down the drain. 
2. Don't leave noodles in a crockpot all day long. I decided one day that I was going to make chicken noodle soup. I chopped the veggies, precooked the chicken, and added it all to the broth in the crockpot. Wanting the noodles to absorb the broth, I added the noodles before I left for church, turned the crockpot on low, and left. Coming back home I was excited when I came in, and it smelled good! I had to friends come over as well to celebrate my first real complete meal made all by myself. As we went to look at the dinner, I was dumbfounded that the noodles had almost quadrupled in size. They took up most of the crockpot. The soup, and chicken still tasted good, but the noodles were way too soft, and had too much of the broth in the noodle. 



Noodles

3. The dishwasher creates heat, which then takes away heat from the rest of the house. It has been unseasonably warm this past weekend. Saturday it was 72 here! But I was sitting on my couch with a blanket around me because I was cold.  I ended up shutting off my heater, and opening up my doors, and windows. I thought that I was getting sick because I was cold. No it turns out that my dishwasher was staying on (not sure why yet) and my dishwasher is right by my heater intake. While my dishwasher was on the warmth is making my heater think that it is warm enough to turn on my air conditioner! No wonder my feet have been so cold. For now it is fixed by leaving my dishwasher open just a crack to make it shut off. But I am going to have to talk to my apartment managers about what I can do to fix it.

These are just the first three things I have learned from living on my own. I'm sure there is more, but I can't think of anything right now.