Your 20s are a time of growth, and an age when many people move out and live on their own for the first time. That means learning to take care of yourself. What household skills are essential to learn during your 20s?
Image from j_regan.
Just knowing the basics of how to do something, even if you haven’t mastered it, empowers you to take matters into your own hands. From being able to fix a simple home cooked meal to handling basic household repairs, share your wisdom in the discussion below. Include what the skill is, why someone in their 20s should learn it, and any helpful resources they can use to get started.
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16 responses to “What Household Skills Should Everyone Learn In Your 20s?”
building something that has a frame. whether its a stool, an end table, bedside table, wood shed, anything with a frame. get a half decent drill with an assortment of attachments and screws and check out some DIY websites and give it a crack. if you are willing to invest a bit of money, you can also buy a KregJig, which makes the experience a bit simpler and comes with easy to follow instructionals.
Yup and using a circular saw. Those things can be scary. But when you use it to cut something you need there is a sense of accomplishment ‘I cut exactly what I needed and didn’t get killed’.
haha, yep. i hadnt had anyone teach me growing up. but because we owned a house with a wood fire, i ended up buying a mounted pull saw. best thing i ever bought, and got confident with using it just to cut fire wood. no my wife and i use it for DIY projects around home.
We used them in shop. Although it was a mounted one.
Change the oil and oil filter in your car. Change a tire. These are all piss easy. I don’t know anything about fixing cars or what everything under the hood is but I can do this. It’s really only something you have to be shown once to learn.
This is a good one. It’s pretty weird how many people don’t know how to change a tire.
I’m still in my twenties, so still a lot to learn. 2 things which changed my life:
1. Learning to use a power drill and the attachments it comes with.
2. Fix a leaky tap/shower including the mixer tap kind.
Fixing a leaky toilet or shower head. In most cases this is an easy YouTube fix.
How to cook some basic recipes, learning the differences between roasting, baking, frying, grilling, steaming, etc. Learn which of those can be done with which tools, and which types of ingredients you should do them to, what kind of result you’ll get, and how long each should normally take. Those basic principles can then be applied all over the place and you’ll avoid the need to hunt down ‘recipes to the letter’. Knowing underlying principles is always better than blindly following instructions you don’t understand.
Also:
Learn to swim. Preferably well enough that you could swim in clothes. Look up ‘life saving Bronze Medallion’ for your area. Ours is a country of rivers, beaches, and pools, with 85% of the population living on the coast.
Advanced First Aid with CPR is also something you should get taught the basics of at least once. (Yeah, you constantly gotta renew it to keep the certificate, but learning and remember the principles of CPR can save a life even if you don’t stay ‘current’. It’s not like it changes that much, that often.)
i know its one of the easier ones out there, but also learning to paint walls and ceilings and cutting in and applying painters tape.
i know a lot of people who just hire others to do it, but my wife and i started off pretty useless at and now we smash whole rooms out in no time at all without it looking terrible.
This one is mainly just use common sense. My wife and I have painted heaps of rooms. I still hate doing ceilings though.
ha ha. i find that spending a bit more on the rollers and bruse reduces the splatter and helps get better paint coverage. i wouldnt ever do it without drop sheets, but, i just get it done real quickly now, compared to when i first started. like i said, its one of the easier skills, but its worth doing and and shouldnt take too long to get efficient at it.
From my experiences;
1. Learn to read contracts properly, your an adult now!
2. Cooking (or learning to bulk order dinner, thanks muscle army)
3. Getting an engineering degree in washing machine mechanics and operations
4. Following up and filing letters / mail correctly, dont do it and stuff creeps up very quickyl
5. Housecleaning, dont overlook this one. Vacuuming, cleaning and knowing what situations to use the correct chemicals is very vital, Im glad my new house is all timber flooring now.
6. Routine (living by myself often means when I wake up late its hard to blame anyone else)
7. Master the toolkit, get a decent tool kit that will service 90-100% of your house, only a pussy cant fix a creaky door or lose door handle.
8. Put your mum on speed dial and get her to sign a NDA to not tell your big sister of your past failures otherwise you get annoying phone calls from your sister who just wants to laugh at your ‘failed attempt’
9. Document and stay organized, nothing worse than being late for a bill, meeting or delivery
10. Dont ride the skate board through the house. Just because you can doesnt mean you should (even if its really really fun for the first 10 minutes lol)
Use youtube. Pretty much anything that was a hard-learned household skill 10 years ago is now 3 youtube videos and a quick warm-up. By god, we live in an age of wonder.
Agreed!
Start recording your expenses and make a budget. Use one of them newfangled apps if you need to (kids today, git off my lawn, etc).
Learn about how to wield your money. Level up your finance knowledge. Realise that one day you’ll either have diminished ability to work, or just not want to (actually, the onset of this is pretty quick), and plan for that.
“I’m no good with money” is not an excuse. This is a 21st century survival skill. Pick it up in conjunction with all the good stuff the other commenters in here are suggesting.