Living with parents as an adult.

If you don’t know, I currently am a 30-year-old living with my parents. I haven’t always lived with them but have for the last 4 years as a true adult.

There are challenges and blessings in our situation, and I thought I would share them with you as well as the reasons why I live with them right now.

The living situation: My parents have a three bedroom, two bath house in town with a big back yard. It’s not the house I grew up in and is an older house. When I first moved in, I had one of the bedrooms, but the house felt a little cramped. After about a year, I built my tiny house on wheels and placed it in their back yard. While I can’t legally live in it where we are, I moved out of the bedroom in my parent’s house and into my “detached bedroom” in the back yard. My house has electricity but not water or internet. While I have my bed and clothes in the tiny house, I still use the kitchen, bathroom, laundry, and living space in my parent’s house. The bedroom I was once in is now my sewing room.

I don’t pay rent. What I do is I help with the yard work, gardening, home improvement projects, laundry, pet care and any other chores that I’m asked to do or find to do. I also paid to get the electricity run out to my house.

The challenges: I used to have more independence. I could choose exactly what food to have in the fridge, what soap to have in the bathroom, what shows to watch, etc. Now everything is more of a collaboration which to be honest, isn’t all that bad. This winter, I had to walk through snow drifts to get to the bathroom. Like the pioneer that I am. What my parents’ plans are for the week, impacts my plans for the week. From when we eat, to inviting people over, to working on house projects, we must coordinate and communicate.

The blessings: It’s financially easier for me. More house chores get done since three people are sharing the burden. My parents don’t have to hire pet sitters as much. I get to spend more time helping and learning from my parents. We’ve worked together so much that we know each other’s strengths well and just really enjoy building and beautifying parts of the house together. I get to use my mom’s curated kitchen which means I’m not as limited in what I can cook. Having my own detached space has been amazing because it gives me a truly private space that I can retreat to.

Now why do I live with my parents? As you can see, there are some great benefits. Some of the other reasons though are that I hate renting and random roommates, I can’t afford to live in this town otherwise, and there’s more security knowing that people I love are right there when I need them.

There’s so much emphasis put on being independent women in our culture today, but I think more and more women are learning that we want to have some dependency. Deep down, I think we are family oriented and it’s hard for us when the safety we can have in our family is gone. I think for my situation, I’ve managed to find a decent balance of independence while also enjoying the benefits and dependency of family.