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My first apartment; what should I expect?

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Lots of good advice in this thread.

Renter's insurance
Take pictures of everything
Keep it clean.
Make sure they cleaned appliances before you move in.
Walk around naked and eat cereal for dinner.
 
Realize that no one is there to clean up after you and the more you put it off, the worse it gets.

Locate the nearest grocery store.

Have a plan for feeding yourself.
Right across the street xD
Decorate. Not just for having people over but for your own enjoyment
I'm looking for a Japanese touch in the living room.
How big is your place? That would've taken up like 60% of my apartment.
~60m² (what's that? ~645 square feet?)
 
You're gonna need shit you haven't even thought about yet. Best advice I can give you is go through your parents' kitchen, linen closets, bathroom (your bathroom) and make a note of shit that you don't buy but that helps the household run. Once you move in, do a run to the local store and pick stuff up.
 
Get a washer/dryer or find the nearest laundromat

Buy a plant

Don't get into hookah smoking or be prepared to buy new carpets
 
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Remember in your own place Clothing is Optional. Best feeling in the world to just lounge around nude LOL.
 
I live in a studio with no roommates and I love it. Pay rent on time, decorate like an adult but still show some of your personality through it, keep it clean it'll look better and you'll stay in better mood, invest in some decent furniture, also make sure its not embarrassing mess when you have a date over.
 
Although my mom wasn't hard on me at all since I was a responsible young adult before I moved out, the freedom you're about to experience is going to be fucking awesome.
 
I agree with most of what has already been said however may I also add to that list that if you buy something online, try and get signature confirmation for everything. This way anything you order if you are not home, you can just pick it up from UPS, FedEx, or the post office.
 
I need a good 5.1 set.

Hard wood. Normal window height, lol.
You laugh but the difference between windows that start half a meter off the floor and those that start a meter is pretty dramatic. Wood is good though, you can make a place with wood floors look real nice
 
Before you move in take pictures of EVERYTHING


E V E R Y T H I N G
This. SO much this. If you don't do this, 90% of the time you will not get your deposit back because they'll either blame you for doing shit that was already there when you moved in, or they will make something up.

Also, read your lease at least once so you know how, if necessary, to get out of your lease and what it will (or won't) cost, as well as what constitutes a breach of the lease on their end (and yours of course). That way if maintenance or something isn't doing timely repairs for broken things (AC/Heat), or any other reason stated in the lease, you can get out without paying a dime.

Edit: Also, always have extra TP on hand. And if you're a single dude, get a hand towel or two for the bathroom. Ladies dig hand towels, as should any self-respecting human! Who wants to leave a bathroom with wet hands? When my friends and I started getting our own places, most of them didn't have hand towels. I've had many girls comment on how refreshing it is to be at a guy's place with a hand towel. This may just be a unique experience, but it stuck with me, and I pass this information along to you!
 
Before you move in take pictures of EVERYTHING


E V E R Y T H I N G

Ding ding ding ding ding

This is like your one and only hedge against a landlord making excessive deductions from your deposit. Most will ding you for the smallest nick, scratch, stain, etc. If you're feeling studious, brush up on your local landlord/tenant laws. It's good to know what your responsibilities are and what theirs are.

What to expect? Noise. Possibly lots of it, depending on the building and neighbors. Never hurts to have a polite conversation early in tenancy with a neighbor (assuming they're reasonable) if they're being excessively loud. Beyond that, get noise cancelling headphones if it bothers you.

Another thing, coming from someone who was the noise-sensitive tenant in an insanely noisy building for years: please be conscientious about the noise you make with respect to the mundane stuff - shutting doors, drawers, cabinets, clinking dishes, etc. Maybe it's less of an issue in your building, but in mine everything traveled through the walls, and having neighbors with no awareness of that shit drove me to the brink of insanity.
 
Take pictures of everything you can find broken/scratched/peeling etc first week if you ever want a cent of your deposit back.

How do you prove it's not recent?

What I did was have a walk around with the landlord and pointed stuff out and noted them. I think that's more of a just so you know, don't screw me over but not iron clad thinking about it now.
 
Yeah but peoples first appartments usually are small with an even smaller kitchen which makes cooking in big batches hard.

You don't need that much room to set up a slow cooker, even less if you're just throwing shit in and not having to prepare much
 
How do you prove it's not recent?

What I did was have a walk around with the landlord and pointed stuff out and noted them. I think that's more of a just so you know, don't screw me over but not iron clad thinking about it now.

Email them to your property manager.
 
Email them to your property manager.

This is good advice, and extends to much more. Generally, the more you can correspond with the landlord in a way that creates a documented paper trail, the better. Not to say a phone call is inappropriate for the small stuff.
 
I've been in my first apartment for a year and a few months. Expect a lot of things to go wrong with the house/floor and be ready to deal with anything. Last week my key broke off and got stuck inside the lock so I had to borrow the owners ladder to climb up to a window I knew was unlocked and slash through the screen with a knife to open it. It was like -10 degrees that night too, it sucked.
 
Expect to be stunned at the amount of random supplies that you take for granted being present in the house that you'll now have to buy yourself.

Dollar Tree is really incredible for this type of stuff. Take time to buy some organizing tools while you're there, too.

Hopefully there's something similar for the OP in Germany.
 
Although you will need a lot of stuff, buy as you need it, especially if you're in a city where you can run to a store at any time. A small place will get cluttered fast.
 
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