The Next Stage - Your child’s new spaces: Tips on helping your child move into their new phase of life

This summer has been one of great change and evolution for my household, and for many others around the world, I’d guess.

It all started for us in May, when our youngest graduated from college.

Well, in truth, it started way before that, in the fall of 2025, when he was sending out applications for grad school.

You see, our youngest child graduated in May with a Computer Science degree and has a goal to get a PhD in the same field so that he can go back and teach at the university he graduated from. Kinda cool, isn’t it?

It gets better.

He researched and found out that there are universities out there that offer fully funded PhD and MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programs. This means that the college not only pays for their education, but many times a stipend is also given through being a Teaching Assistant (TA) or Research Assistant (RA).

In doing his research, he found a professor who is in the exact field of study he wanted to continue. He applied and got it!

So cool, isn’t it?

As a mom, I am tremendously proud of this. As a mom, I am also a little sad, because it meant he would be spending the next five years in another state very far away. Like two flights away, or 17 hours of driving.

Wendy Fleming of Love Hard by Whitney Fleming shared something on her Instagram that summed up what I felt perfectly:

See the post to process it all. Wendy was right on when she called it momlancholy.

Which for me translates to feeling happy, proud, excited, sad, and worried all at once. I felt so seen in this moment, and when I shared this word with other moms in the same stage of life I am in, it fit for them too.

What I also learned is that it isn’t healthy for me to stay in this feeling, though. Instead, we used the last two months we had with him in our house prepping for this next stage of life.

Tips for moving your child into their first place

The tips I am about to share in this article are what we learned. Please know I am not an expert in any of these areas. I am learning just like you are. So, if you have additional tips, please feel free to drop them in the comments below too.

Insurance

One of the best investments your child can make, or you can make for them, is to get renters insurance. It is important to note that if they are moving into a dorm, your homeowners insurance may cover it. I am not an insurance broker, so please ask [your agent/provider] to be certain. For both of our children, the yearly premium was around $200 and covers their property and electronics. With my youngest getting their degree in computer science in a place where tropical storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes happen, having this type of coverage was a good idea. Both of our kids went through Progressive to get this insurance, and funny enough, so did my husband and I when we got our first apartment. It's best to get this insurance prior to moving in so that it can start on the first day that they are there.

Other things to set up

If in an apartment off campus, other things that may need to get set up are utilities, Wi-Fi, and any streaming services. They also may need a checking account and a credit card too. We had both our children get a Capital One Student Credit Card when they entered college and told them to use it to buy gas. That is helpful in two ways:

• It helps them start building credit. You can choose to pay it off for them or even send them money to pay for the gas. Building credit can only happen with credit cards, and if they ever want to get a loan or a home down the road, having credit is needed. Small things like gas are manageable to pay off.

• If they do use it for gas, sometimes stations put a temporary hold on the card while it waits to process the payment. By using the credit card for this, it does not tie up their checking account.

We found out that for his electricity, since he was new to the system, he would need to use a credit card vs. hooking it up to his checking account. Huge bummer, as he wanted to just have the direct withdrawal.

On the other hand, it did give us the opportunity to talk about credit cards that offer cash back or, since he will be living so far away, ones that could be tied to travel rewards. He will still be paying it off monthly, as they both know that not doing so affects your credit score.

We also worked on teaching our children how to budget for their bills, including food, fun money, travel money if that is part of their life, saving for the just-in-case moments, and so on. Budgeting is not something that is always taught in schools and is not always something that comes easy. The good thing is there are tools out there to help them create a system that works for them. It is my belief that offering to teach this to our kids early helps them in the long run. They can totally turn us down, or do it a different way, though at least they know that it is helpful to keep track of.

Grocery Shopping

Buying food and necessities is a fact of life. The thing we learned is that because his apartment was so close to his campus, the prices were $1–$2 more for the same items at the Publix by his apartment vs. a different Publix just a few miles away. This was also true of restaurants, and even the laundromats I’ll talk about further down.

We taught our kids early on to make lists before going out because it not only helps them stay organized, it also helps them budget. We took them to Aldi to show that the same food, often with the same brand name, could be purchased there for much less than at the big-box store. In this day and age of apps, we also talked about downloading the grocery app to grab their digital coupons too. Most grocery stores have them.

Helping your children see where the deals are and how to store them is super helpful. For example, he loves rice. He also lives in a very humid state now. So, Modular Mates were necessary for making sure that moisture would stay out of the rice, along with his brown sugar, sugar, and flour. We even made sure he had an Oval 1 Modular Mate to hold his baking soda, so it didn’t just deodorize his pantry! Having the right storage tools also helps to maximize the tight spaces I’ll talk about next!

Maximize Tight Spaces

The apartment that our youngest moved into was a studio apartment with a divided wall between what would be the "living room/work space" and his "bedroom." Growing up with a mom who sells Tupperware, having our kids in the kitchen and learning how to cook was just part of what we did. As a result, he loves to cook and was frankly frustrated by the lack of prep space.

The kitchen consists of a smaller fridge/freezer combo, a 4-coil stove/oven, and the sink you see here. As we shopped he found this really cool dish drainer — the silver thing with the CrystalWave dishes on it — that fit perfectly in that tight space. There were hooks already around the sink that we used to hang the knives he would prep with, and we used canning jars to hold his cleaning supplies and the utensils he would cook with. I really liked how we could hang more than one on the hooks too.

Inside the cupboards above the sink, we placed his dishes and cups, with cleaning supplies below.

It was helpful that, at college, our youngest had bins that fit into the cubbies of his dorm closet. These cubbies came in handy in his first apartment too.

He has two built-in closets where he could hang things, and a built-in dresser. Most of his clothes could fit in the dresser and one closet. For the closet closest to the kitchen, we took his 4x2 square bookcase you see here — the white cubbies from college — and made it into a pantry.

This still did not help with a prep station, so back to the hardware store we went.

There we got a 3x2 storage unit which he placed a wooden cutting board on for stability From there he could place a Tupperware flexible cutting board on top of to prep.

It was put perpendicular to the wall, so he could just turn a 180 to prep and then bring it to the stove in one swing. All of his prep tools fit in the bins and cubbies, so they could be out of the way. More hooks were on the wall next to this, and we took his fry pans and hung them from those hooks with the inside of the pan facing the wall.

Laundry

When we brought our youngest to welcome week, way back when he first started college, they separated the parents from their children so there could be team building for them and info for us. One of the biggest things they talked about was teaching your child how to do laundry.

Yes, laundry.

They mentioned how surprised they were by the number of kids who didn’t know how to do that. In our house, our children were taught how to do their own laundry around 9 or 10 years old, with supervision. So this was something both our kids were used to.

What would be different now is there are no laundry services in the space that our youngest is renting, so he would need to go to a laundromat. If that is also true for your child, I would highly recommend bringing them to one so they could see what it is like before they need to do so on their own.

He loves to use Reddit as a resource for what is good in an area — from food to, yes, even laundromats — and was able to find some great recommendations. Learning which ones take quarters vs. only cards was also important, as there could be fees with cards too. The one he found costs $4 a wash and $2 a dry with quarters.

Initially, he wanted to get a portable washing machine that could fit in his shower/tub combo, but it was too small to be practical. So, for now, the laundromat is the answer. One of the purchases we did get was a drying rack, so if he didn’t want to use the dryer or didn’t have time, there was another way.

Keeping Cool

With that in mind, if that is what your child does too, or lives in a place that is very humid, getting a small dehumidifier and circulating fan can be helpful.

The fan not only helps move the air from one side to the other — since the air conditioner is next to the refrigerator — but it can also help dry the clothes faster on the racks. The dehumidifier is great for keeping a musty smell down if you're in a humid climate, and for removing the moisture in the air from the clothes too.

Final Checks

At the end of the day, when our children get to this point in their lives, we really do move from the conductor of their lives to an audience member. We can help them write down the things that the management company needs to fix as they requested. We can help them get the insurance they need, along with everything for their kitchen and for keeping things clean. We can help them by being a resource when they have questions.

Then we need to let them experience life and learn the things they need to learn. It is their turn now. It is not always easy to watch or sit in the chairs as part of the audience. It is our job now, though. We will hear about their wins and the not-so-great days. We will hear about the struggles too, and the best advice I can give for that is this:

Ask, when you realize that it may be heading that way, what they want your role in this conversation to be. Do they want to just vent and have someone to listen to them? Or do they want advice too? Letting them know you are good with either, and sticking to whatever they decide, is important. Sometimes they just need to think it through, out loud, in a safe space. You can be that safe space if they wish you to be.

It is my hope that this has been helpful. This is by far not the end of what suggestions could be shared, as I am sure I am only scratching the surface. Either way, it is a good start. Like I mentioned in the beginning, if there is more to share, feel free to do so in the comments.

With love and Stardust,

Sarah

Hi, I'm Sarah Brynteson — mom, astrologer, author, Celtic Seer, and the voice behind Written in the Stars. I help individuals understand their own energy through their birth chart, and I have a special love for helping parents understand their children's energy, too. I'm a graduate of the Debra Silverman School of Astrology, a former middle school teacher, and someone who believes, deeply, that dreams become reality when we choose to make them so.