Top 3 Must-Have Kitchen Appliances for the Young Adult

**Disclaimer: No affiliate links or sponsors. Just wanted to give advice just cause.**

For me, one of the crappiest parts about living away from home is the limited access and space for all the great kitchen stuff my parents have. My mom loves to cook and host parties, and she has all the gadgets, gizmos, whosits, whatsits, and thingamabobs you could ever need. My parents even renovated the whole kitchen for extra storage, a larger stove, and an espresso machine (I love that damn thing so much).

Now I like to think I’m a mostly competent cook, but since moving out, it’s really hard to do certain recipes without those gadgets to speed the process along. Thankfully, after a mix of thrifting and preparing Christmas lists, I got some items which are absolute life savers. And I know they’ll be totally useful for anyone else looking for more out of their kitchen and cooking.

Here are my Top 3 Must-Have Kitchen Appliances for the Young Adult!

My One Tip For Applying for Jobs

No one likes it, but in this great capitalist society called America, you need a job to pay rent and eat. And for many folks my age, especially those continuing their education after high school, job hunting is one of the most daunting tasks ever. It doesn’t matter if it’s an internship, a minimum wage retail job in between classes, or your first 9-5 full time job with benefits; actually sitting down and applying for jobs is a bitch. Thankfully, the Internet is chock full of resources on how to spruce up your resume, what to wear for an interview, and what flowery language is best for embellishing your skills.

But if I learned anything from my years of applications and rejections, it’s this: Just. Freaking. Apply.

Sounds too easy? Because it is, so just do it!

It’s one thing to post your resume and LinkedIn profile to the void and hope some opportunity comes along. But it can take forever to get noticed, and sometimes recruiters find the shittiest jobs to match you with. And it’s too easy to get discouraged when you find the perfect job which matches your qualifications only to never hear back or get hired. I think my generation is so used to shooting high that we forget we only have so much knowledge to apply to any job.

My stepdad once told me that you gotta eat a lot of dirt to rise up, and he was definitely right. I knew I didn’t want to continue in retail work after college if I could help it, so I just threw my resume at any company hiring outside of Santa Cruz. At first, I was really hoping for a job in writing; blogging, journalism, editing, anything. But most of those positions were incredibly specific to what writing experience they were looking for (especially technical writing) and for how many years, which I definitely didn’t have much of.

After a while, I got desperate for ANY entry level job to get me more experience, even for places completely out of my field of study and experience level. Maybe someone would find something in my qualifications worth hiring onto their team. I still had no idea what my dream job was, and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna get it right out of college unless some higher power blessed me with a miracle. As expected, I got a load of rejections, even after interviews to about 4 places. But with graduation and a move coming up, I didn’t have time to wallow in whether or not I fucked up the interview or if I was qualified enough for the position. Take things as they come and move on to the next one.

Eventually, I found my luck as a legal assistant for an immigration law office, and it became the best job I picked for right after graduation. It wasn’t on whatever vague game plan I had in the back of my head, but it steered me into the direction of a potential lifelong career. I’m drawn to detail-oriented work where I can be a second pair of eyes and check that all the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. I enjoyed learning about the work which goes into a few different visa processes to best guarantee an approval and how to keep up with my boss on the changing regulations, especially given the current times in regards to immigration. And I’m eager to expand my horizons and learn more about the field.

I always loved doing behind-the-scenes work to make sure all the cogs in the machines were working, so I’m fairly confident that I don’t need to become an attorney (not like I’d have the patience or stamina for law school). At most, I want to get my paralegal certification to get more knowledge of the legal field and better appeal to employers. I know much of my future is full of uncertainty, but I’ve never been more confident in my choices than that to pursue paralegal work. And that all came from an on-the-fly online application.

Many major life choices are total leaps of faith as you’re pulled in multiple crossroads after high school. You’ll have to take some paths out of basic necessity (like working a crappy fast food job), but you may circle back to the ones you’re most passionate for. Sometimes new paths will open which you didn’t think existed, but they lead to new passions. Very rarely is anyone completely confident at age 18 what they want as a lifelong career, so don’t be scared to open up to multiple opportunities. You never know where life will take you until you freaking apply already.

---

If you liked this post and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi. Your support is much appreciated!

Online Passive Income Which Doesn’t B*llsh*t

No, no one is paying me to write this. I checked these out of my own volition and curiosity, and thought they’d be neat to share without the “too good to be true” filter.

In this lovely economy, young adults like myself feel pressure to shoot for any source of income we can grab on. Sometimes it’s a second job, and other times it may be weird apps we stumble across the Internet. And I’m covering the latter today. I got curious when I was waiting to bump up to full-time work, and once I got a new phone, I downloaded a few apps to test out.

Some of these apps advertise you can make hundreds of dollars quickly, but don’t be the dumbass who believes this. Some of these apps garner quicker results than others depending on how often you use them, but even then, it can still take a month or two to actually earn money. That’s gonna be the case for every single app I discuss. These are best if you’re looking for some extra spending money and should never be a substitute for a job. I found these are especially helpful for the holiday season since shopping does quite a number to my wallet, and I still need to save for a car and pay off credit card debt.

So let’s get right into what I tried and was most successful in my experience!

7 Home-Cooked Meals When You’re Low on Energy

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

You’ve been up since the crack ass of dawn. Most likely back and forth between classes or internships or work (maybe multiple part-time jobs if that’s where life has you at the moment). You busted your ass to get that bread, you finally get home at some ungodly hour, and all you wanna do is just pass the fuck out. Then your stomach growls, and then you go, “Oh yeah, dinner.” But you don’t have the time or energy to make anything. Been there, done that, and still doing that.

Sometimes if me and my housemates coordinate in advance, we can work together on a great meal. But we also have our fair share of days where we need to reserve our spoons to wind down for the evening, and we just slap together whatever is edible from the fridge and pantry and call it a night. And there’s no shame in going out or ordering in if you’re really struggling to stand any longer, but it’s a habit to be careful of if you already have food at home. I usually have a ton of leftovers or odds-and-ends which I have to get creative to make a meal, so I don’t feel bad about wasting money. And I found a few awesome and easy meals over the past few years for days when I’m too exhausted to think straight.

Without further ado, here’s 7 Home-Cooked Meals When You’re Low on Energy!

7 Tips for Living on Your Own for the First Time

For any young adult, moving into your own place is simultaneously the most liberating and terrifying milestone of your life. On one hand, no parents to tell you what to do, and you can make whatever the hell you want of your new home. On the other hand… no parents to tell you what to do. You have to take charge of making time to take care of said new home, whether it be a dorm, apartment, or house. Depending on the rest of your obligations, it’s difficult to keep up with cleaning, checking appliances, and respecting your roommates’ spaces. So I came up with some general rules of thumb which worked well for my experiences, and they may help you figure out how to take care of your first home away from home.

Without further ado, here are my 7 Tips For Living On Your Own For the First Time!

6 Tips For Your First Year of College

Well, it’s that time of year again; back-to-school season. Bye-bye to spontaneous adventures and back to the books! And for many, this back-to-school season will mark your first year of college! Hooray!

Regardless of what program you take, it’s a hell of an adjustment period in those baby steps of independence. Orientations can only prepare you for so much, and most shit you learn as you go by winging it and making a couple mistakes along the way. Thankfully, you’re not alone in wondering what the fuck you’re doing with your life, and you have seasoned veterans like yours truly who had to learn a lot to make the most of the college experience.

Here’s my 6 Tips For Your First Year of College!

5 Things to Know Before Starting Your Curly Hair Journey

So I’ve been on a curly hair routine for a year now, and I couldn’t be happier with how much healthier my hair is. Not that I had a crap ton of damage to recover from, but I can’t imagine ever going back to how I used to take care of my hair. Some weeks are rougher than others with all the experimentation I do, but I finally nailed down on what works and what doesn’t for the best results.

Now anyone who begins a curly hair routine knows some of the basics: don’t wash your hair every freaking day, avoid sulfates and silicons, don’t brush your hair dry, et cetera, et cetera. Since going on a curly hair routine, I learned a few other things I wish I knew when I began. These are little topics I may see brought up time-to-time from social media influencers, but they’re not as widespread talking points. And of course, I had to make it into a list.

Here are 5 Things to Know Before Starting Your Curly Hair Journey!

Eliza’s Top 10 Ways to Decompress

The biggest form of self-care to learn is how to decompress when you’re thrust in an extremely stressful situation. Keeping everything pent up and unattended will inevitably lead to disaster, and it’s no fun for anyone involved. Stress management is one of my major resolutions for the new year, and I found some tricks which work well for me, but I definitely need to practice more often. Some of these are related to my autism symptoms, so bear it mind these may not work for everyone.

So, in no particular order, here are my top 10 ways I decompress!

Making Resolutions You Can Actually Keep

The winter holidays are almost outta of here, which means it’s time for a new year and the ever-so dreaded resolutions– promises and goals you make to be a better person before forgetting all of that by February. And here I am still making a resolution list anyway cause I gotta get my life in order.

It’s easy enough to say that you’ll exercise more or cut back on caffeine, but if you don’t make an actual game plan towards those goals, they become harder to stick to past the first month, and you’re back in the same old habits. Sometimes it takes a little while for results to kick in, and other times, life just gets in the way of achieving certain goals. But once your resolution becomes a part of your daily or weekly routine, it becomes significantly less burdensome. Of course it helps to make resolutions which are actually feasible with everything else you have going on.

One of my resolutions last year was to read at least one book a month, and boy howdy, that did not happen. I’m still slogging through Carrie Fisher’s Shockaholic after…. 5 months? Though I got back into podcasts since I updated my phone and commuting a lot, and am still catching up with Welcome to Night Vale after 3 years. I even finished Alice Isn’t Dead and Wolverine: The Long Night which are also spectacular podcasts if you’re into thrillers, suspense, and a touch of the supernatural. I still want to regularly read again now that I’m out of college, but it’s all a matter of setting aside time when I can actually focus.

Get a better sleeping schedule? Psh! Yeah, right. Not for this caffeine addicted raccoon! I was doing well for a while when my legal assistant job was only part-time in the afternoons and I could afford to sleep in. But since I’m now full-time, I need to learn to love my mornings, try to make it through the day without jacking up on caffeine, and going to bed before midnight. So it’s on my resolutions again for 2019 with intent to set more reminders and an earlier alarm to better will myself awake.

Below are a few more resolutions for 2019, and some of the steps I’ll take to turn these goals into regular habits:

1. Getting into a better skin care routine
   • I like to think I take care of my skin better than average, but it’s still a work in progress. I’m prone to stress and hormonal breakouts which is as ugly as you would think, and my sister— who you can follow @marina.dove on Instagram— has been on a kick the past couple years on skin care which is actually kind to her face. So I’ll ask her for suggestions and go on a few Sephora runs.
   • The major areas I need to tackle include the following:
     • Regularly using retinol and ice treatments;
     • Face mask once a week;
     • Move away from drug store make up and facial care as much as possible.
2. Cut back on caffeine
   • Every so often, I tell myself I’ll ease on the caffeine, and for a while, I was good at tracking how many sugar-y drinks I had every week. Now that I’m a coffee drinker, that’s tossed out the window. I also have a bad tendency to drink caffeine when I’m stressed, which wires me the rest of the day.
   • For this resolution, I will try the following:
     • Drinking tea more often (no, Snapple iced tea doesn’t count);
     • Soda on the weekends only (I’m already making a habit of this with alcohol consumption cause that’s too slippery of a slope to a bad coping mechanism).
3. Socialize!
   • I still don’t have as strong of a network as I would like since college, and with a 9 to 5 job and no car, it’s not easy to get out during the week. And by the weekend, I’m just tired and need to mentally recover. Now that I’ve been full time for a couple months, I have a good idea on how to manage my time outside of work and what I can work into my free time. There’s a couple volunteer organizations in town I’ve been meaning to check out which I already follow on Facebook, and I really want to find local LGBT organizations to get involved in too. Now I just need to sign up for email lists and get my ass out on the weekend.
   • Also I miss trivia, bowling and karaoke nights, and I need the occasional dopamine release before I go insane.

And I have a few other little resolutions which are just upkeeping regular habits like managing social media, experimenting with my curly hair routine, and starting another savings account for a car. Nothing too big, but I’d like that extra independence with my own car, and I’m already drafting new post ideas for the next couple months (including another movie review month). It really helps to not feel jaded by New Years resolutions by making a few you know you will accomplish before the year is out. Again, it’s all about realistic feasibility and making a plan on how to achieve those goals.

I also need better stress management, but that’s a post for another day. Stay tuned for tips on stress management, and have a Happy New Year! Don’t drink and drive!

11 Tips to Set Good Studying Habits

It is finally December, which means for any of you lovelies out there still slogging through college, finals are just around the corner! It’s the most daunting time of the year when winter vacation is so close you could shove as many candy canes as possible down your throat. But you need to surpass one more mountain before you can enjoy that time off, and you’ll need a shit ton of preparation before doing so.

Sitting down with a semester/quarter full of material to compact in a final paper or memorize for a big test is already exhausting as is, and everyone has their own method to the madness. So I thought I’d share some of the tricks I picked up throughout college which really made a difference between passing and failing.

Here are Eliza’s 11 Tips to Set Good Studying Habits!

1. Put your phone as far away from you as possible
   • This should be a no brainer, but we’re all still easily distracted and too curious on whatever the hell Brenda shared. Trust me. It’s not important. Turn on silent mode, flip it upside down, and set it on the opposite end of the room until you’re done.
2. Set up blockers for social media when on your computer
   • I’m personally a fan of the Strict Workflow extension on Google Chrome. It uses the Pomodoro Technique where you work for 25 minutes, break for 5, repeat as needed. You can even adjust the timer and pick which sites to block.
3. Find background noises which work best to help you focus
   • Some people love the silence when they need to focus, others need sound while working to not lose their sanity. And there are also people who can make anything white noise while others are easily distracted by singing, movies or TV shows. Noisli is a pretty good website to mix different sounds like trains, rain, and fire to whatever you’re in the mood for. And of course, you can never go wrong with the endless plethora of lo-fi stations on YouTube or movie soundtracks like Lord of the Rings.
4. Back up EVERYTHING
   • I don’t care if you got good anti-virus software. You never know when shit will hit the ceiling fan at the zero hour. Google Drive, DropBox, fuck it, use iCloud if that’ll ease your worry. I did all my school work through Google Docs so I could pop it up from any computer lab without needing to lug around my laptop around, and God forbid, should my laptop set on fire, I wouldn’t worry about losing that big final paper.
5. Have sufficient snacks and water
   • It’s too easy to forgo self-care when studying, because you want to use all your time as efficiently as possible even if it kills you. Don’t. Do Trader Joe’s frozen dinners or take-out if you’re otherwise too lazy to cook, but please eat something of the four main food groups so you’ll still have the energy to study. And for fuck’s sake, eat a fruit and drink a tall glass of plain water.
6. Take frequent breaks and don’t overwork yourself
   • Falling under the same lines as the previous point, your whole body is going to feel like hell sitting in one spot and staring at a computer screen for too long. After a while, your brain will run on fumes trying to memorize terms or re-write that one fragmented sentence at least 80 times. Close the laptop or book, stand up, and stretch until your joints sound like a crisp, fresh bowl of Rice Krispies. Let your mind wander to other things besides school before you become a mindless robot.
7. Colored pens and highlighters save lives
   • Staring at the same plain text over and over is draining for your eyes, and only a fraction of it is going to matter to you. Throwing in a pop of color helps a ton to prioritize and organize what’s most useful for the test or paper, and for me, I don’t feel like I’m staring at the same sentence for 5 years.
8. Make study groups
   • Even if you never see these people in person, find at least 2 or 3 people in your class you can trust as back up when everything feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. Have a group chat, make a Google Doc, and keep in touch to help each other in these dire times. I also had a few larger classes where people make one big study guide for everyone to access, and it’s fantastic to bounce off dozens of people to see who got the answer to that one question everyone else is duped on.
9. GO. TO. STUDY. SESSIONS.
   • I guarantee you’re not the only helpless motherfucker out there stumped on what the hell is going on. There are never stupid questions, and your TA and/or professor are your last life lines which can make or break your final grade. Even if you’re confident that you know the answers, it never hurts to get confirmation right from the source.
10. Find study spots outside your dorm/apartment to study
    • I work best when I’m not at home. It’s far too easy to get cozy or distracted by what chores I need to do or when the cats look so darn cute and you wanna snuggle them. So I go to the least busiest cafe I can find, get a drink and a snack, and camp out for as long as I can (which is sometimes until my laptop battery runs out). It helps to have a few backup places in case one is too crowded or all the outlets are taken, which was usually the case in downtown Santa Cruz around finals time. I’d often just bus all the way to Capitola where it’s much easier to find a free table, especially if it’s Mr. Toot’s hot chocolate and a cupcake.
11. Mind the drug use– I’m gonna talk about two substances to be super wary of in regards to studying.
    • Caffeine: It’s great to get that boost of energy from a good cup of coffee, soda, and/or energy drink. But if you overdo it to compensate for a crappy sleep schedule, you may feel like blasting off to the moon before crashing and burning. Now if I have to be active and move around for work, I don’t mind the extra caffeine, but if I have to stay still and focus, it just ain’t gonna happen. If I really must, I get those tiny Coca-Cola cans for a quick boost and carry on with my studies. Some people aren’t really affected by caffeine, so it’s very much a “pick your poison” sort of dilemma.
    • Adderall/Ritalin: I really shouldn’t be having to say to not use medicine not prescribed to you, but life never fails to surprise me. If you think you may have severe ADHD/ADD, go to a freaking doctor or psychologist first before mindlessly popping ultra powerful pills to the point where you don’t even remember getting work done. Medication for mental disorders is not something to be messed with lightly, especially when there are people who actually need that to function on a daily basis for everyday tasks, not just to procrastinate the night before an exam because you have no sense of time management or discipline. This is why you plan things out ahead of time as soon as you get the syllabus at the beginning of the semester/quarter so you don’t play the game of “Is there a God.”

And that concludes my tips for setting good study habits! As mentioned before, everyone is different in how they pace themselves and focus, and sometimes you don’t know until you’re in the moment. Of course, getting the work done as efficiently as possible is important, but a lot of students forget that priority number one should be self-care and remembering that they’re not Super-Man. Sometimes half-assed is the best you can do, and you may miraculously pass anyway. Just don’t beat yourself up on being an absolute perfectionist!

Happy studying and happy holidays!