I Graduated College—Then Moved Back In With My Parents

In 2019, when I was 18, my family moved from Oakville, Ontario, into a log cabin at the 250-acre Crieff Hills Retreat Centre in nearby Puslinch. Coincidentally, the property was once the estate of John Bayne Maclean, the founder of this magazine. Maclean had left it to the Presbyterian Church of Canada, which turned it into a retreat centre. My mom, a Presbyterian minister for 20 years, was hired as executive director, and we moved on-site.

Less than a year later, the pandemic hit. My mom had to lay off most of her staff, so our family became responsible for most of the property maintenance and administrative work. I’d just graduated from high school, and I began working full-time for my mom, doing kitchen work and cleaning—but my mom couldn’t afford to pay me because there was no income due to the shutdown, which was frustrating.  

My plan was always to go to college, so in the summer of 2020, I moved half an hour away to Waterloo to attend Conestoga College for baking and pastry studies. I was lucky that my parents owned a house in Waterloo; they let me move into the basement. They charged me $600 a month to live in that house with five roommates. I kept working for my mom, mostly in the kitchen, but the move gave us some much-needed distance—and there was finally enough revenue for me to receive back pay.

Despite the ongoing lockdown, I was excited for my newfound independence. I had a curfew while I was living with my parents, so being able to go out when I wanted was a big plus. I couldn’t make new school friends during COVID, but I hung out more with high school friends who lived in the area, and I met other people through them—even my long-term boyfriend. I didn’t have to think about anyone else’s schedule either; I stayed out later and bought groceries and made meals whenever I wanted. 

And yet, living on my own wasn’t as glamorous as I’d hoped. I had cooked for a family of six most of my life, and adjusting to cooking for just myself made it difficult to plan meals. I had to buy ingredients that could be recombined into several different meals, and even then I often ended up over my grocery budget. I always had leftovers, and my food often went bad. I also ate out a lot more often than I’d thought I would. My parents’ financial support and Conestoga’s relatively low tuition costs kept me from going broke, but money was still tight. 

I also spent a lot of time alone in my room. I didn’t know anyone in my classes, and I wasn’t close with any of my roommates because we had very different schedules and were in different phases of life. I left for school in the dark, came home in the dark, and spent my days off in the dark. It wasn’t the college experience I’d expected.

In some ways, working a lot helped. I didn’t have time to waste away in my room. But in the last semester of my degree, my mom’s head chef quit. I was still a student, but I took over the role, both to help out my mom and to bolster my resumé. Suddenly, I had to learn how to menu plan, order food, prep, and manage a kitchen on the fly. My days were split in two: in the morning I would go to class and study, and in the afternoon and evening I would commute 30 minutes to work in Crieff’s kitchen. Usually, I would try to prepare for the next morning as well, so that the employees covering for me while I was in class knew what they’d be doing. 

At that point, I ate, slept and breathed the hospitality industry, and though my mom found a replacement head chef after a month, it was already too late. When I graduated from Conestoga in the spring of 2022, I was completely disillusioned. The work was very demanding and didn’t leave me time for a personal life or self-care. From talking to chefs, I knew that I’d be working long hours in hot kitchens, on my feet all the time. Most chefs work weekends and holidays, and end up missing important events and milestones. I didn’t want to force myself into the industry right after college because I knew that, if I did, I would grow to hate something I had once loved.

But living on your own is not feasible when you’re burnt out and have no idea what you’re going to do for work. I wanted to move out of Waterloo, so I started looking for an affordable apartment in an area where I could find a job in the pastry industry. At the time, I was making minimum wage plus tips at a café, and I was picking up some additional hours at Crieff, bringing my monthly income to around $2,000. I began searching for a nice apartment in Hamilton, but I quickly had to adjust my expectations for a starter place. I didn’t have any friends from college who I could live with, so I had to consider one-bedroom places, which usually cost between $1,800 and $2,100 monthly. I then looked into communal housing, but most of those options still cost around $1,500. Plus, I was concerned about safety and whether I’d get along with my roommates. Timing was also an issue: most places became available in the fall, but I needed somewhere to live immediately after graduation. I rejected some places for their distance from public transport and others out of a fear that the landlord would be unreliable. 

Eventually, I decided to continue working for my mom, so it made sense to move back to Crieff. Emotionally, the decision was difficult. Though I knew that it’s common for people my age to move back in with their parents after college, I felt the weight of failure resting on my shoulders. I was upset with myself for still leaning on my parents and not trying harder to get another job. In retrospect, I’m glad I took advantage of that privilege, but at the time it felt like a step backwards.

By the time I moved back in, all of my siblings had left home, so it was just me and my parents. My responsibilities increased: the organization had grown, and there were fewer people in our household to split the work. I ended up cooking for my family a lot in my first few months back. I also couldn’t go out as often, and I missed the freedom I’d had when I lived on my own. 

There was definitely a period of adjustment: my mom and I had to transition from a mother-daughter dynamic to more of a roommate one. One night my parents held a dinner party that I didn’t attend. The next day, my mom and I got in an argument because I hadn’t washed the dishes that they had used the previous day. I understood that I wasn’t working as much at the time, so I was expected to do more of the housework. But it didn’t made sense for me to clean up after events I had not participated in. I wanted us to be more responsible for our individual lives. 

Now, it’s been about a year since I moved back in, and things are better. My mom has a type A personality with regards to cleanliness, while I’m less organized. Accepting that we’re comfortable in different environments and learning to respect those preferences was definitely a large shift in our relationship. Now, she lives upstairs and I live downstairs, so we don’t have to tiptoe around each other. I also began working as a flight attendant in August of 2023, so I’m out of the house for a big chunk of the month, which helps. My room is very bright, which is a nice change of pace from my cramped and dark basement room, and while it’s still hard to see people, I enjoy the solitude at Crieff more than I did while living in the suburbs. It’s peaceful, and I like having all that green space.

There are still challenges. The power goes out frequently, the wi-fi is spotty at best, and everything is far away. Of course, it can be overwhelming to balance everything. Work as a flight attendant is intense, and when I come home, I still do various odd jobs for Crieff, like tending crops, housekeeping and helping at reception. I also have to find time to rest, spend time with my family, see my boyfriend and his family, have a social life, do laundry, and pack each time I leave for work. And yet it’s still better than killing myself to pay rent. 

The cost of living is crazy right now, and I say that as someone who still had a lot of things working in my favour when I moved out. I paid cheap rent and my Conestoga program was relatively inexpensive, but I still had to work all the time to make ends meet. I lived off coupons, a food program and the leftovers I’d get from school.

Even now, I work two jobs and still don’t make a lot of money. Flight attendants make low wages and my company isn’t unionized. Lots of my co-workers are living with roommates or parents, plus they work a second job. And yet this is the best out of a series of bad options. I’m grateful that I can go home when I need to; I just hope there’s a better living situation in my future. My boyfriend and I have discussed moving into an apartment together, but we also hope to buy a house one day, so it makes more sense to save than pay rent. We’d still have to move to a less expensive city, which wouldn’t be ideal, but ultimately that’s how housing decisions work: you weigh what you can afford against what you can sacrifice. 

—As told to Marta Anielska