--- title: Looking after yourself and a home — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Looking after yourself and a home», a lesson of the adult life course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: When you grow up and leave home, nobody else cooks, cleans, washes your clothes, pays the bills or sends you to bed. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Adult life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/) / Looking after yourself and a home # Looking after yourself and a home Lesson 38 of the adult life course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/0/) — When you grow up and leave home, nobody else cooks, cleans, washes your clothes, pays the bills or sends you to bed. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/1/) — You have to do it all yourself. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/2/) — Grown-ups learn these jobs slowly, often by getting them wrong first, and the ones who practise as children find it much easier. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/3/) — Vivid example: in Melbourne, cousin Jess moves into her first rented flat with a bag of old plates from Gran. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/4/) — In her first week she turns all her white shirts pink, eats toast for tea three nights running and rings her mum to ask how to boil an egg. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/5/) — Looking after yourself and a home means cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping on a budget, paying bills, renting, finding a doctor, sleeping enough, being on time, making scary phone calls, reading what you sign and knowing when to call an expert. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/6/) — Knowing a few simple meals saves money and keeps you healthy; adults who cannot cook spend much more on takeaways and ready meals. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/7/) — A home does not clean itself: dishes, hoovering, the bathroom and the bins all need doing, and when you live alone it is all your job. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/8/) — Laundry means sorting colours, reading labels and choosing the right temperature; a red sock in a white wash turns everything pink. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/9/) — A budget is the amount of money set aside for something, like food for the week; putting things back on the shelf is a way to stay within it. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/10/) — Bills are regular payments for electricity, gas, water, the internet, phones and council tax; paid late, they bring extra charges and services can be cut off. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/11/) — Renting means paying a landlord every month to live in a home that belongs to someone else; renters usually pay a deposit at the start and sign an agreement. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/12/) — A GP is a family doctor; in the UK you sign up with a local practice, and people must do it again themselves when they move town. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/13/) — Looking after yourself means sleeping enough, eating properly, moving your body and resting; grown-ups have nobody to send them to bed, so they must decide for themselves. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/14/) — Being often late can lose someone a job or upset friends, because it says other people's time does not matter. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/15/) — Lots of young adults find phone calls to strangers scary; planning what to say first helps, and it gets easier with practice. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/16/) — A contract is a written promise, for a phone, a flat or a job; the small print is the detail, and once you sign you usually have to keep to it. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/17/) — Never sign something you do not understand; asking questions first is what sensible adults do. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/38-looking-after-yourself-and-a-home/18/) — Some home jobs, especially with water, gas and electricity, are too tricky or dangerous to do yourself, so grown-ups call and pay an expert like a plumber. - ← previous: [Sorry, white lies and «because I said so»](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/37-sorry-white-lies-and-because-i-said-so/) - next →: [Money, work and the big choices](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/39-money-work-and-the-big-choices/) - ↑ back to [Adult life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/)