5 Things Every Queer Apartment Should Have on Day One

I moved out three months ago and I almost didn't put up the flag.

Not because I was scared. I'm out. My building is mostly other queer people. My parents would not be visiting. There was no reason not to.

I just kept thinking I'd do it next weekend.

It sat in the Pride Palace mailer on my nightstand for six days. Six days of looking at it, walking past it, thinking okay, this weekend.

Then I had a Saturday morning where I didn't have anything else to do, and I taped it up above my bed, and I sat on the floor and looked at it, and I cried for about four minutes.

I have lived in three places in my adult life. Two dorms and a sublet I shared with someone who was, in retrospect, a little homophobic. This is the first time my own bedroom had ever looked back at me and said yeah, this one is yours.

If you have just signed a lease, just moved in, just finally have a wall that isn't getting inspected by anyone, here is the checklist. Skip whichever ones you have. Don't skip #1.

1. A Pride flag for your wall.

I know. Obvious.

But here's the thing about the flag specifically: it does the work of every other piece of identity decor combined. You don't have to find the perfect print on Etsy. You don't have to commission art. You don't have to wait until Pride drops a poster you like.

You put a 3 by 5 foot flag on the wall, and your bedroom is now legibly queer in one move. Every other piece of decor in the room is suddenly the room of a specific queer person, not a generic queer person. The room means something now.

(Pride Palace ships these free, you cover shipping. Linking at the bottom. Move on.)

2. One lamp that's the right temperature.

This is not a queer-specific tip. It's a your-first-apartment tip.

The overhead light in your apartment is, statistically, terrible. Get one warm-bulb lamp. Put it on a side table or the floor. Use it instead of the overhead at night. Your whole apartment looks ten times more like a real place to live and the queer kids on TikTok will respect you more.

3. A playlist for when people come over.

You will, at some point, have queer people over. You will need music for that.

You do not want to be the person panic-Spotifying when the first guest walks in. Make the playlist now. Title it specifically. "my apartment, my rules" or "first place i ever cried in" or whatever. The playlist becomes a personality. Spotify shows it on the cover of your phone when you AirPlay it.

(My current one is called house meeting. It's mostly Caroline Polachek and Ethel Cain.)

4. One piece of identity jewelry you wear every day.

A ring. A pendant. A pair of earrings. Something small that you wear to the grocery store, to your job interview, to your therapist's office.

This is for the days when you are not in your apartment. The flag is for inside; the jewelry is for outside. They are the same act in different sizes.

(Pride Palace sells rings, pendants, and earrings. If you're getting the flag anyway, throw one of these in the cart.)

5. A flag for someone else.

This is the one nobody told me.

The first flag goes in your room. The second flag goes in the room of a friend who hasn't ordered theirs yet. Or your younger cousin. Or your sibling. Or the friend who just moved into their first place too.

The flag-for-someone-else is a thing you do because someone did it for you, even if no one did. You become the person who shows up to the housewarming with the gift no one knew they wanted.

I have bought four. One for me, one for my best friend, one for my sister's college dorm, and one I'm saving for when my younger cousin moves out next year.