8 Signs You're Finally Becoming An Adult In The Kitchen

When do you actually become an adult? Is it when you turn 18 and can legally vote? Or when you turn 21 and can buy beer with your own ID, not the one you got from your older cousin who sort of looks like you? Is it when you turn 25 and have to decide whether or not to purchase the insurance the rental car company tried really hard to sell you?

Or is it when, at 11 a.m. on a random Saturday, you find yourself going over ever inch of your stovetop with a Mr. Clean eraser while a Golden Oldies Pandora station plays in the background? At some point on your early 20s, you may have considered "using the good plates" to mean serving mac and cheese on paper plates rather than eating it straight out the pot.

But slowly, something changes. Maybe 401(k)s, like moons, have gravitational pull that affect things around it. Maybe, at some point, we just realize no one else is going to show up to scrap the weeks-old Brussels sprouts out of the bowl at the back of the fridge. Maybe we just get boring and, suddenly, the idea of labelling food with the date you froze it becomes a real gas.

Ahead, the eight signs childhood is over and you're becoming (gulp) a real adult in the kitchen.