I was actually a few years out of my parents home when I realized that I did not have to have the spongey, rubbery, hypoallergenic pillows that I always had growing up. I have NEVER had one since.

Wall color. Owning my home gave me the freedom to paint the walls in a beautiful color.

The pink wall to wall carpet throughout the apartment. Ugghhhhhhhh.

To never have white walls.

My husband and I had not been in our first home for even a day before I grabbed a utility knife and started pulling up the carpet. There was lovely hardwood underneath. In our second and present home, I started ripping the plaid wallpaper off the family room walls before the moving van arrived.

I couldn't wait to change the channel to whatever show I wanted to watch on tv whenever I wanted to watch tv.

The floors!

The very first thing I did was paint my white walls with color. White walls remind me of apartment living and I will probably never have another white wall in any house I live. Second was getting rid of ALL carpet. Love my wood and tile floors. House stays so much cleaner without those carpet fibers floating in the air.

couldn't wait to float furniture pieces to use all of a room. grew up with furniture lining the walls. hated that.

The dining room wall colour. It was three shades of beige - pinky beige, yellowy beige, and greeny beige. It's now cherry tart red with white trim.

I've always wanted a red dining room, but couldn't have it in the previous house since it had a combination living/dining room.

Next step was organizing the kitchen; garbage and recycling bins in lower cupboards, extra removable shelves to efficiently stack plates and bowls, new inside-of upper cupboard door spice rack, and so on. We gave considerable thought to how we would work in the kitchen and where the best place to store everything was.

a home without stuffed animals and dolls wearing elaborate lacey outfits.

Honestly... Whole house. We bought one that needed work, more than we realized once we purchased and started. We had literal garbage left from the owners kids- expired food, you name it. Stained carpet throughout entire thing- bathrooms and kitchen, too. Nicotine stained everything- wall paper and mid 90s cheap fixtures. Damaged hard wood underneath requiring refinishing. Probably the biggest was taking down the black mirror wall tiles that were double stick taped, some broken, some came of easily, and others that removed large pieces of plaster.

Baroque or gilded ANYTHING and the furnishings that would compliment that style. Wood turnings, any suggestion of knotty pine.

When I was growing up, I was allowed to decorate my room as I chose, so I never had an intense dislike of anything. I never lived in an apartment on my own.

We had so very, very little while I was growing up that I relished being able to go to the grocery store without adding up each thing that was put into the cart to see if we could afford it.

The most important thing I changed was no longer taking into consideration what "people will think."

It is so liberating to make every decision based on the needs and desires of myself and my family rather than the supposed opinions of random others.

Everything painted grey and the white kitchen were first to go.

I could not wait to NOT have a garbage can in my kitchen. In my home, I use plastic bags from the store and place the bagged garbage in the alley canister. No dirty, smelly can in the kitchen.

I could buy furniture based on looks, comfort, and price instead of ignoring the looks part of the equation.

Plastic off of the dining room chairs! Growing up, my mother kept clear heavy plastic on the seat cushions of our dining room chairs. I can still feel the bare skin of the backs of my legs ripping off of the plastic every time I moved my legs or stood up-ouch! In those days little girls wore short dresses and knee socks. Bare skin and plastic is not a good combination.

popcorn ceiling

I never had my own place! Four kids and two parents in my smallish childhood homes (the fourth child arrived while we were in a 2-bedroom house before we moved to a 3-bedroom place). I lived at home when I started college, married after two years and moved to our first apartment.
What I would add to other Houzzers' list of things they would have in their own first place would be my own CLOSET. After 20 years of marriage, we moved to a home big enough for each of us to have our own closet. Our kids had their own rooms and their own closets, but I got my own closet at age 40!
PS: I wouldn't change my life.

Removed the carpet, painted the walls anything but beige or white, & no clutter. Nice clean open spaces