5.31.2013

APARTMENT LIVING

after david and i made the terrible mistake of signing our life away the lease to our last apartment we came up with a list of priorities for our new place. it's funny how this list has changed over the years. four years ago when we came to this glorious place known as california i would have never moved into an apartment without a dishwasher. wash and dry my own dishes? please. oh and having shared laundry room seemed like a ridiculous idea. our current place doesn't have a dishwasher or laundry in our building (shared laundry rooms don't look so bad now).

but now that we are on our fourth apartment as a couple we know we don't need those thing. there were three major factors that determined whether or not we applied for an apartment. light, ceiling height and large living space.

1. light. a lot of places we looked at had windows in the front room, leaving the rest of the apartment looking like a dungeon. we didn't realize this was something we needed until we lived in a dungeon (i.e. our last apartment). natural light does wonders for your mood.

2. high ceilings. the height of a ceiling makes a  huge difference when you live in a small place. it makes 650 square feet automatically feel bigger. we could easily rule places out on craigslist just by looking at the space above the door frame.

3. large living space. when your apartment is less than 700 square feet, you live in all of it. david and i spend most of our time in the living room. it's easy to sacrifice bedroom space for living space. not the other way around. when looking at places i ask myself, can i do a jillian micheals DVD in front of the TV in here? it's a good rule of thumb when judging a space.

4. location. i refuse to say it three times. i hate when people say location, location, location. ah, that was painful for me to type. we live in our favorite part of the city. totally worth living without a dishwasher and laundry.


now for the reasons why we left our last apartment as fast as we could. 

1. we couldn't use the oven without the fire alarm going off. i'm not talking burning food here. simply turning on the oven would result in ear piercing sound. we stopped cooking all together because of this. when we told our landlord she said it was good to have a sensitive alarm. um?

2. although we signed a lease that said there was no smoking allowed on the property, our neighbors did not seem to follow this same rule. when we turned the heat on our place would fill up with the stink of cigarettes. for this same reason we couldn't open our bedroom window for longer than 10 minutes.

3. when we got heavy rain, our drains backed up (picture a tub full of dirty water) and our toilets didn't flush. sounds super fun, right?

4. our hot water heater broke for 3 weeks. that did wonders for my cold urticaria. our landlord couldn't have cared less and told us to to use the public baths that the homeless people use. 

5. the place was shaped like a bowling alley. really long and narrow. we had a hallway for a living room and ceilings weren't too far from your head. the place was oddly dark and turning on the lights didn't really help.

well i think that's enough complaining for one post. 





3 comments:

  1. Daniel and I loved reading this!!!! Still laughing. We too have had our share of duds. Your new place looks like a dream!! More pics!!

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  2. But you complained only like twice when you lived there - you deserved at least 6. 7. 8. 9. and maybe even 10. So glad you are out of there! Ugh, SF apartments, talk about hit or MISS.

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  3. I love this post!!!! Although I won't lie... it makes me never want to live in SF.

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