Apartment Living

I've told you that we live in an apartment, right? We are up on the third floor of a corner unit and it makes for good stuff most of the time:

We save on energy costs because of the shared space
We do not have to shovel when it snows, or deal with water issues when it rains
Do you know how much cheaper it is to have Renters Insurance instead of Homeowners?

We lucked into a great place with lots of space, and a friend from church that helped us find the place too. Since I've blogged about how much we love this place before, I wanted to point out that not everything about living in an apartment is great for us.

1 - There are smokers that live below us, and that sucks. Now that winter is over, we are starting to notice the smoke more again, since windows are open. The worst part is that when we had windows open for a week it seems that the smoke built up in the duct work, so when we turned the air back on it took two days to get rid of that stench. Ugh.

2 - The third floor is fun for lots of stuff, but some times it would be SO much nicer to just walk right in from the sidewalk to the front door. Add a preschooler who is sometimes deathly afraid of stairs you can see through and sometimes it's downright miserable. I am just really hopeful that none of us ever sprains or break anything while we live here, or it with be unbearable!

3 - While it is nice to not have to be responsible for issues around here like when the sink stops up, we also have to know that sometimes we won't get the immediate reaction of calling a plumber ourselves. Two weeks ago we had a bad clog and had to wait for Monday to roll around because I forgot to call on Friday! We did just enough dishes to get by in the bathroom sink. Also makes you think about how many pans and such you use when you have to be mindful about how much washing needs done.

4 - (mostly from Anny, who opts to do 100% of the laundry) We do not have laundry facilities in our place, and we live on the third floor. I finally convinced Anny that we could leave the laundry soap and such in the car to ease some of the weight up and down. It was a really big issue when Abby got stomach-sick a couple of months back, but we're managing. Once we have fun-money again I think we might look into laundry service, but that's several years off.

We love living in the apartment, and now that spring is here we can see our neighbors again and have fun in the big yard! Good times.