Settling in

And then we were moved. After a solid four days of almost non-stop moving-type activities (packing, throwing away, loading, unloading, unpacking, arranging, rearranging, etc.), our new place is beginning to look a little like a place we'll be able to live. A little. There are still many boxes to unpack, the furniture arrangement is still up in the air, and we're seriously flummoxed with the sorry state of the kitchen. How could we have missed the fact that there's almost no cabinet space and that which does exist is rotting (literally) and falling apart? Yeah, that's right. There are a total of five drawers in our kitchen, all very small. Of the five, two are missing their fronts—they apparently pulled right off. Two of the other three are about to lose their fronts, as well, primarily because the drawers are warped and swollen and barely move on their tracks. Great.

How do you persuade your landlord you need an entirely new kitchen?

Of course, that's not going to happen. Judging by other little details of this place, our landlord—who I must stress seems very very nice and who I like a lot—has kind of skated by, doing the minimum in maintenance for some time. In addition to the tiny, falling apart and otherwise completely substandard kitchen, the bathroom exhaust fan was broken, the walls are scuffed and pocked with holes, and there are about four strange little dead spaces at different points around the place. These dead spaces are little closet-type spaces containing the guts of the apartment—furnace, water heater, electrical panel, random plumbing and wiring, and other machinery I cannot identify. That's fine; every house/building must put these things somewhere. The trouble with this place is that all of these mechanicals have been positioned randomly and w/out any forethought, then they were enclosed in the same manner, thereby creating huge pockets of "dead space"—meaning space that is almost completely unusable, wasted. We're talking maybe close to 20 square feet or more of space that you mostly can't do anything with; you can store boxes or something in part of it, but otherwise, nada. This is a tragedy in an already small apartment.

But enough of the whining. The place is growing on me, and we're going to save $300-400/month (the savings vary b/c we don't pay utilities so I'm counting the variable costs we used to pay in utilities as savings). Plus, I've already replaced the bathroom exhaust fan, so there's one complaint out of the way. The bathroom is the size of a small closet and L. could not cope with the lack of circulation in there; after I'd replaced the fan, I realized she was right. Other big pluses include a cool covered and locked bike storage area in the entryway; access to the back "deck, including gas grill and patio furniture (w/prior approval of the landlords who live upstairs); and a dog park right across the street. No more walking a block and a half just to let the animal get her ya-yas out. (No, a block and a half isn't far, but it gets a little old when you do it 3-4 times/day and/or when you're in a hurry to get to class or work.)

So we're settling in. This is the third time we've moved in the last 15 months, and I'm hoping it will be the last time for about two more years. Moving blows.

I was going to write something about how much U-Haul also blows because they jerk you around w/your reservations and never have the equipment you reserved and their trucks smell bad and are in poor repair, and and.... I was going to write all that, none of which I need to write because if you've used U-Haul you know what I'm talking about already, but I'm holding off on that to see if their "SafeMove" insurance policy will save my buttocks. A big blemish on this recent move was that I sort of, um, got too close to a parked car w/the truck and pulled its passenger-side mirror right off. Oops! The repair bill is going to be upwards of $300, and I just don't have that right now. So now I'm waiting to hear back from U-Haul's insurance company to see if they will cover the claim. Keep your fingers crossed for me, will you?

Posted 11:06 PM | Comments (5) | life generally