Pros and Cons of Apartment Living

We've been in our house for almost a month now, so I've had a little time to reflect on almost six years of apartment life. From our first little tiny place in Goldsboro (good old Ash Street!) to our New Bern townhouse to our Texas apartment, we've had varying experiences over the years but overall I really enjoyed living in each of those spaces. I was going to write "things I miss about apartment life" and then I changed it to "things I don't miss" and then I got smart and decided to combine the two. =)

Pro: Quick cleaning. I am a bit of a neat freak (in visible spaces, anyway... my closet can be another story sometimes!) and only having a few hundred square feet to keep clean was awesome. It was also awesome that even deep cleaning took under an hour. Honestly, it doesn't take a whole lot longer than that to clean my house because I don't like cleaning so I do it as quickly as possible =) but still. I could deep clean the apartment in like 45 minutes, which was great.

Con: loud neighbors. Somehow, no matter where we lived, we managed to be stuck under or over couples who hated each other and loved to scream at each other at all hours of the night. (I wish I were exaggerating.) Beyond the cursing, there was usually stomping, loud music (this last downstairs neighbor inexplicably loved techno) and partying on the patio right under our bedroom. (So fun!) I'm sure we weren't always the best either, with our screaming newborn and all, but we tried to be considerate (and we weren't hurling profanities back and forth at 2 am! Ah!) I did the whole broomstick on the floor thing a few weeks before we left because you wake up my baby, you deal with my wrath! #mamabear

Pro: Maintenance crew. When something broke, it wasn't really our problem; we could just call and someone would come fix it. Now we have a two-person maintenance crew: me and Jonathan( really just me, because let's be honest- that's not my jam.) And even though we're educated in other areas, we're not exactly fix-it people. At least Jonathan is good at figuring out instructions and when all else fails, there's YouTube. 

Con: Three. Flights. of. Stairs. One of the main reasons we moved from our apartment (and this sounds crazy, but it's not) was that we were on the third floor and there were no elevators. Carrying a baby in a carseat + third floor + Texas heat = no bueno. I seriously did not want to deal with that with the summer and 100+ temperatures coming. (Also a certain baby in this house is only getting heavier as the days go by so... yeah. Not happening.) 

No more stairs! Woohoo!

Pro: No bugs! Since we were on the third floor, it was extremely hard for bugs to make it all the way up to our apartment. I've killed more bugs in the month we've lived in this house than I did in a whole year in our last apartment. (This includes a roach Jonathan killed tonight so I'm considering burning the house down. Nope, nope, nope.) 

Con: Limited Storage/Customization. (I'm combining these!) Our apartment had pretty good closet space but there was still not much room for all of our junk seasonal stuff, tools, etc. (Tools sounds better... mostly we needed room for our books.) And not being able to paint meant that every room was the exact same color so that got old quickly. We haven't made huge cosmetic changes to our house but at least we have the option if we want to, and we have painted so that every space isn't a sea of khaki-colored walls. 

Pro: the pool. THE POOOOOOOL. Seriously, y'all... I've been in mourning ever since we moved because that pool was seriously my favorite thing ever. (Plus this time last year I already had a great tan.) It wasn't just a pool, either... it was gorgeous and the majority of the time I was the only person there so I really felt like it was mine. =( 

Goodbye, old friend. 

I'm so thankful for all the memories of our years in apartments (even those shouting matches are a little funny now.) But I am loving our house and all the extra space... we're really settled now and hopefully I'll get some good pictures together to share soon. (Just don't ask to see the garage. Now that we finally have one we're definitely putting it to good use! #hoarders)