We checked out an apartment yesterday and we think its the one! We haven't signed the lease yet but we are first in line to get the place after we go through the background and credit check. Because its not official I wont post and photos yet. But let me just say, it is going to be a huge change. I will describe it to you.
The biggest change is that it is TINY. I mean...REALLY TINY. It is the smaller apartment in a duplex. Its basically a basement that was renovated. It has a living room, a tiny galley kitchen, and a small bedroom. It will be the smallest place either of us has ever lived besides a dorm room. However, I am not worried much about the size for several reasons:
- The bathroom is actually a good size with lots of storage in it.
- There is a HUGE closet in the bedroom that will be more than enough space for all of our clothes.
- There is a shared laundry room with the upstairs unit that has a ton of storage space that is ours for the taking. There is also a shed that we can use outside to store additional items.
- It has a MASSIVE back yard that is for our use only (the other unit has the front yard). There is a patio where I think we could set up a little table for eating when it is nice out. There are also six giant planter boxes, a driveway, and a fence around the entire thing.
- Also, Brad and I like to be close to each other. In our current house it is so big that we are often sad that the other person is doing something in a room so far away. If we play music on the stereo you can't hardly hear it outside of the living room/dining room.
- It will be way easier to clean it!! I am most excited for this. The living room has fake hardwood floor, so the bedroom is the only place with carpet. I know small places can look messy faster but I don't mind frequent cleaning if it doesn't take long. It will be a test of my organizational skills.
- It is $600 cheaper per month ($1295 vs. $1895). Cha-ching! I also expect to save a lot on utilities, especially in the summer.
Overall I actually like the idea of living in a small place. I think it will bring us closer. Its also more environmentally sustainable. It will force us to focus on the belongings that we really care about having. To me the more junk you own the more time you have to spend thinking about your junk, cleaning it, organizing it, finding it. I spend way too much brain power thinking about material possessions. We may have to sell or give away a few possessions that we are attached to like the mattress Brad had growing up that we moved to NC and WA with. Also maybe the headboard that Brad and I designed and built. It won't fit in the bedroom. I'm wary about where we will put our dining table but there is no way I am getting rid of it. We may consider getting a storage unit somewhere, but it seems silly to have the added cost because of our inability to detach from material possessions.
Also, I think it will be a good learning experience for Brad and I. Given that we do want to buy a house, its good to try living in a small place to give us a sense of how much space we really need. It isn't forever, so if we hate it we can just move out (and we may get a lease for less than 1 year).
I'm also excited that we will have neighbors upstairs. Yes, it may be noisier than we are used to in our house where there is no one living above us. However, when we talked to the current tenant, she said it is a couple in their thirties and that the guy likes to brew beer! Just like Brad. So I'm really hoping we will find friends in them. It will be a little awkward though because they control the thermostat...so I'm not sure what to think about that. It will force us to be in touch with them I guess!
Another big change is that it is located in Magnolia. In the map of Seattle below, you can see a gray house symbol on the right where we currently live. The red marker is south of this new apartment, in Magnolia. We will be really close to a huge beautiful park. The views around us will be of the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains instead of Lake Washington and the Cascades. We will be a little farther from work (the gray suitcase symbol in the middle of the map) and from downtown in general. However, it wont be so far that we can't still bike or take the bus. I won't be able to walk the whole distance most days because its about 5 miles. But I think I'll work up some combination of biking and walking or walking and busing.
There are still restaurants nearby and an Albertson's grocery store 0.5 mile away. The neighborhood is SO quiet. It is residential like our current neighborhood but with a more suburban feel. There aren't as many ridiculous mansions but there also are fewer really poor areas (from what I've seen).
I do feel a little bad for our friends who are visiting in July. When we rented our current house we thought it would be so great to have a guest room for all the people who would visit. As Brad's last post mentioned, we only have had one visitor from the east coast (though our friend in Oregon has stayed there a few times). And of course now that we are moving we are getting visitors...But the yard is so big we figure that Brad and I can put the tent out there and let our friends have our bedroom.
Ok, I can't help myself, I have to give you a teaser photo of part of the yard (this is from the online ad for the place, the yard is currently completely overgrown and crazy looking - we are both excited to fix it up!):
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