Should I Stay or Should I Go Now

It’s storytime…

Last Thursday we walked through two apartments in the affordable midcentury-hipster-chic neighborhood of North Park, here in San Diego. We’d found the units on Craigslist and coincidentally they were right next door to each other. The first, a recent renovation (recent as in, the paint was still wet) was decked out with fabulous carpet and a brand new custom IEKA kitchen and white quartz counters that had me drooling. The problem was that it was move-in-ready, like, within the next two weeks (our lease here goes until the end of September). The second unit was part of a triplex next door that was seriously ancient, disgusting, and awful. Both units cost over $200 less than our current space, but were also significantly smaller–up to 200 sq ft smaller.

We drove around North Park, Normal Heights, and University Heights jotting down “for rent” numbers with stars in our eyes. We came home with every intention of putting in our notice and planning to hire movers for late September. I left to meet up with a blogger I found through her home tour on A Beautiful Mess, and Doug was going to go downstairs to have a pow-wow with our leasing office.

I came home a few hours later (Jen and I had a great time!) to ask Doug how everything went. I found him asleep on the couch. The pow wow with our leasing office never happened. Then something strange happened… we agreed that after touring those apartments and very seriously entertaining the idea of moving next month, we both felt like the extra 200 sq ft was reason enough to stay. To make sure it wasn’t just cold feet, I searched CL a bit for larger units and two-bedrooms in North Park and found that they cost the same amount we are paying right now. Then, we did some calculations in regards to a) doubling up on rent for two weeks, b) coming up with a security deposit, and c) paying movers, etc… and it just makes sense to stay put for the next 10-12 months, even with a medium rent hike ($40). Even though my gripe list with our current apartment is very long, the noisy summer partiers (my biggest frustration) have moved on and things are just comfortable here.

With that resolution agreed upon, we decided to put down roots here. We’re going to make more holes in the wall. We’re going to sell some furniture and buy some other furniture. We’re going to make the rooms right, as opposed to okay for now. We’re going to have people over more often and finally turn our temporary cookie cutter into our home.