Tag: apartment life

Pondering a New Apartment

September is looming. The end of a lease is kind of like a DTR for apartment dwellers. It says, “where do you see yourself for the next six-to-twelve months?” To get the best price, you often have to lock yourself in to a longer time commitment.

Tons of thoughts are swirling around in my head. I am not in love with our apartment complex, but I know our “generous” 825 square feet is hard to find at a reasonable price. Most 800+ apartments/condos/houses are in the $1600/mo. range here in San Diego! I don’t know why I feel uncomfortable sharing how much we pay per month, but I do. I’ll just say it is certainly less than $1600.

We walked through an apartment that is 725 square feet yesterday. 100 less square feet, but over $200 less per month than we are paying now. I know that if we consider homes in the 700 square foot range, we might be able to find a few good candidates at a lower price point. Saving $200 per month amounts to $2400 per year! But can I (we) live in that small of a space?

The cons about our current place:

  • Noisy neighbors
  • Awkward layout
  • Expensive
  • Third floor
  • Little natural light
  • Inattentive management

The pros:

  • We already live here (i.e, no moving trucks!)
  • Unusually large sq. footage for a one-bedroom
  • Dishwasher
  • One reserved parking spot
  • Pool and hot tub (that is, during the rare moments when they aren’t too crowded)
  • Easy freeway access

Luckily, I have a couple of months to ponder this and troll craigslist to see if a better option opens up. I don’t really want to move again, but I do want a new place! The truth is: I want to buy a new place! With all these bloggers I follow making big moves I want to have my own homebuying adventure and start rolling some of our hard earned money into real estate equity (doesn’t that sound grown-up?) rather than filling the pockets of our property management company every month, and having nothing to show for it.

As I diligently try to squirrel extra cash into savings for a down-payment, I will continue to hem and haw about whether we need a new apartment or not.

Any advice for me?? 

An Office in a Drawer

You’ve seen my desk before, but today allow me to share a photo of the rest of my office:

Office in a Drawer

Whenever I can, I try to think of my experience living here in 850 sq ft and share what I’ve learned with other apartment dwellers. One of my small space solutions is paring down office clutter and keeping a streamlined system of the most useful items! I certainly don’t have a spare room to function as an office and guest room anymore, so I decluttered a lot of things I used to think were office essentials.

Items I now consider essential for my “office” are as follows:

  • Pens, Pencils, Sharpies
  • Stapler
  • Envelopes
  • Sticky notes
  • Blank paper (printer paper and lined paper)
  • Checks
  • Stamps
  • Tape (scotch tape and packing tape)
  • Ruler
  • Blank cards for all occasions
  • (Honorable mention: three hole punch. Not a necessity, I find it useful.)

I know the list will be different for many people, but even working in an actual office for a year, I still feel like this minimal list will meet the basic needs 99% of the time.

Having a dresser smack dab in the living room is something many might consider unconventional, but I am really pleased with how well it has functioned in storing all kinds of things. I highly recommend it as a storage solution for those living somewhere small. All of my dishtowels, cloth napkins, and placemats are in one drawer. Packing and shipping materials for my Etsy store live in another drawer (along with some random board games). Anyway, today I am going to focus on the top right drawer and share with you how I maximized the space to hold all of my office essentials.

Slightly messy office drawer

Every now and then, it’s good to reorganize a space like this. Even though I threw away very little, it’s a good refresher to know where everything is and to straighten up a little bit. I started by taking all of the items out of the drawer:

Items that live in my office drawer

As you can see above, my desk is made up of a wooden top and a set of two legs. There aren’t desk drawers to speak of! The crate turned on its end holds files and techy gear (charger cords, software CDs, etc). Everything else lives clear across the room (oh, the horror of getting up and walking across the room!) When I do need to make the interminable trek of about 12 feet, it’s nice knowing that everything will be exactly where I expect it to be.

So, I set about putting everything back into the drawer in a orderly manner. I even emptied out the white box, and placed things back into it thoughtfully. Seldom-used items like a box full of new checks are on the bottom layer, and frequently used items like tape and stamps are easily accessible. I condensed two of the boxes of envelopes. A few things like the swiffer and the cube with prom photos on it (!!) got moved to other places in the apartment. I do have a separate craft drawer in another room, so from there I took out this woven box of notecards for all occasions and replaced it with a ream of printer paper and some lined paper. Those are essential, but I found I don’t use access as often as I use these cards.

Everything got put back in neatly:

Office drawer organization

Office drawer organization

Don’t have a spare dresser in your living room? Go back and look at the list at the beginning of this post. All (or most) of these items would fit very easily in a milk crate, in a paper box, in an under-bed box, or even in a kitchen drawer! It’s easy to run a tight ship if you simply keep just the essentials on hand (and avoid the siren song of the school supply section of Target in the fall).

I’m certainly no expert on eliminating clutter altogether, but in this realm I think I’ve got it whipped.

Any things you consider essential that aren’t on my list? Do you have a smart way to hide boring stuff like office supplies? Please share in the comments!

The Ole Switcheroo

As I mentioned back in March (yikes!) the apartment is now home to a new-to-us sofa and dining room table. To accommodate these new items, our space plan got totally changed up and we lived with it for a while (three months!) tweaking here and there, until landing on a layout that mostly felt right. But something was off. Lazily, I had never changed up the arrangement of  any of our art pieces after moving around the large furniture.

Anyway, if you remember, our sitting area was at the back right of the apartment, and the dining area was at the back left. Those spaces have now been flip-flopped. Here’s a wide shot to give you an idea, and, spoiler alert–the new art arrangement too:

Switcheroo

A few nights ago, we rearranged almost ALL of the art in the apartment and while we’re a couple steps away from being done, I can say that adding art in the right places can help a furniture arrangement feel more purposeful and make your place feel more like home.

Before hanging art

Before we moved these pieces to the TV wall, the white wall combined with white shelves looked “blah.”

After hanging art

Now, the focal point is more anchored.

After moving the couch and secret console-table-slash-storage-space, the tall art almost seemed too tall.

Dining area art

Layering my favorite empty gold frame with this pretty painting made by my great-great aunt in the 30s adds color, and by hanging horizontally, balances out the lamp and the eiffel tower. I love seeing the gleaming gold frames when I come through the front door.

So now, the gray couch lives in the office “slash” extended entryway. It creates a great little place to sit and put on/take off shoes, read a book or magazine, or to chat with whoever is using the computer at the time. Mosey also loves rearranging the throw pillows so he can take a nap there. It wasn’t replaced by the green couch per se, just relieved of some of its use!

Switcheroo 2

It was kind of sad to see the gallery wall go, but I was just craving simplicity. (In all truth–we were thisclose to hanging Doug’s bike there but the wall couldn’t support it). I don’t know what I’ll hang above the gray couch now, but at the moment I’m strangely feeling okay with the empty space.

When I get antsy and obsessively peruse craigslist to find out what other apartments are out there, I must rearrange my current space to satiate my need for change… Which is exactly what I did. Now it (kinda sorta) seems like a new place! So, what do you think? 

An aside: It’s a pet peeve of mine when bloggers apologize for their crummy images, especially “sorry for the iPhone photos!” But… I truly have to gripe about the photos in this post. Getting shots of this part of the apartment is murder, since the only light source is the sliding patio door, so every image is either way underexposed (and therefore grainy) or too blown out to make sense. So even though I used my fancy camera, I can’t help but shake my head at these pics, simply because I know I can and should do better. Now you know.