In a cottage
Coming to you from my new apartment! I just spent 2 days moving. I’m pretty exhausted, I rather hope I have clothing to wear to work tomorrow, and I have some pretty astounding bruises. But the Important Part is that it is done.
We wanted to do something more in this move than just trade one cookie-cutter apartment for another. Personally, I needed a change. I’ve been commuting to the same job from the same place for 3.5 years, and it’s gotten to be stale and annoying. I know many people do this same sort of thing for much longer, but I am not someone who can do that. This is, for example, my 20th move in the last 16 years. I am not a stay-a-long-time-do-the-same-thing kind of person.
We picked a converted garage built in 1932 to live in. There is exactly zero standard space in here (no white square box rooms), the walls are entirely plaster and wood (quiet!), and we have downsized from almost 1300 sq feet to 650 sq feet (I can hear the collective gasps now). The most challenging part is the kitchen, which if I didn’t know any better I would say was a Manhattan kitchen. It’s tiny, and there isn’t any counter space at all.
And my new crafting “room?” It’s a closet, about 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. Woo!
We chose our new place based on a few priorities that we thought would make us both saner, happier people.
- No commute. No buses. We wanted to walk or bike to work, and hopefully bike or walk lots of other places too.
- Less stuff. We have been through a two-month process of getting rid of everything we didn’t want or weren’t using. I sold 150 books, for example. And I know I am not done cleaning out.
- No shared walls. This was hard to find, given we didn’t want an entire house. It meant no apartment complexes.
- Less wasted space – we didn’t want more acres of room we rarely used, and the high energy cost that goes along with it.
- Safer neighborhood. Ours has been gradually declining until we felt like we couldn’t take a walk there. Our building had been robbed 8 times that we knew of in 2 years.
- Keep the washer/dryer. This turned out to be the hardest requirement, but I really don’t do laundromats.
There are always compromises to be made with such a definite list of requirements, but our new place fit the bill. Nothing is all roses, but I’m looking forward to the compromises and the ingenuity required to fit into a small place.
Most of all, I’m really looking forward to walking to work tomorrow.
On a side note: It’s NaBloPoMo month again. Caught me totally off guard. But I’m going to try anyway, even though that’s a totally nuts thing to do. And I should post now, for that reason, because it’s 11:52!
