Why I May Never Move Out--My 1st top 10 list

Lest you think my stories about crazy people mean that I am dying to get out of this place, I wanted to shed some positive light on our living situation. You may already know that we live here rent-free, which is an obvious benefit. I mean, things would have to be pretty darn bad, or our financial situation would have to miraculously change in order for us to even think about moving. Plus, I told Bo when we moved here that I'm not moving again unless we can afford movers. I happen to know that we can't afford movers yet, so I'm setting down roots.

However, I happen to find apartment living desirable for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it's free for us (though not really free since I have to earn my keep).

Here's my top 10 list of reasons to like apartment living:

1. It's cheaper than a house. Even if you don't get free rent, apartment living is definitely cheaper. At first, it might seem comparable since some fancy places do charge an arm and a leg, but once you consider utility costs, apartments win hands down. Our highest gas bill last winter (which runs our heat) was $42. That's just ridiculous. If our electric bill is $100 we have a heart attack.

2. It's greener. The other great part about low utility costs is that it also means we are not consuming as many natural resources as when we heated & cooled a house. This gave me great consolation in the early days before I lobbied for a recycling service (no recycling would be a huge down side of apartment living for me, but being the manager means I can fix that!).

3. Noise. It's not a lot of noise, but enough to know that people live around me. Our apartments are very quiet, but I can still hear my neighbor come home and the guys downstairs playing video games. I'm not quite sure why I like it. Maybe it assuages my guilt that we are super noisy so I like it when I can hear other people too. Maybe it just makes me feel not alone in a world of isolation.

4. Bumping into neighbors. We don't exactly have the most social of atmospheres (we don't have a club house or any gathering place, plus there is a wide range of people who live here it's not like there is some kind of affinity group sprouting up), however, I like seeing people in the hallways or in the parking lot or at the mailboxes. Since I know everyone I always say hello and get all nosey about their business. This would probably be true of me wherever we lived, but when people in a neighborhood can drive directly into their attached garage it's harder for me to corner them.

5. Forced simplicity. I am part slob (from my dad), and part hoarder (from my mom). I should say that's whom I would be in my most natural state. I used to have a really hard time getting rid of things, but living in 1000 square feet while trying to maintain some semblance of family order, purging is a skill that I have developed for survival. Also, my office used to be the absolute pit of our house--the dumping ground for everything I didn't know what to do with. Now my office is part of our kitche-offi-dini-living room. I have had to learn to organize paper and not let piles run rampant. Since we have less stuff, my inner slob has less to mess up.

6. Less cleaning. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will never be a clean freak. I might as well just admit it and stop beating myself up all the time. The beauty of apartment living is that when I do finally suck it up and clean the place (never all at once--I could never be that focussed), it really doesn't take that long. I can vacuum every room without moving the cord for crying out loud. How hard can it be? (It still is kind of hard because I would really rather do just about anything than actually clean.)

7. No maintenance or yard work. When something breaks, I don't have to stress out about coming up with the money to fix it. Now, in my situation I do have to make sure it all gets done and I do plant flowers and rake leaves from time to time, but for the most part we do not have to factor yard work into our family equation. If we're still here when the kids get old enough to start mowing, I envision hiring them to do it so that they will learn how and have some responsibility, but if they decide to get a job doing something else, so be it.

8. I never have to throw out left overs. Furnace filter day is when I get to spy on all of my neighbors and see what goes on behind all those closed doors. What I've discovered is that some people live even more simply than we do. Way more simply. In fact, you don't really need much of anything to live as it turns out. Some people don't even have food. I don't go peeking in cupboards or anything, but you can tell by the trash bin overflowing with take-out containers that there is nothing like cooking going on in that kitchen. I don't offer my left overs to just anyone, but when I know that someone never eats a home cooked meal, they don't turn me down.

9. When borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar I don't even have to put on shoes. Once in awhile I start a batch of cookies without realizing that Bo ate the last egg that morning for breakfast. Nothing like stepping out into the hall and having any number of neighbors to hit up for a favor. I love it when someone asks me for things too. I mean, they all ask me for apartment manager kinds of things, but when they ask for sugar you know they just think of you as a neighbor.

10. Forced togetherness. There is no place to run. No place to hide. We are all together. All the time. Some might include this on the list of downsides, and surely some days it is, however, I have come to love the chaos of cooking dinner amongst the hubbub of the daily wrestling match and the fact that we have one TV to fight over and the times when I have to run into the bedroom to find a quiet place to have a professional phone conversation about the benefits of our apartments when a perspective resident calls. We basically have one room. No basement or family room. It's just us, hanging out together in the kitche-offi-dini-livingroom. The boys share a bedroom, which is...you know, terrible some days and fabulous that one time when they played in there for hours without arguing. In the end though I think there's something to be said about closeness creating.....closeness.

These are a few of my favorite things about apartment living. I sometimes wonder if we will bail the minute we can afford to or if we will continue to choose this lifestyle. Right now we might as well choose to like it because it's definitely working for us. I know that there are things I may never have learned without this season of life so I'm thankful.