Apartment Hunting, Part 1

Could our dreams be at the
end of this hallway??

Well, we learned a lot.

Our first foray into the big-city-apartment-hunting process produced no concrete results. The best we can say is that, well, we learned a lot.

Here’s what we’re looking for, and yes, this is our ideal wish list: 3 bedrooms, not on a main road, available and free parking, 3^rd floor, decently quiet, located between Priority 1’s current apartment and Ginny’s school, and family-friendly. Oh yeah, and “affordable.” [Author’s note: That last word is in quotation marks because what New Yorkers consider “affordable” is what most others may call “exorbitant,” “ridiculous,” or “highway robbery.”]

Yes, our wish list is long. We know this. We understand that whatever place we ultimately choose will have positives and negatives, and that there is very possibly no place at all that meets all of those wishes. Our primary concerns are the location and the cost, and after satisfying those two, the other stuff is negotiable. It’s funny, though, how our definition of a “good price” has changed since beginning our search. “Really? That 6^th floor walkup 2-bedroom 1-bath that needs new floors, paint, appliances, and fixtures is only $1510 a month? Wow!”

Juliet and Amber, our Children's Ministry Coordinator

So Bethany and Juliet (our 13 month-old – the older two girls stayed home with their grandma) and I saw at least four different places with two different realtors on Monday. We weren’t overwhelmed by anything we saw. The next morning I, Greg, awoke before my alarm went off, confused that I was no longer asleep, but also increasingly concerned with the growing sensation in my stomach that something was wrong. Skipping ahead in the story, I had picked up a stomach bug and was rather useless for the remainder of the day. Bethany, remarkably, was still able to see a couple of apartments in the same building where Priority 1 already maintains an apartment. On Wednesday we squeezed one more apartment in, but none of the four realtors we had interacted with had anything else to show us, nor had anyone we had contacted on our own through various Internet searches responded to us. So we got out of town, stopped for bagels along the way, and returned to our older two daughters.

So we felt a bit stifled, but we knew that it was highly unlikely that we would come back to PA having signed anything. We did learn a lot about the process, about what paperwork will be required of us to apply for a lease, and what questions to ask.

There will be a Part 2 of this blog. In fact, I’m going through Part 2 as I write this: I’m in the city once more, this time wife-less and baby-less, and may well return to PA with a signed lease under my belt.

That, or there will be a Part 3 of this blog. We’ll see.

Clearing Out Our Junk

As the days gradually bring us closer to departing for the Bronx, we look around, sigh a little, and say to each other:

“What the heck are we gonna do with all our stuff?!”

 While I don’t think we’d even register on the scale they use for hoarders, we have managed to accumulate a good amount of stuff (junk?) in the thirty-something years we’ve lived on this planet*, and now we need to find different homes for most of it, whether it be with a yard sale customer, in a trash dump, in a consignment shop, or given away to friends or family. A friend of ours who knows what he’s talking about recommended we have two yard sales to get rid of as much as we can. So Memorial Day weekend we borrowed some tables, got as much as we could out of our attic, put up several signs, and waited for customers.

Our living room pre-yard sale

A few came. But only a few. Mostly what sold were paper goods: folders, binders, different kinds of paper that we had gathered over the years. Odd, huh? We were hoping our proximity to the post office would bring in more people. It didn’t.

The next day in church a couple in our Sunday School class offered to let us sell our stuff in the community yard sale happening in their neighborhood the next weekend. So we took them up on it and put out our books, a bag of stuffed animals, a big lamp, an old TV, and some other random things.

We made less than we did over Memorial Day, but we did sell the lamp and the TV! (Both of which could be described as “beasts” and we were very pleased not to have to transport them home.)

Halfway through July we will hold an actual Moving Sale that we’ll advertise better than our first one. The stuff that’s left over after that – well, let’s just say we’ll be calling the aforementioned friend who knows what he’s talking about.

Yard sale family picnic!

I jest, but we really do need to downsize. It’s healthy! It’s good for us to look at our things and say, “You know what? I don’t need that at all. I haven’t worn that shirt in 10 years – why do I still have it?” It’s hard to miss the correlation between the junk that accumulates in our attic and the junk that accumulates in our souls, the stuff we don’t know what to do with so we shove it somewhere out of sight. Someday though, we will have to deal with it, and better that we deal with it before it becomes a crisis.

So we’re cleaning out stuff. There’s a lot more work to do, but little by little, we’re clearing it out.

Next time: We’ll tell you all about our apartment-hunting venture coming up June 16-18!

*Seriously, in one box I found a film canister (kids, ask your parents what that is) that contained all the teeth I’d lost when I was little. Why do I still have this???