*not my apartment. not even close.
Typically, Mondays are reserved for What I’m Reading posts but it’s Sunday evening, and I’ve yet to finish a book this week! Eeps—this is so unlike me! So, I’m moving that post over to Wednesday, as I’ll have finished two books by then. Instead, today I’m going to talk about what I’m dreaming about for my next apartment.
I know, I know. I’m not moving for another seven months. This post might be a little early, but I can’t help it. I am sooo ready to move out of this apartment and into a space better suited to my needs.
Even so, this apartment has served me well when I needed it. It was the only apartment I could rent for under $1,000 ($800 to be exact!), I’ve never felt unsafe here, and I have great neighbors. I rarely even hear my upstairs neighbors walking around, which is a feat in itself. It was Dutch’s last apartment and the apartment I brought home my kitties. It’s the place I came to after long days at the hospital with Pops.
So many memories—good and bad—are attached to this apartment.
And it’s time to make new ones somewhere else.
I’ve been doing some preliminary apartment research over the past few weeks, creating a spreadsheet listing out a handful of apartments I’d like to tour, their rent prices, their move-in fees, and anything special I noticed from their listings.
My main consideration is budget, as renting a one-bedroom apartment isn’t cheap. Right now, I pay $866 for a one-bedroom apartment, including around $30 a month for water. My goal is to pay no more than $1,250 a month, including utilities, but from the research I’ve done so far, whew. That’s going to be tricky!
As I’ve been thinking about my new apartment and what I want from it, I’ve compiled a list of certain features that I’d like to have in my new apartment. Many of these are must-haves (denoted with an asterisk) and some of these are nice-to-haves. As I’m touring apartments, I’m keeping this list handy for me to mark off what each apartment has and doesn’t have, to better help me make my final decision when the time comes.
Closet Space*
Currently, I only have a walk-in closet and an outside storage closet. That’s it for closet space! I have had to get super creative with the way I organize my belongings. And then there are the items that just don’t fit anywhere so they’re shoved in a corner of my bedroom. (I’m looking at you, vacuum and large rolling suitcase.) It’s not the greatest system. I would love to have a linen closet, walk-in closet, and outside storage closet. Those are the minimum requirements for my next apartment. It would also be nice to have a kitchen pantry and a closet in my bathroom. Please and thank you, apartment gods!
Washer and Dryer*
I haven’t lived in an apartment without an in-unit washer/dryer in a decade. I’m not about to start now.
Screened-In Porch
After four years with a porch that’s frankly unusable (it’s right next to a lake, which means it’s prime for bugs), I really need one that is screened. I want to be able to open up my patio doors to enjoy the weather when it’s nice, let the cats take sun naps on the porch, sit outside and read, etc.
Bigger, Upgraded Kitchen*
Oy vey, my kitchen is the bane of my existence. It’s tiny, for one. And the appliances seem to be from the 80s, for another. There’s no pantry so I’ve had to get creative for how to store my kitchen appliances, spices, and non-perishables. There are only four tiny drawers, none that are big enough to hold a typical silverware sorter. There’s no counter space because the only big block of counter is taken up by a massive microwave. Due to the way the fridge opens, I can only use one of the crisper drawers. And I’ve had to really utilize the “one in, one out” rule, as literally nothing else will fit in my cabinets anymore. I’m so tired of my kitchen. I never want to cook because it’s so tiny and impractical. A bigger, more spacious kitchen is my #1 desire. Bonus points if it’s not a galley kitchen like so many apartment kitchens are these days.
24-Hour Gym
I’d love to be able to quit my gym… even though I waited for nine months for it to open, lol. I’m looking for an apartment that has a decent-sized gym (multiple cardio machines and weight machines, plz!) and is open 24 hours. My current apartment gym is cramped and every time I’ve used the treadmill, I’m certain it’s going to fall apart. (It’s very old.) The kicker is that the gym has very specific hours, not opening in the morning until 6am, which is too late for me to work out in the mornings.
Dedicated Dining Area*
How nice would it be to have my own dining table? Very, very nice. My apartment doesn’t have room for a dining table so I use my kitchen island as a storage spot/desk/dining table/food preparation area. It’s where I sit when I’m working from home, where I eat every meal, where I write my blog posts, where I watch TV, etc. I’m really looking forward to having an actual dining table so I can eat my meals like a normal human being and maybe even have friends over for dinner! What the what!
Desk Nook
Okay, okay, maybe I’m getting a little indulgent here. But I dream about a time when I can have an actual desk to work from when I’m working from home. Maybe I could even have a second monitor, too! A girl can dream…
Ceiling Fan in My Bedroom
I live and die by my bedroom ceiling fan. It provides white noise as I’m trying to fall asleep and keeps me cool (even though I keep my home ridiculously cold as it is). I didn’t have a ceiling fan for the year I lived in Tampa and dealt with chronic congestion for eight straight months. Related? Who knows, but I’m not willing to take the chance.
Tell me something you’d like your home to have!
Good luck with your apartment search! Have you considered renting something that isn’t open by a commercial property manager? Meaning, something you’d find on Craiglist or something along those lines? I rented out my condo and my last 2 rentals were owned by someone else and I found that experience to be cheaper and better than living in a commercial building. They didn’t nickel and dime you like the commercial buildings can. But that said, it can be a little harder to find a unit. I figured out what area of Minneapolis I wanted to live in and luckily found a building where owners tended to rent out their units.
Our house really has all of what we wanted. But it took over 2 years to find it so we definitely have to be super duper patient. One thing I’d like our house to not have is a leaking master shower! Phil’s cousin is coming over again next weekend to see if they can figure out where the leak it coming from. I’m so ready for this issue to be behind us!! The other thing I wish our house had but wasn’t important enough to be a ‘must have’ item is an office or den space on the main level. Right now the 3rd bedroom upstairs is an office but hopefully that will be a bedroom for a 2nd child some day so we’ll have to find another space for our home office. I would never use a home office but Phil does when he works from home or works on things like taxes, etc.
Those sound like very reasonable wish list items!
For our next home, my number one requirement is a MUD ROOM. Our garages opens directly into the kitchen. Yes, there’s a tiny entry way and a coat closet right inside the door, but it’s so small that only one person can be in it at a time (not useful if we are all coming home from somewhere) and you cannot keep anything outside of the closet or the closet door won’t open. And the closet is TINY, so we have a constant pile-up of boots and coats and all the different bags for my daughter’s activities. I need a mud room!
I’d really like to have more closets, too. We have to get super-creative with storage – namely, I have my childhood trundle bed in my office, used as a couch, but without the actual pull-put bed beneath it., so I store stuff beneath it. I keep all my seasonal clothes in suitcases under there. But it’s such a pain! We also don’t have a coat closet or anything like that, so all of our winter gear goes on a coat rack. Ughhh.
A screened in porch would be so amazing, especially for the girls! I hope you find it, and all the things on this list! How are preliminary looks going?
It would make me bonkers to have my luggage and vacuum out UGH.
Our home needs an attached master bathroom. Our upstairs is half the size of downstairs, and is two beds, one bath. We’d really love to have two baths up there, but we’d have to get really creative to make it work.
The other thing our home needs is another garage – but you know all about that! 😉
Oh man, a lot of things about your current place make me think of our current place (especially the whole non-existent counter space thing. Ugh)
I think about this a LOT haha. My must-haves for the next place we live: a BATH TUB (I miss it so much), a dishwasher, more counter space and a washer/dryer that isn’t coin operated (the first place I lived wasn’t coin operated, my first solo apartment was and now we’re back to the land of non-coin laundry. I’m never going back!)
Ugh, your list reminds me that we traded in quite a bit when we moved from our house back to an apartment. We found our apartment on Craigslist (it’s a duplex, privately owned) and of course it doesn’t have the amenities of bigger apartment complexes, but it checked off a lot of boxes. The kitchen however drives me bonkers daily, because we had such a nice kitchen before and I totally understand why you’re looking for an apartment with a nicer kitchen! So much time is spend there!
I hope you can find an apartment that checks all your boxes. You have some time to look before you’re thinking of moving, right? So you should be able to be a little pickier than if you had a set moving date.
I am super later commenting on this but I hope your apartment search is going well, and good plan to take your time. We took 8 months to find our house before buying three years ago and it was such a good decision because it really is such a great house for us. It’s a good size with a great layout. The only thing that isn’t ideal is that it’s a half-duplex so we share a wall with our neighbours. But it’s definitely worth the time to figure out your non-negotiables and then search hard for that!