I am moving today and I am convinced that as soon as I enter into my new abode, no more problems shall ever befall me.
In my new apartment, I will have exactly as many books as fit onto my shelves, and they will remain color-coded for eternity. I will also reread them all and maintain a perfect memory of exactly what happens.
Herbs will grow plentifully on my windowsill, instead of withering into jagged, dry stems.
I will become crafty. Instead of ending the work day and watching reruns of Shark Tank I will take up knitting. I will darn all my socks. I will sand and refinish cabinets and install molding and everything will be made of reclaimed wood. Never a beam shall enter my home that has not been claimed at least once before.
My new apartment is probably covered in some magical paint that will never, ever show smudges. Or if it does smudge they will be easily washed away instead of showing a vague, lighter but larger stain around where I tried to clean them.
Marie Kondo will ask me for advice about folding shirts.
The cats will never drag bits of litter with them across the floor after they’ve used the litter box, and their urine will smell like standing in a circle of fir trees.
No one in my new building will be learning to play a loud instrument for five years.
In my new apartment there will be no dust. My cats will have the decency to leave any errant hairs on the balcony. My skin will never shed because it will have turned into pure silk. All shaved hairs will magnetize and clump together in an easy-to-toss ball. The Roomba will be used for entertainment purposes only. I will never sneeze again.
No wires will protrude from ANYWHERE.
In my new apartment all those burn stains on my pots and pans will come right off on the first scrub instead of my having to stand at the sink rubbing a sponge in a circle for half an hour and still be left with brown spots and little grease stains.
In my new building I’ll never have an awkward conversation with my upstairs neighbor where I have to explain to him that I’m not Jewish. Instead my new neighbors will greet my husband and I with fruit baskets upon our arrival and we’ll have rotating dinner parties for eternity. Nobody will hear anyone else have sex.
A gnome lives in the garbage chute who will sort all my recycling for me.
My pots and pans will remain eternally sorted and placed properly and will never end up in a mess of lids and pans stacked inside of pans. Same goes for Tupperware. It will never stain or develop a way to reproduce itself in the cupboard so that I have 350 lids and two containers.
I will finally learn to make my own bread. And do it more than once. The house will smell of hearty baked bread and homemade stock instead of “whatever I made for dinner last night.”
The cats will get a job and start paying rent instead of being furry little deadbeats whose only talent is to yell for dinner as loud as their little lungs can handle. Maybe something in finance?
I think the plastic containers are migrating rather than reproducing. If I send you some of my excess containers, will you send me some lids?
I want to be your roomate
I currently happen to have 350 containers and two lids. Maybe we can arrange a trade.
Seriously, WHERE DO THE LIDS GO? They travel only four places: the fridge, the counter, the dishwasher, the drawer. In my 8X6 galley kitchen. So WHY ARE THEY ALL MISSING?
Kids and socks, WHERE DO THEY GO?!?!
A+ typo
“The cats will never drag bits of litter with them across the floor after they’ve used the litter box, and their urine will smell like standing in a circle of fir trees… My cats will have the decency to leave any errant hairs on the balcony.”
Ok, yes, but seriously. To whom do I need to donate money to get this to happen? Is there a research firm I should be investing in? Kickstarter? Anything. I will do anything.
I get this cedar litter that soooort of smells like standing in fir trees until it has been way too long between cleanings.
In my new apartment, I will clean the litter box daily.
I have a weird igloo shaped litter box, which, though not at 100%, has significantly reduced the amount of litter that gets out of the box.
Our top-entry litter box is also good at preventing this for the most part.
I prefer the scattered litter than open tops letting scent out, but I grant this is a personal preference which sometimes like when they get litter in my bed I regret.
(I also have one elderly cat, one cat who is getting up there and has leg problems, and one cat who is approaching perfect sphere, and I just can’t see an open top working out.)
Sure! Whatever works for your cat! Top-entry is good for ours at the moment.
Fill the litter box with potpourri and put it in a wire-mesh cage hanging from the ceiling. It will never smell less than wonderful.
Ooh, I just bought one of those. Happy to hear it works!
YOUR DREAMS CAN COME TRUE. The rescue society I got my cat from uses pine stove pellets. You can get it marketed as litter like this or you can go to a big box hardware store and get it for 1/3 of the price. Ours is $6 for 2 months. It’s reverse-clumping, so to get the wet sawdust out but keep the dry pellets you have to scoop differently. But! It’s sustainable wood, we can flush the sawdust, it SMELLS LIKE A WOOD SHOP, and it doesn’t stick to his paws at all. Let me reiterate: *no* perceptible cat pee smell. IT IS THE BEST. (Except for elderly cats with sensitive paws. Then you are gonna have to use pine shavings and deal with some tracked litter — but still *no smell*.) Big Cat Litter wants you to believe it’s not possible without Fancy Science Additive Things. But the people are waking up. (Cats are still asleep of course.)
Ooh, thanks for the tip about getting it cheaply! I just started using this stuff and love the pellet form, and the cat seems to like it too, but it’s so expensive.
I’m envisioning some kind of magic ball that sits in a corner, glowing with a kind of pulsating throb, that attracts all dust, cat hair, litter trackings, cracker crumbs, and quietly zaps them into oblivion with no byproduct. Will someone please get on to this?
Yes, this is what I want. I don’t want to change any of my habits or do more work, I just want a new, unobtrusive appliance that fixes all cat hair/dust/crumb/litter issues.
There is a vision in my head that derives from some science fiction context, but I can’t remember whether it’s the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, something(s) from Doctor Who, or who knows what else. Probably all of the above. And more.
I have a little sisal mat that I put under the litterbox that mostly catches any litter my cat tracks out so I no longer need to vaccuum my apartment daily
Nice idea!
Get a Greyhound rescue and a dog walker, that’s pretty much your only option.
“No one in my new building will be learning to play a loud instrument for five years.”
And yet despite including magic gnomes THIS is the least realistic dream on the list.
I somehow have ended up with a neighbor who plays the saxophone (badly) in the past THREE apartments I’ve rented. THREE.
I was visiting my parents over the holidays and one day I was woken up by what sounded like someone slaughtering geese, constantly.
I looked out the window and a child (maybe early high school?) was standing in the middle of the lawn jamming away on a saxophone like she thought she was Kenny G.
It was too hilarious for me to get mad.
Or maybe her role model is Lisa Simpson. No shame in that game!
Isn’t everyone’s?
The daughter of some of my neighbours was learning the saxophone once. All she ever seemed to play was the theme to The Pink Panther, over and over.
I live in a building with walls so thin I sometimes want to yell to the guy downstairs that he really ought to take some cough syrup. But nobody is learning to play a loud instrument. Unfortunately…somebody 2 doors down plays the bagpipes OUTSIDE.
(What’s a garbage chute? Can I get one? Even without a gnome?)
I, too, have lived near a bagpiper. At first it was charming, like being Queen Elizabeth, who is awakened by a piper every morning.
The charm wore off, though. Boy, did i t wear off.
Bagpipes outside are loud, yes. But they *are* an outdoor instrument. May all the deities protect us from ignoramuses who bring bagpipers indoors. (I’m looking at you, grieving widow who hired a piper for the funeral. The priest firmly suggested the bagpipes would be best out on the steps of the church. But you did not listen. After the funeral, the rest of us could not listen, or hear anything, for that matter.)
I once lived underneath a violinist. Who only played after 1am.
Aspiring. Opera. Singer.
Aspiring. D.J.
Aspiring. Salsa. Dancers.
Chicken. Coop. That fucking chicken coop is the worst of all.
All facing the same acoustically perfect courtyard. Grace Kelly in Rear Window doesn’t have shit on me.
If you hadn’t mentioned a courtyard, I would have wondered if we had once lived in the same building. I had a frequent across-the-hall visitor who was an actual opera singer, and the people upstairs kept chickens on the roof. They also left just left them there when they moved out. If I wanted to live around chickens, I would have just stayed on my parents’ farm.
I have a neighbor who sings opera. He’s quite good actually, and since he tends to practice daily between about noon and 5pm, I have zero problems with this situation. I did once hear another neighbor holler out the window at him in a fake attempt at opera, so apparently someone gets annoyed by him.
There used to be a guy in my neighborhood who would sing opera while pushing his kid around in a stroller in–well, not the wee hours of the morning, but considerably earlier than this night owl prefers to be conscious. Haven’t heard him for a while. Presumably his kid can walk now.
my little brother basically screamed constantly until he learned to walk, so my dad used to carry him around in a sling and walk around the apartment complex trying to sing louder than my brother cried. people in the complex referred to him as ‘the man with the baby’.
my partner is an opera singer. our kid is a screamer (when he’s not happy) and a shrieker (when he is happy.)
I’m so sorry neighbours. So sorry.
I used to live next to a really superb piano player. He was really wonderful at it, and didn’t practice late at night, so it didn’t bother me that the piano in his living room was on the other side of my bedroom wall. Then, one day when I was home sick with a migraine, I realized…
During the day, he used that piano to give lessons to beginners.
I once lived next to a drummer whose drum set was in the room that shared a wall with my bedroom. If he was practicing, I couldn’t be in that room at all. Lucky for me, he was very nice and tried to practice only when I was at work and also told me that if the drumming ever bothered me to just come in and let him know (since he wouldn’t hear me knocking). And I tried to be considerate enough not to tell him it bothered me every single time he practiced. Because it did. It really, really did.
When he moved out, the new neighbors had infant triplets. There was never not a baby crying. Still easier to endure than the drums.
I once lived next to an aspiring ska band. I like ska, but this was bad.
My old neighbor was an amateur drummer who dated a professional opera singer. I was never so glad to have a lease run out.
I have a lot of practicing-musician angst. I mean, like, I’m actually pretty good? I’ve been playing for 30 years, went to music school, the whole nine. BUT, I also know that listening to a single clarinetist practice band music parts is not something anyone ever wants to hear. I try to be as conscientious as possible, not play past 8 p.m., etc etc, but I know it’s probably torture for the neighbors. Hell, most of the time I don’t even like listening to myself.
Just, you know, it probably sucks for the person playing, too. /shrug emoji
My husband’s beard trimmings will all magically find themselves in the proper trash receptacle. Our stray hairs, along with our cats, will never float along the bathroom tile, glaring obviously until the exact moment I get the broom and dustpan out, only to disappear temporarily as I sweep and sweep and sweep…and then reappear the moment I put the broom away.
“beard trimmings”
I mean as a long hair I don’t really have that much room to talk but holy shit [my brother] how is your bathroom covered in beard? I some how manage to shave my damn face with out getting it on the ceiling.
I swear half our problem is our bathroom is tiny, tiny, white, white tile which makes every single hair — head, beard, human, cat — seem 100x more obvious and also 100x more difficult to clean up successfuly.
We bought our house five years ago and I still occasionally find beard hairs from the previous owner stuck up underneath the rim of my sink, no matter how hard I scrub. (Different hair color than my husband, that’s how I know.)
My spouse got a “Beard King” and it almost lives up to the hype. Random bathroom beard hairs have decreased 92%.
Clever idea. but oh god do they really need to be selling womens underwear too?
No, they do not, and they should stop immediately.
I want to swap out beard trimmings for nail clippings but otherwise, YUP. (except I don’t have a cat – but I have long curly hair and I shed like a sheepdog)
PIVOT. PIVOT. PIVOT.
PI-VOOOOOOOOOOT!
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUUUUP
(That is the only episode of “Friends” I actually like.)
THAT’S MY ARM!
Every time I move a couch anywhere.
And one time when I came upon two bros moving a couch in my building that they had wedged into a corner of the hallway and could not figure out A) how it had happened, and B) how to get it out of the awkward corner and out of the building. Best day for me, worst day for bros.
“I will have exactly as many books as fit onto my shelves”
I, on the other hand, will have exactly enough shelving to fit all my books.
I will never have either of these problems, because I am on Design Team “Stacks of Books In Any Empty Space You Have”
If the stack is at least 18 inches high, it can serve as a rest for empty teacups and water glasses. Smaller stacks can by used by cats for essential extra elevation.
I prefer the ‘every flat surface is a bookshelf and some not flat surfaces are bookshelves and also some of those surfaces are other books’ school of thought.
That’s the only reasonable and sustainable way to treat books anyway. I deeply mistrust people who colour-code their books.
Also, every room is part of the library including bathroom and kitchen.
I will magically grow a unique, effortless, yet cozy aesthetic. The walls will be decorated, the shelving will have a “scheme” both functional & decorative. I will demur gracefully when asked about it. “oh I just got it at a thrift store a while ago. Those vases & sticks were sitting next to it, so naturally I had to have them.”
I will voluntarily & joyfully invite people over to my apartment, they will leave feeling restored to health.
It will embody “the whole is greater than the sum it’s parts.”
I will ascend beyond the need for dishes or eating.
Last night I scrubbed the bottom of the Le Creuset soup pot for a mere minute, after barely any soaking, and the thing turned up cleaner than at any point in the twenty years since I stole it from my mother.
Was this some magical by-product of African peanut stew? It was the first time I’d made it.
Was it because the Le Creuset was happy that an Actual French Person was staying with us? She didn’t eat much stew, true (I blame jet lag; the stew was delicious), but perhaps the pot thought if it was clean enough, she would eat the next thing I cooked in it?
I don’t know what it was, but now I’m hesitant to ever use it again, even though it’s perfect, because I will never get it so clean again.
If I figure out what magic applied last night, I will share the news so at least one of your New Apartment Dreams will come true.
Cooking things in it is definitely the most effective way to clean out my enameled pot, which leads to a weird escalation/deescalation of foods anytime I get weird stains in it.
Perhaps the acid in the tomatoes loosened the stains, then the proteins in the peanut butter bonded with them to pull them away from the pot?
Perhaps! I always have tomatoes in that pot, which are supposed to deglaze it, but the peanut butter was a new addition.
Would you consider sharing the recipe?
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/african-peanut-stew…
Except I didn’t have swiss chard so I substituted a bag of frozen collard greens I did have.
This is exactly me whenever I buy new clothes. “This sweater will solve all of my problems. It will always fit perfectly and match everything. I will never stand blankly in front of my closet on a freezing cold morning with no idea of what to put on, because THIS SWEATER.”
I have done that so many times. So many magical sweaters. (Or boots, or purses, or pants)
Same same same same same.
I do the exact same, but with yarn/fabric to knit/sew perfect sweaters from. I have at least seven absolutely perfect sweaters… if you overlook the fact that they’re still in string form.
^ seconded
In my new apartment, my wittiest and most interesting friends will want to always hang out at my sleek large kitchen island on Sunday evenings, while I casually serve up elegant foods I am cooking with no effort while we talk. The refrigerator will always be full of the most perfect ingredients for said dishes, and never limp lettuce or bottles of ketchup.
In my new apartment, every day will seem invigorating and full of promise, and I will get up early with a smile and bounce off to work with magazine-worthy hair and clothes, instead of sleeping in “just a little; well, maybe just a little more” and then reluctantly dragging myself to the office late with slightly greasy hair cleverly disguised in a ponytail.
My laundry will be immediately folded and put it away in drawers rather than left in the basket and removed as needed to be worn.
In my new home, I will have wizard powers that will allow me to sing the “Higgitus piggitus figgitus fum” song from The Sword In the Stone cartoon to tidy the place up.
My new apartment will come furnished, and all the furnishings will be clean and newish and either perfectly suited to my taste or blank enough for me to add character to them myself.
My new fridge will contain only healthy food and will somehow make the food enticing enough for me to want to eat it.
Even though I will continue to have more hair on my head than any two normal people put together, I will cease to find clumps of said hair gathered in tumbleweeds on the floor.
I’m moving to Prague in a few days and I can’t help hoping that Czech apartments are indeed this magical.
That’s the wrong approach for Prague. Clearly, all you need to do is acquire a golem to do all your housework, and possibly scare away burglars.
In my new apartment, my downstairs neighbor will be a handsome man who will invite me down to his spacious apartment to play billiards, and I will invite him up to my spacious terrace to sit by a fire and watch a storm front roll in across the water. He will not be a batty old woman who calls me to shriek at me over all the noise my nonexistent heater is making every time there’s a truck out on the street.
What do you think we knitters do while we knit? We watch Shark Tank. You’re halfway there!
I will also reread them all and maintain a perfect memory of exactly what happens.
Oh thank god, I’m not the only one reads (and loves!) a book and then immediately forgets everything about it!
People like you and me have the advantage here. I have been joyfully surprised by the same twist ending up to three times.
Also movies I have seen multiple times. I tried to give a summary of Michael Clayton to my hair stylist, to encourage her to see what I consider a really phenomenal film that I have seen at least twice, and it came out as essentially “George Clooney, err…Tilda Swinton, um, lawyers or something? The environment or water?” I think I need to generally hit 4-5 viewings before I really have a good spontaneous memory about a movie. (My husband can quote scenes of movies he saw once 15 years ago. Just, what.)
The only upside to this is sometimes getting to be surprised by movies with good twists more than once!
OMG. I’m not brain-damaged? I do not understand people like your husband. Are they human?
I can do this with movies and songs. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with relevant and/or useful information.
Thoughts:
“The cats will never drag bits of litter with them across the floor after they’ve used the litter box, and their urine will smell like standing in a circle of fir trees…. My cats will have the decency to leave any errant hairs on the balcony”
Cats exist to bring the additional chaos into our lives that we didn’t know we needed.
“The Roomba will be used for entertainment purposes only.”
Is there another purpose for owning a robotic cat-frightener?
“Nobody will hear anyone else have sex.”
Be careful what you wish for.
In my new apartment, the fridge will be filled with fresh leafy vegetables at all time, that never decay. All expiring food will be repurposed into stuffings, stocks, yogurts and other, or head to my balcony compost system, with the soil used for my thriving urban herb garden. My fridge will smell like sage at all times.
As I understand it, this is exactly what that samsung wifi-enabled smartfridge does, right? I mean, what else could an internet-connected fridge have to do with its time?
Search Google for appliance porn?
(Also, I deeply crave this apartment.)
I’m moving at the end of the month and MAN this strikes gloriously close to home. Something tells me I should be moving into Jaya’s new apartment, though, and not the one I picked out.
In my new apartment, I will wash the day’s laundry joyfully and effortlessly every night, despite the fact that the building is equipped with no laundry facilities.
In this apartment, pots and pans will wash themselves, and never just linger in the sink “soaking” until I urgently need them for something.
In my new apartment, the cat will never scratch at the doors and cause me to lose my security deposit, because there will be no doors, because I will be completely unencumbered by roommates and privacy shall follow me wherever I go, like an ethereal silver cloud. Also, I will only have to wipe the counters when I spill something on them.
In my new apartment I will have a closet. No, really.
I know someone who has lived, on purpose, for 10+ years in two different apartments without closets. HOW?
We’ve managed okay for six, but we are MAXED OUT on vertical storage for sure.
I have one closet, but in the weird nook where every other unit in my complex has a linen cabinet, I’ve put IKEA wardrobes there.
On our first anniversary of living in our house, coming up this June, we will awaken to discover that our stolen bikes (two stolen from my husband out of our unlocked garage in June, and the three stolen via broken window out of the same garage over Christmas) will be standing in an orderly row in our backyard with bows on the handlebars, just like a Lexus on Christmas morning.
And I’ll run up to my glorious old Purple Rain, my beautiful purple bicycle, and say, Welcome back, Old Friend.
And she won’t say anything. Because she’s a bicycle.
Seriously you guys. I’m mourning the theft of this bicycle like an unexpected and unwanted breakup. I’m becoming more and more certain that the day I lose hope of finding her, I will resolve my angst by writing a series of bad poems to her and collecting them in a rambling Facebook post (in lieu of the LiveJournal post that younger me would have done).
I keep worrying over this lost inanimate object like it’s a person in trouble. I need fucking help.
I have woken up from nightmares in which my bicycles are stolen literally crying. Nothing but sympathy here.
I mean, really. Our bicycles feel like an extension of ourselves, at least as much as cars can. Especially if we’ve had them for a while, or done a lot of work on them, or have a lot of memories tied up in them.
The bicycle in my little icon, a 1985 Miyata 210, is the bicycle that taught me that I love long-distance touring. I must have done thousands of miles on it, pulling into campgrounds as it got dark, taking breaks to celebrate at the tops of passes. Plus all the around-town riding I did. I have so many good memories with that bicycle! When I finally sold it for something closer to my size, it was really hard to let it go. I nearly cried. I still get excited when I see other Miyatas of the same era!
Having one of my bicycles stolen would break my heart: the Linus is a lovely thing, the first bike I bought new as an adult, my daily commuter and errand-runner. The 1961 Raleigh Sports is my beautiful old steed, the bicycle that taught me that I love bicycling as a form of transportation. The mid-90’s Novara Randonee came with me on my longest tour, and is covered in stickers from places I visited. We give our bicycles names! They have a personality to some extent. I would be heartbroken to lose any of them.
Is your Linus a Dutch-style bike? Purple Rain was that: a violet PUBLIC C7 that was my favorite ride to work and an essential antidepressant during a tough year of my life. That year is ongoing.
I keep wanting to write a graphic novel about a vigilante anti-heroine whose bike is stolen, and the journey to recover it or wreak vengeance on the dirtbags who stole it leads her to…probably…present a socioeconomic report on crime and depleted infrastructure in the American midwest that allows petty crime to flourish? In the form of a graphic novel?
I don’t know. I’m like Tyrion Lannister over here, except it’s “Where do stolen bikes go?” instead of whores.
My bicycle is a cream Linus mixte, actually! My original intent had been to buy an 80’s-era Japanese or English mixte frame and turn it into a city bike with upright handlebars and a 3- or 5-speed hub and generator lighting. But then one of my local shops had a sale on Linuses, and it was just so much cheaper and less hassle, even with me getting generator lighting and a chainguard on it. (I still might make over an old bike one day. Those old mixte frames with the lugs are just so lovely.)
Some of my friends have had bicycles stolen. Sometimes they get them back if it’s a really unique bike (why. why would a thief steal a very obviously custom cargo bike with a christmas tree on it?!) but oftentimes it’s just gone. And other friends have had saddles and seatposts and wheels stolen.
A few months ago a woman had ended her cross-country bike trip in Portland because she was moving here, only to have her Surly LHT stolen the day after she arrived. Her post on facebook was shared 47,000 times and she got her bike back within a few days. I think everyone just felt so awful for her.
Awwww! So I guess there’s hope, maybe.
Thanks for the kind words!
*hugs* I was laid so low when my bike got stolen. It had been a gift from my parents after my grandmother died! It was the best bike I had ever ridden on up until that point.
My mother bought my little brother a yellow banana-seated YELLOW SUBMARINE bicycle in the 70’s. Told him to lock it at the library. He owned it for 3 days and we never saw it again–which was tough, because we were friends with the local cops, AND because anybody who stole a bike in our neighborhood was stupid enough to keep riding it around, so if you could get bigger people on your side, you could steal it back.
That was like, 1976. My mother cannot go to a flea market, an antique store, or see ANYTHING beatles without saying, “i wish we still had that bike. I told him to lock it. I wonder what that bike would be worth now?” (she has looked on the interwebs, which of course say the bike doesn’t exist at all anywhere)
Each time I remove a bobby pin from my hair, it will return immediately from whence it came, ready to be of service when it is most needed.
I will never need to cut fallen hair out of the vacuum bristles again.
My new apartment will already be painted the perfect colors. The wall colors will both complement my furniture and make all inhabitants look well-rested.
My new apartment will have internet that always works, and is always fast, and allows me to read The Toast Dot Net and watch Netflix at the same damn time.
What kind of dark sorcery are you trying to call upon the world?
I will definitely, absolutely not stop priming and painting my entryway to remark, “I’ll finish it next weekend,” and then ever do it.
When people come over, I won’t feel the need to state “YOU DIDN’T SEE IT BEFORE. IT WAS SO BAD. I HAVE PICTURES.”
Yup, in my apartment the walls will paint themselves. And the cabinets.
This is how I feel from the moment I see an apartment, love it, apply for it, up through to finding out that I’ve gotten it. However, every single time when I get the keys and am alone in it for the first time, I decide it is way too small and it smells weird and I don’t like how that one thing is different than the thing at my old place, and I feel sad and depressed and want to cry. Then I move and everything is great and I love it again. WTF, me?????
My new apartment will have insulation that keeps it cool in summer and warm in winter with minimal use of the thermostat.
In my new apartment all my earrings will stay forever mated before and after being worn.
do you need a roommate?
We’re house-hunting now and I can’t wait to move into a place where the appliances always work and the ceiling never leaks.
Moving Tuesday and if I get 10% of this it will be a big life upgrade.
My new apartment will have a forcefield surrounding it that keeps out all bugs.
Also, it will have walls made of something other than plaster over brick that can support decorative and/or functional items being mounted on them.
(I really really love my current apartment except for when those two things make me want to move immediately.)
Our new house (circa 1950) has cement walls covered in plaster.
Use an electric drill with a masonary bit to make a tiny hole, then insert a screw not a nail.
I gave my daughter an electric drill as a housewarming present when she got her first apartment. Because I am a good mother.
In my new apartment, I will not have any neighbors who listen to EDM at high volume during seemingly random hours of both daylight and darkness.
In my new apartment, there will never be junk mail and bills piling up on the entry table. My mail will consist solely of delightful handwritten cards from friends and family, which will be posted on the stylish bulletin board for my enjoyment for a month until new cards take their place, whereupon they will be neatly filed into stylish storage boxes, handy for reminiscing in my elderly years and eventually to form a delightful archive for researchers/distant family members to wistfully pore over several hundred years later.
Also, your apartment will be so spotless, that your tortie won’t find the one errant plastic bag thingy and start chewing on it in the middle of night, waking you up out of a deep sleep because you’re afraid that she will choke on it. And why does she even chew on plastic????
I have also been known to leap out of my bed in the middle of the night to make sure that my cats are not eating anything they shouldn’t. It is STRESSFUL.
i briefly worked on a farm to which a small kitten belonged. his name was sergio. he had a penchant for chewing on irrigation tubes, especially ones that hadn’t been laid yet.
Plastic bags often contain animal fat.
did not know that! Thanks for sharing
Great, now my cat’s going to get mad cow disease.
My cat LOVES chewing on plastic bags. It’s usually a sign that she wants to be eating grass/leaves, and she’ll stop if I give her some spinach or something. But she’s pretty weird, so no guarantee it means the same thing for your cat.
I’m going to try that. Who knows, it may just work.
My new apartment will have a kitchen wide enough to open the oven all the way.
Jaya yes. YES. All these things* are exactly what I want, and why I’m still disappointed in the apartment I moved into last summer.
I’d add: In my new apartment, I will have an aesthetic. The rooms will look stylish and pulled together while still comfortable and unfussy, rather than holding a random assortment of mismatched (and not in an artsy way) furniture.
*Especially re: dust, wires, smudges, and cat litter.
We just decided not to renew our lease, TODAY. So I’m trying to find this dream apartment now, and getting severely dejected. The bf and I seem to have decided to move to the DC metro despite neither of us actually having jobs there yet. ….I may regret this.
My new apartment will not have upstairs neighbors. And the upstairs neighbors I won’t have won’t decide to forgo rugs on antique wood floors. And when they have sex they will have the decency to muffle their screaming.
Worst Apartment Choice ever.
My new apartment will have more than 1.5 square feet of counter space IN THE ACTUAL KITCHEN
Mine will have more than one drawer in the kitchen!
Three words (for your pots and pans): Bar Keeper’s Friend. That stuff is MAGIC
I will actually recover all of my socks after putting them in the dryer.
The bus right across the street that I use to commute to work will actually be on time.
Rent will not cost a quarter of my salary.
Wait, you mean you live somewhere where it’s possible to spend less than 25% of your salary on rent? :O Because I live in London, where the least you can expect to spend on rent is about 40% of your salary, and that’s in the furthest-out areas. *cries*
http://www.cityam.com/232121/where-do-londoners-s…
I feel you. In originally from San Francisco and the rent prices my friends pay there is terrifying.
I’m spending 25% now because I moved out of Seattle and to a less expensive neighboring city and have a fiance to share my rent. But if I ever wanted to move back to seattle…D=
I had two bikes stolen out of my storage space in the basementof the building I lived in over 20 years ago and I STILL look for them wherever I see bikes locked up. One was the first bike I had owned since I was a kid and the other was one my sister had built for me out of spare parts. It felt like such a violation.
ETA add, sorry, this was meant go upthread with the other bike stuff.
Have you tried Feline Fresh? It’s pine pellets. It’s the best smelling least tracking litter that I’ve ever used. IT’s almost as good as a fir grove. ACTUALLY. Also, flushable.
Anyhow, that’s what I discovered in my new apartment.
In my new apartment, I will make homemade food every night and eat it sitting down at the table, not on the couch or at my desk. I will host charming dinner parties several times a year. All my invited guests will RSVP and then actually show up or not show up as indicated.
My cats will only vomit and spit up hair balls on tile or wood, not on carpet. They will sleep at least as late in the morning as I do, and the cabinets will be secure against their paws without the use of ugly childproof locks.
I will not have inappropriate sexual fantasies about any of my neighbors. I will not have inappropriate murderous fantasies about any of my neighbors. My neighbors will instead be friendly responsible people who would never neglect their animals, leave their trash in the hall all week, take up more than their share of allotted parking, or be way too sympathetic and dreamy and married when commiserating about such problems.
My dryer will not be my second closet. My floor will not be my third.
So true about the cats. 35% of my bedroom floor is covered with a rug and yet my black cat cannot find it in her heart (or gullet) to deposit her hairballs on the other 65% which is nothing but painted cement…Always on the dang carpet…This is the same cat who works hard to open all the doors because she feels that she is entitled to go WHEREVER she pleases.
Nobody will hear anyone else have sex.
When I first moved into where I am now, I had a bed sleep pattern and would still be up at 3 in the morning. Around this time when I’d step out to have a cigarette, I’d hear someone’s bed springs violently squeaking on the floor above mine and across the hallway. No moaning, no sound that there were 2 people, just this constant, endless bedspring squeaking at 3am. After mentioning it to friends we all decided it had to be someone getting intimate with their pillow or something. It’s always good to hope that that won’t happen too
In my new apartment I will make use of the pool across the road and get up early everyday to swim for an hour.
In my new apartment I will not have to live off junk food because I will not have a shared fridge and my food will not get stolen.
In my new apartment I will not have to share a bathroom. I will have ventilation fan in the bathroom so I can take nice hot showers and not drown in sweat when I step out. I will also not find bloody mucus in the sink because there will be no flat mate to invite sickly guests over.
In my new apartment I will not be ambushed by my flat mate with a permission form to let him have guests (because student accomodation).
I’m one week away from moving, my first time in ten years, and yes. All of these. Yes.
No one in my new building will be learning to play a loud instrument for five years.
My upstairs neighbours have a small child who sometimes likes to “practice her jumping”. She also likes to shriek. And their front door is right next to the wall the headboard of our bed is against, which means when people go out at night and slam the door it is very noticeable. (They are very nice neighbours, mostly! Just, on occasion, loud.)
You are me!
In my new apartment, I will have a new roommate. She will not leave her textbooks on cutting boards, the stovetop, or the fridge. Bacon fat will no longer reek for days on cold frying pans ‘for later.’ I will not be lectured on how our only bookstore supports Israel (???). Vibrators will not be left in open spaces for all to see.
Instead, my new roommate will leave lavender in mason jars on the kitchen table. When she speaks on the phone, she won’t yell and cry at her gross boyfriend. We’ll share an interest in waffles and woolen socks.
Oh god, please get me out of this unit!
My new apartment will be located in an area where hiking/biking trails are nearby and perhaps a cute town just a short drive away. The apartment will have hardwood floors and not carpet, because I enjoy getting my security deposit back after not having to prove to my landlord, that yes, that stain was there when we moved in.
My new apartment won’t have shitty roommates who are disgusting shut-ins that never clean or selfish pricks who don’t pay rent on time or mentally unstable adult-children who cry very loudly at 2am. My new apartment will have nicely colored walls that compliment my furniture (that isn’t handed down from a dead old woman and smells of mildew). I won’t have neighbors that take my parking spot or neighbors that get into screaming matches at random hours of the day. My new apartment will have beautifully potted plants and succulents. Spiders and cockroaches and scorpions will the barred from entering the apartment because of force-fields. I will actually cook in my beautifully renovated kitchen and not just heat up something questionably edible in the microwave. I will have all of my pictures and posters and drawings framed up on the walls and placed ever-so-perfectly because I’m an ADULT. Everything will be reclaimed wood and I’ll have puffy pillows and soft blankets and a tv that isn’t from 1993.
…I need to move, ya’ll.
I love this. All of it. Now let’s all imagine what our next wonderful new partner will be like!
My new apartment will have a sparkling clean bathroom sink ALL THE TIME. There will be a built-in Lego vacuum so that I never step on my children’s Legos in the middle of the night in my bare feet. The dishwasher will not spew gunk onto the dishes and then bake it on. I will never, ever forget about the radishes in the fridge and then wonder what in the world made that slimy, nasty-smelling mess in the produce drawer. My bed will make itself.
Ha ha, that was so fun to read. I wish all of the listed could implement into my home as well! I particularly loved the “my cats will leave hair only on the balcony” one! Oh, that would be so nice…
My new apartment unit will have windows with a scenic view of the ocean/horizon/sunrise/sunset which I can enjoy daily from the comfort of my majestic balcony. That is my only request as of now please!
High speed wifi 😀