Our First Apartment
I am truly grateful for our little apartment. It was our first home and we will always be grateful for anyplace we live after it. You must first know that when Jeffrey and I got married we were just eighteen but truly knew that God wanted us to be married then. However Jeff worked at Eckerds and I worked at a daycare center so money was not flowing. We needed somewhere to live that was cheap. Cheap we found, I say "we" but it wasn't we our mom's looked, our rent was $270 a month, that included electric and water.
I looked all through our papers, I save everything, to give you the sq footage but I couldn't find it. The apartment people must have had the good sense not to tell us the actual size. Since I don't have the sq footage let me paint a picture for you. It was tiny and when I say tiny I mean keep your canned goods in the linen closet in your bedroom tiny. I mean Jeffrey's feet touched the dryer at the foot of our bed tiny. I'm talking your husband has to keep his clothes in the coat closet in the living room. It's what Realtors call cute, maybe for Barbie.
I should also tell you that these apartments were built in 1941. So there was no central heat and air. We had window units, one we got from Jeff's parents and the other one was our first big purchase. In the southern heat you would sit as close as you possibly could to the window unit and just try and hear the TV over the rumbling. Winter time, oh winter time was a different story. We only had one space heater and you would think that in a place so small it would be stifling hot but it wasn't, no insulation. We would sit in the living room under blankets watching TV (prekids) and then come bed time we would unplug the heater and drag it to our room. We then would plug it in on the other side of the room away from the bed, all three inches, so we wouldn't catch the blankets on fire. My favorite part was getting up in the night to go potty and how my feet would just freeze on the cold bathroom floor.
To this day chilly floors give my butterflies, taking me back to when we were first married.
Back to this no insulation thing, the walls weren't very thick either so you were always welcome to listen in on the neighbors conversations.
Maybe I should also tell you about the management. First off rent was taken to the main office, if you were willing to receive lung cancer upon entering. And the funny thing is they thought their fan kept the room smelling fresh, wrong. Man was it bad, being in that office for less than five minutes left you smelling like you had been a bar all night long not that the grown up me would know what that smells like Daddy.
And their idea of maintenance was a joke.
We discovered a leak in our ceiling and called to have it fixed.
They came.
They tried.
It didn't work.
The next time we had a big storm it leaked again, only this time it filled a light fixture with water.
Are you ready for their stellar advice
are you sure
are you sure you are sure
okay you asked for it
"Put a piece of tape over the light switch so you don't turn it on"
That was our first home and I loved it. I still love it. Honestly, I wouldn't change it, really I wouldn't. We built some beautiful memories there.
I looked all through our papers, I save everything, to give you the sq footage but I couldn't find it. The apartment people must have had the good sense not to tell us the actual size. Since I don't have the sq footage let me paint a picture for you. It was tiny and when I say tiny I mean keep your canned goods in the linen closet in your bedroom tiny. I mean Jeffrey's feet touched the dryer at the foot of our bed tiny. I'm talking your husband has to keep his clothes in the coat closet in the living room. It's what Realtors call cute, maybe for Barbie.
I should also tell you that these apartments were built in 1941. So there was no central heat and air. We had window units, one we got from Jeff's parents and the other one was our first big purchase. In the southern heat you would sit as close as you possibly could to the window unit and just try and hear the TV over the rumbling. Winter time, oh winter time was a different story. We only had one space heater and you would think that in a place so small it would be stifling hot but it wasn't, no insulation. We would sit in the living room under blankets watching TV (prekids) and then come bed time we would unplug the heater and drag it to our room. We then would plug it in on the other side of the room away from the bed, all three inches, so we wouldn't catch the blankets on fire. My favorite part was getting up in the night to go potty and how my feet would just freeze on the cold bathroom floor.
To this day chilly floors give my butterflies, taking me back to when we were first married.
Back to this no insulation thing, the walls weren't very thick either so you were always welcome to listen in on the neighbors conversations.
Maybe I should also tell you about the management. First off rent was taken to the main office, if you were willing to receive lung cancer upon entering. And the funny thing is they thought their fan kept the room smelling fresh, wrong. Man was it bad, being in that office for less than five minutes left you smelling like you had been a bar all night long not that the grown up me would know what that smells like Daddy.
And their idea of maintenance was a joke.
We discovered a leak in our ceiling and called to have it fixed.
They came.
They tried.
It didn't work.
The next time we had a big storm it leaked again, only this time it filled a light fixture with water.
Are you ready for their stellar advice
are you sure
are you sure you are sure
okay you asked for it
"Put a piece of tape over the light switch so you don't turn it on"
That was our first home and I loved it. I still love it. Honestly, I wouldn't change it, really I wouldn't. We built some beautiful memories there.
No comments:
Post a Comment