Moving

I know everyone has a hard time when they move. Finding a new place is hard, especially in cities where there are a lot of college students. I really think though that we have had a harder time than most. Let’s start with the first apartment we rented after being married.
Montpelier, Idaho. We called and called trying to find places to rent in this town of 2,247 people. We finally found a guy that had a few apartments, which we scheduled to look at. When the time came to look at the apartments no one was there. We called and called, then drove all through the town looking for any other option. Well there were no other options so we took the apartment on the bases that well, there was nothing else. The biggest problem with the apartment when we moved in ended up being that our bed wouldn’t fit in. We had specifically asked if a Queen bed would fit, and got a yes. We picked up our new bed in Idaho Falls and drove130 miles to our first little place. Well you guessed it … the bed wouldn’t fit. Then the guy tried to put us in a very old looking apartment that was upstairs with a cat hair covered couch, which he said we could have for nothing extra. The bed still wouldn’t fit though. Oh yeah, one other thing, Justin is 6’ 4” and the doorways were only six feet tall. Luckily he only hit his head a couple of times all summer. As I continue hopefully you will be able to see it turned out to be one of the best places we have lived in. Finally a few weeks after moving out of this place we got our deposit back from the landlord we both used before we got married.
The summer ended and it was time to go finish school in Pocatello, which meant a new apartment. We spent a few very hot and unpleasant days looking at new apartments. It’s amazing how gross people let their properties get. After much looking we finally found one that wasn’t totally disgusting, close to campus, but was at the top of our price range. We requested a few repairs and some paint then set the date to move in. The middle to the end of August came and we moved in. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that none of the repairs were made, there was no fresh paint, the carpets were still dirty, and the whole place was covered with cobwebs. After talking to the lovely landlord she agreed that someone could be there that weekend to take care of things. We figured that since we were going to be gone that weekend anyway it would be o.k. We arrived “home” after the weekend only to find no changes. My so brave husband used a paint stick covered in paper towel to remove the webs and killed any live spiders. We cleaned up and after a week we had the carpets cleaned and the wall painted after another week went by. I wish we had volunteered to paint ourselves because the job done was awful. The color was latte (a golden brown) that really looked like baby poop. I thought the right way to paint was to remove all covers, paint edges and around outlets then use rollers for the rest. Well it got done the opposite way, but without removing any covers, just painting around them. After the end of day one I went a head and retaped all the edges for a little better cover, it didn’t help especially when to cover little spots the painter used her finger. Note: fingers aren’t paintbrushes.
The last requested repair was a vent above the stove. It was so covered in grease that I swear it dripped when I was cooking one time. It took a month and a half to replace that and it sat on the front doorstep till we moved. When the dryer died it took at least two weeks to get a new one (meaning trips to the laundry mat). Our fridge also died and we had to take all our food to a friends house. It’s really hard to cook without any butter or milk. I also learned the value of water living in that Pocatello apartment. We had to borrow water from friends when we came home one weekend and found all the water was turned off, at least that one got fixed in a good amount of time. In each of these apartments we have had to make our own copies of keys because they didn’t have any.
Justin graduated, got a job and before we knew it we were moving again. We considered buying a house but were stressed out with the idea and decided to once again rent. We selected a complex and Justin visited an apartment. We figured it would be a pretty decent place since they check credit and run background checks on all tenants. When we went to sign the lease we saw that a ground level apartment was just available and grabbed it. We loaded our truck and drove up here. We got the keys and came to move in. There were a few little things though that weren’t good. There was no stovetop, again the carpets were dirty and there were cracks in the bathtub. The landlord acted very concerned and even called the police to file a report. They had us look at some other options but the only ones in our price range were really shabby and smelly. We agreed that repairs would be made within a week or we would be allowed out of our lease and that we didn’t have to pay for the days there were still damages. I guess things have worked out but have been really annoying and sometimes stressful. Hopefully the next place we move into will be our own and we can take care of things ourselves instead of relying and waiting on others.