Apartment living has its perks. I’m a huge fan of having someone else take care of all of the maintenance issues, especially when it’s the best maintenance man ever. Depending on the apartment, one can also have access to awesome amenities, like an on-site gym, gourmet kitchen, or a cycle repair shop.
Another perk I like is having access to fresh food from our community garden while not being the sole person responsible for keeping all those plants alive. The location of apartments can be great, too, as you’re not likely to find a house to live in downtown or close to so many bus stops. And lastly, I love that I don’t have to remember to take the trash to curb on garbage day every week.
Yet, apartment living also has its drawbacks. I grew up playing musical instruments and would love to practice sometimes when I get home for work, but the apartments I live in are small and were built in the seventies, which means insulation wasn’t a high priority and sound travels well. As much as I’d love to pull out that trombone, my desire to be a good neighbor and decent human being outrank that and so my neighbors live in peace.
Then there are the passive-aggressive wars. A common one in college was taking someone’s clothes out of the washer when they were two minutes late. (I never did this, just to be clear, but it did happen to me.) At another apartment complex, parking was tight and my roommate was given special permission by the landlord to park her car in his visiting spot for a few weeks until a spot would open up. In the meantime, another resident left a note on her windshield stating she was not allowed to park there. My roommate wrote a message back and had to deal with aggravating back-and-forth messages until she finally got her own parking spot.
I don’t know why that resident didn’t just talk with the landlord to find out that my roommate was, indeed, authorized to park there. But that just seems to be one of the 'artforms' you have to deal with when living in an apartment.
