I have been an apartment dweller for nearly fifteen years now, and there is a certain pattern that I’ve noticed. You can tell how nice your apartment is (and, consequently, determine your station in life) based on how many amenities on this list are fulfilled.
1) Deck of Cards – This is the first thing you should get when you move into a new place. If you have nothing else, you can always play solitaire and weep softly into a can of beer.
2) A Toaster – Your first appliance! Congrats! Pop Tarts become a major food group
3) A Bedroom – This feels like luxury after living in a studio/bachelor suite. Better yet, if you run out of sofa space, people aren’t likely to spill beer on your clean sheets (cause they’re all the way in that other room).
4) A Dishwasher – Hundreds of hours of washing dishes are now gone. You begin to wonder why no one has yet invented a “potwasher”.
5) Washer/Dryer – No more begging the dour-looking clerk at the corner store for precious, precious change. You can use the dryer to make your pajamas warm and toasty before you go to bed.
5) Stairs – Owning stairs means you own multiple levels of house. You are your own upstairs neighbor. Who cares if the bed squeaks? Go to town.
6) A Garage – Your very own car-hole. Coupled with underground parking at work, you can stay entirely suntan-free. No need to cordon off a parking space with broken white plastic buckets, you are lord and master of eight feet of concrete.
7) A Lawn – Congrats. You own grass. However, you must now purchase a lawnmower, weed-eater, fertilizer, …etc. Get ready for hours of caddyshack-esque gofer-based fun!
8 ) A Two Car Garage – Your car has a mate. Hopefully you do too. If not, well, there’s now room for an in-home gym. Use it. If you’re at point 8, you’ve pretty much made it. (Apparently, there’s a bug in WordPress that cuts off anything after point 8, so: If you have anything to add at any point in this list, please mention it in the comments, and I’d add it in the appropriate location.)
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9) A powered screwdriver – I always got by fine without one. Now that I own a house, though, I can’t live without it.
10) Epiphany – every household project will take at least twice as much money and time as you thought it would, and will rarely have been worth it.
11) Weeds – pulling them just once won’t do it. See 10).
12) Your very own dustbin – not just sharing that stinky little shed known as the ‘communal garbage area’… Remember to put a bungy cord on the lid to stop the foxes, seagulls and crows spreading your rubbish over the garden, though.
13) A washing line. Well you need SOMETHING to hide those pesky weeds – what better than your favourite jeans spread across the garden in the latest gales?
I never realized the extent of the love I could develop for a 30 year old dishwasher and free underground parking until I moved into my new place. Alas, I don’t own stairs or lawn, but I DO have a rather nice toaster!
Yeah. The desktop dishwasher we had now changed my life. It just might be my most precious possession. (well after the computer, maybe)