Movin' On Up

The Mrs. and I moved several months ago, after living in the same place for almost 11 years. A lot of that was inertia: the rent was cheap and the apartment was comfortable and in a decent location. But it came at a price: an annoying, nosy, borderline-OCD landlord with too much time on her hands. And we couldn't have any pets. Mrs. SAR is quite the animal lover, and had been yearning for a pet to love for a long, long time.

I was the one who suggested it might be time to move. I liked the idea of having a dog, but I wasn't necessarily in a hurry. But beyond that reason, I was just tired of where we lived, and I thought a change of scenery would be good for us. I mean, when we moved there, Clinton was still in his first term, we weren't yet married, we didn't have cell phones--we didn't even have dial-up internet service.

Moving is a difficult enough undertaking, but finding the right place is just as trying a task, especially if you're renting and want to have a pet. Some property owners say their rentals are "pet-friendly" but don't really mean it. Some of them impose weight or size limits for dogs. Some of them want an additional security deposit. I don't necessarily think those things are unreasonable or unfair, but they make the process of finding a suitable home more difficult. We were lucky: we only looked at three apartments before we knew we'd found one we wanted to live in.

The first one was in a good location, but it was a cramped third-floor space, and everything was really old and worn. An adequate starving-grad-student place maybe, but not for us. The second, though in a somewhat less convenient location, was very clean and well-kept, but walking through the front door was like passing through a time portal: the entire apartment was straight out of the 1970s.

The dining room had pale green paneling and a classically baroque hanging light fixture; the bathroom had those tiny floor tiles and the old-style fluorescent light fixtures on either side of the mirror; but the kitchen was the worst. Gold-brown linoleum, brown paneling, and darker brown cabinets, topped by eye-searing yellow Formica countertops. Strangely, there was also a brand-new, gleaming black gas stove. The Mrs. summed it up by saying, "I couldn't stand having to get up and look at that every morning. I would just hate myself."

The guy had owned the place for a decade, and he obviously cared about the property, but I got the impression that he wasn't willing to forego a couple months' rent in order to renovate and modernize. But maybe I'm wrong; maybe he thought it was fine the way it was. The lesson we'd learned: if people don't bother to put pictures in their listings, there's usually a reason why. I have no doubt he found someone to rent the place. It just wasn't going to be us.

Then we went to see a place that did have some pictures in its listing. The owners had a baby, but no pets. They didn't seem too concerned about what sort of dog we might get. Their attitude toward a dog was basically, "Do what makes you happy, we trust you." That was refreshing. That, along with the fact that we really liked the apartment, was enough for us to make the decision. I said to my wife, "We can keep looking if you want, but I don't think we're going to find another place as nice as this one in the price range." We thought about it over the weekend, and submitted the application on Monday. Having found a place to live, we had to prepare to move, which meant contending with the accrual of stuff that comes with living in the same place for 11 years...