Trying to Get It Right

Househunting is a pain in the backside. Every time I move, I want it to be the last time (until I hit the NYT Bestseller List and/or win the lottery, so I can move without worrying, anyway.) So finding a forever home that I can afford? Not so easy to do.

When I moved into the house before my current one with my then-roommate, I loved the house. It had a fenced yard for the kid and the dog! It had a dishwasher! It was all tile, so it would be easy to clean. Managed by a professional company instead of a very nice but not particularly stable man who took in every homeless cat ever but was completely ineffectual about fixing anything.

Turned out that when we viewed the house, it was a particularly quiet traffic day. In particular, no buses stopped in front of the house as we were viewing it. And we didn’t have the dog with us, so we didn’t know how much he’d bark at ordinary traffic. And we didn’t know the professional company still had to get approval from the owner before they could do any work at all, so everything that needed fixed required 1) a call to the realty company who would 2) send someone to look at the issue who would 3) call it in and have someone else come look at it who would 4) call the owner to authorize the expense who would 5) argue that it wasn’t necessary to fix it right away and then 6) nothing would happen and we’d 7) call the realty company again…

Imagine, if you will, discovering this is how the realty company works the day after you’ve moved in, when you awaken to find a waterfall in your kitchen. And not a good or pretty one either–one coming through the roof where somehow someone stepped THROUGH it while working on the cooler. Did I mention this was five o’clock in the morning and I stepped out of my bedroom and into the freezing cold puddle in the hall?

Thank goodness for tile floors, man. Considering the dining room ceiling fell in the next year and it took them a month to fix it, I’d hate to think what any soaked carpets would have been like.

So yeah. We were there two years, and we seriously came to hate that place. When the roomie moved back east and I had to move because I couldn’t pay the rent alone, I was glad. Even though I had pneumonia and had to move with an 8yo and a tiny car without a useable trunk, I was glad that I had to move. And as I searched for my new place, I had some priorities.

I wanted quiet. I wanted well-maintained. And I wanted a great landlord.

The current place is set back from the street. Between that and finding a new home for my dog, it’s much quieter. I did find the great landlord. An extension of that is, naturally, a well-maintained place. No falling ceilings, no leaking roofs, and when I have a problem I get help, almost always that day. The one time the cooler went out and he couldn’t get it fixed that day, my awesome landlord brought me several large fans.

On the other hand, the place is small, maybe 500 square feet. I knew that, of course, when I moved in, but I didn’t know how it would come to bother me. The litter box takes up a fourth of the free floor space in the bathroom. There’s no actual room for pretty much anything, and my neighbors live practically in my lap. My front “porch” is big enough for a small plant stand and for the screen door to swing open. My back porch holds the washer and dryer and a narrow shelf, and that’s all the space there is. And there’s no dishwasher. I lived my whole life without a dishwasher, then for two years I had one, and now I don’t know how to keep up with the dishes anymore. I’m continually surprised walking into the kitchen to discover more dirty dishes.

But live and learn, eh? Eventually I’m bound to find the perfect house.

I just hope eventually is NOW.