- First and foremost, my commute is dramatically reduced compared to what it was. It used to take me a minimum of 45 min and up to 2.5 hours to get to/from work. Now it's a reliable 30 min. On top of that, the more central location of the new place makes it easier to get out of town on weekends and to get to most of our friends.
- I used to give EGM a ride most days and we would bicker about it each and every day (I need to go. But I haven't finished my coffee. I'm ready. Let me just put on my shoes. Come on!). Now he walks to work, so that tension is gone.
- Due to poor security in the lobby at the old place, mail would regularly get lost and packages would get ripped off. Now there's a secure place for packages and we have an outgoing mail drop.
- We used to hike three flights of outdoor stairs to coin-operated laundry that was often broken (I once fell on icy steps with a full basket of laundry). Now we have laundry in unit, which is just about the best thing evah.
Our building has a number of other lovely amenities that are pretty damn nice. There are tradeoffs, of course. The most notable being that the new place is much smaller -- a one bedroom -- and we're having EGM's parents for a month in the fall. I have no idea how that's going to go.
4 comments:
about the parents:
1. who gets up the first gets to sleep in the living room (if that be parents, be sure to give them a key, so they can go off and wander in the town, while you still "sleep"
2. who pees the most at night gets to sleep closest to the bathroom
2. 1 or 2 nights of that period, somewhere in the middle, but one of the cheapest days in your town, you can decide to put them in a nice hotel, or go yourselves
That's how I would fix it, but I have to admit, I am from a pretty "rude" country, and my parents are pretty understanding about this (in fact my mum made up rule 1 and 2 for a weekend trip), don't know how my husbands parents would cope with the 3rd point, since they love "sharing" everything, and think when I suggest 3rd, I don't like them...
EGM's parents probably get up first, they definitely pee more in the night, and they won't need to get to the bedroom closet. However, I think they would find it impossibly difficult to sleep on the couch or an air mattress in the living room. Unless we get a new couch with a decent pull-out bed, I think we'll be giving up our bedroom.
They are also afraid to go out on their own, which is really unfortunate.
In suite laundry is indeed the best thign evah. During my PhD I had to go the laundromat (which was luckily just over the road) every week and it SUCKED.
Phew, parents visiting for a month in a 1-bedroom apartment sounds tough -- honestly, after a long weekend I usually had enough (but within Europe that's feasible, with this distance I completely understand that it's not, and in fact wonder how we'll make that work...).
Will you have a chance to take a trip somewhere, maybe for a (long) weekend sometime in the middle of their visit? That way everyone could get a change of scenery and a proper bed...
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