I recently moved into a new apartment. It's a bit smaller than my old place, but for all utilities included with the rent, being an upper floor unit, and having a killer mountain view from the front room and kitchen, a little less square footage isn't a big deal. I would jump on board the "tiny house movement" bandwagon, claim the move was to reduce my footprint or that it was to reduce the amount of things I feel I need to have, but really it was because the price was right and I'd spent five years in an apartment I didn't intend to spend five years in.
In early 2011 I lived in a room at the hotel where I work, which wasn't ideal; not much in the realm of privacy, living on-site apparently meant I was on call all the time, and it didn't leave a good first impression telling people I lived in a cheap little hotel room. Out of desperation I started looking for cheap apartments. Since I was a mature adult I had saved up more than enough for first months rent and deposit on a place, but since I'm me I saved that money between the mattresses of my hotel room bed, but I'd made sure I had enough for when the time came that I found a place to call home. In the couple months I looked there were a few promising leads. However, one stood out above them all; it was a one bedroom, one bath, single level brick unit with a fireplace and a covered patio, a short distance from where work.
It was also the cheapest option by a long shot.
An application was sent in shortly after touring the unit, and within a couple weeks I put down the deposit and the rent, got the keys, and settled in to the little Brick Bungalow
My intention was to be in that apartment for a few months and move to the northern coast of California for school, or Steinbeck country if I could find work. I didn't spend money on new furniture since I intended to bail on the place in short order and wanted all the money I could save, so a sofa from the side of the road (that had once housed mice I'd find out later on) faced an entertainment center found at the landfill, with an end table found in a dumpster years before next to a lamp that was scrapped from a yard sale. Actual trash filled the place, but it was strategically chosen trash so it looked intentional. I claimed it was recycling, and it was, but less for ideological reasons and more for "fuck wasting money on shit since this garbage is good enough" reasons.
Circumstances arose and I ended up staying in that apartment longer than initially anticipated. The junk furnishings got a little nicer over time. Art got on the walls. The kitchen, with its harvest gold colored faux-cobblestone linoleum flooring and yellow painted walls, became a shrine for all things tacky and thrift store chic. A large tapestry of the tree of life served as a curtain in the bedroom, and other New Age hippie shit was scattered throughout the place. It smelled of Nag Champa and coffee more often than not for a couple years. If it'd gone any further I might have ended up being a White Guy With Dreadlocks or an Insufferable Hipster Douchebag, but luckily I made it out of that phase with just a djembe and a collection of decent LP's.
After months became a year, a year became years, and years were about to become half a decade, I decided to at least move to a different place in town if I couldn't move elsewhere. It was a sort of like testing of the waters of change. Dipping my toes into the murky depths of discomfort and stress that come with some degree of personal growth meant that, if I could upgrade my place of residence at least a little bit, the possibility of going somewhere even better in the near future could be a possibility. It would mean I could find the wherewithal within myself to be the best person I could be and improve my life in ways I had yet to imagine. If nothing else, it would get me the fuck away from the next-door neighbor who'd scream and shout for no reason all hours of the day, the deteriorating shitshow of a landscaping job that was apparently bailed on a year before, and another five years in the place that became a testament to my shortcomings and failures.
Plus, cheap rent and all utilities included?! Sign me the fuck up!
After writing and dropping off a "letter of intent to vacate" the packing and cleaning began. Boxes and crates slowly made their way out of the old place and into the new one. Stuff I didn't need found its way into the dumpster, Goodwill, and my coworkers' houses. All my remaining furniture was consolidated, moved, and hauled up the stairs. After it was empty I began the task of cleaning the place, leaving it better than how it was when I moved in. Since there were already burn marks on the carpet, chipping paint on the ceiling, cobwebs in the corners, and grime on the baseboards when I initially moved in, I didn't have a huge challenge, but I at least made it look halfway presentable.
I made one last once-over of the place before going to the property management office to drop off the keys to the old place. It had the same smell as the day I moved in; that smell of old masonry, dusty, almost musty, like a church basement or a long abandoned house. Light cut through the blinds, illuminating the falling dust and giving the front room a golden sort of glow. The fridge in the kitchen echoed off the bare walls of the empty room. The bathroom was cold. The bedroom was still. Everything was similar to how it was when I moved in, and I remembered how excited I was to move out of my hotel room and into my own private space. It was a sad, nostalgic couple minutes of reflection, but at least the thought of better things persisted. I locked the door behind me, dropped off the keys, and went to my new home to get ready for work.
A part of me will miss the Brick Bungalow; it was my first place, and it was the backdrop to a lot of moments in my adult life. I guess, though, it's a similar case to my Jeep; I was reluctant to let it go, even though it sucked, but now I have a little Nissan Versa that's doing me a lot better. The Cherokee, much like The Brick Bungalow, had a lot of problems, wasn't maintained that well, and had more space filled with junk and bad memories than I really needed to keep around. The new place and the Versa are more compact, endlessly more efficient, and much more manageable.
That's about as close as I'll get to hopping on the tiny house bandwagon for now, but it's a start of something good I think.
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