As of Monday this week, we are officially free and clear of our old home. We've got everything packed up and chaotically fit like Tetris blocks in our living room. Slowly things are being unpacked and put away. We're starting to settle in and find our way in our new home. We're trying to make this new, smaller apartment into a home instead of just a place where all our stuff happens to be.
Of course, moving always comes with it's challenges, but this new place comes with more than expected. Some of the changes are good, some aren't. For us, this will mean a lot of changes in our lives, both in an effort to work with the bad, and in a positive direction for all the good new features of this apartment.
To begin, we'll start with the good things. The floors in this new apartment are carpeted. This is wonderful as it helps retain the heat and prevents the cement slab floors from freezing our feet. The place is far better insulated, so when it's cool, it stays that way longer. When it's warm, it keeps the heat in. There are very few windows for heat to escape from, and those are well seated and not drafty like our old home. We're on the first floor, so we won't have the challenge of the sun beating down on the roof and causing the house to be brutally warm, though we do have some problems with the master bedroom in the mornings. The ventilation system actually works, so we won't have the problems with trying to play with the temperature settings to keep the house tolerable in the bedrooms and living spaces at the same time. The place is also significantly smaller, which means there's less space to heat. Finally, right off our back patio is wilderness. I saw a fox out there two nights ago. Yesterday there were a pair of hawks hunting. They flew by as close as perhaps twenty feet away! One night last week we had a chance to meet one of our neighbors, a possum that was walking up and down the breezeway. It feels good to be in touch with nature again and not so cut off from the environment as we used to be.
Unfortunately, this place has it's own issues. The biggest problem I have right now is the lack of a recycling program. I know that's easy enough to solve. All I have to do is find the local recycling center and bring all our recycling down there, but it's so much effort! I'll admit that I'm lazy. Whoever lives above us is always banging about at five in the morning, keeping me awake. There aren't many windows, so natural ventilation is difficult. There is one window in each bedroom and the patio door in the living room. This also means a lack of light. Most of our windows are facing north, so that means very little light comes in, so electric lighting needs to be used in order to do just about anything in the kitchen, including homeschool activities. Our northern facing patio is also going to be difficult to grow plants on. Any kind of container garden I could have will need to be made of plants that grow well in the shade. I also can't set up a drying rack in the sun so that clothing can be air dried.
A problem we had at our old place has been carried on to our new home, a lack of a washer and dryer. While a part of this is just a convenience, it's also something that would make a huge difference here. Having a washer and dryer would make cloth diapering so much easier, which means less disposable diapers ending up in landfills and otherwise destroying the planet. I hope to save up to buy a nice, new Energy Star washer and dryer, since those have the least impact on the environment, probably less so than even the local laundromat. Better still, gas would be saved in transporting the laundry! That's something we need to work up to.
All in all, this apartment is a step in the right direction for us. It will be easier to maintain. It's required us to downsize the total amount of stuff we own. Most of what we're getting rid of is going to donations of some sort, so we're not just throwing it away and leading to more excess waste. We are taking steps to give our lives more structure and order. This has really been a positive change for us. Now we just need to cope with the challenges this new place brings.
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