Mi Casa From the Outside

So I found my camera cord, tucked neatly under the belt strap on the camera case, right where I put it so I wouldn't pack it up.

My unit is above the one with all of the plants on the terrace; that's the unit I first saw. I also met the lady who lives there a day or so later -- she's very nice, as has been everyone I've ever met there. Oh, there's been a few "bad apples", but they're never around very long.



Here's one showing all three levels; as you can see the second floor is kind of low -- it's situated at a level that's essentially between floors 1 and 2 of the other building, making it low enough to make me somewhat worried about leaving my terrace doors open all the time -- so when they told me they had a third floor apartment, I was glad for that. My bedroom is the door on the right; living room the one on the left.



I like the fact that I have the trees right in front of my terrace. Yes, it'll be rather leafy in the Fall when they start dropping, but it'll be shadier in the summer, and it's more private. I like the fact, too, that my unit sticks out farther than the ones to the right. The view is really nice as it looks out and over the car ports, and down to the swimming pool. And I can still see Linda's beautiful garden across the way.

(Hmm...Just thought of something. Maybe I ought to look into getting one of those emergency ladders. I thought about it off and on over the years, but the 2nd floor wasn't too high that if I couldn't have climbed out a window, dangled, then dropped. The third floor's too high for that and it's concrete below now, rather than soft, shady ground....)

I ran into my neighbor who lives across the hall and over one unit [insert "is he okay?" joke, here -- ba dum bum chhhhhhhhhh...), and he's going to be moving into the unit directly across from me; he's been in these apartments for around 12 or so years. There's actually a lot of "long timers" there. The previous managers were at the apartments for 20 years when they retired. To me, that says a lot about the company that's owned the complex for at least as long.

And with the upgrade of amenities, so must I upgrade my cleaning products. For years, I've relied on Mr. Clean and water in an old Windex bottle to clean my counters and bathrooms and floors, but I must now relegate him to just floors; you can't use that kind of thing on granite or stainless steel. Granite is too porous, and such solutions strip the sealer off, and it streaks on stainless steel.

I looked for Johnson's Wax at Fred Meyer today, but I couldn't find it; I did find, however, a product designed for daily use to clean granite countertops as well as a sealer to use every once in awhile -- I also found a stainless steel cleaner; I mention this as it was a total of $48 in new cleaning products. OY!

Well, so -- I did double up on the daily cleaner and stainless steel foaming cleaner as they were on sale, and also got a loaf of bread and some butter...but maybe I'll just have to be less anal about cleaning my house!

I also took in my curtains (old ones) to be cleaned -- $45! Aiee! But at least this way they'll be all purdy and fresh for my new place. I go to a cleaner up the road from my office that's all "green" and environmentally-oriented. Your things come back smelling like the outdoors, not dry cleaners. So it's a tad more expensive, but worth it.

I hand washed my sheers and my gray cotton curtains that had been hanging in my bedroom this past weekend, and that was rather...um...enlightening. I'm a fairly tidy and clean person, but it took three washings in my tub to get the sheer swag and curtains to stop making the water gray, and it took four washings before the gray cotton curtains stopped making the water look like iced tea. Ew! I know I've washed all of those things at least once or twice since I moved in, and I've occasionally vacuumed them...but that was gross. I think I may have to make it a point to get my curtains cleaned more often.

So the big move happens next weekend; it's kind of odd / sad to realize that this is the last weekend I'll be here in the old unit. I guess I can always wave at it and say hello from my new unit...!


-- H

Soon! Soon! Soon!

Then will be now, soon!

I was going to take a picture of my balcony to show you all at least the outside of my apartment, but I can't find my camera USB cable; I believe I packed it up this weekend. So that will have to wait.

I got a nice chunk of birthday money for my birthday in July, and I decided to save it for something fun. When the move became apparent, I thought to use it for that. I wanted to use it for something that was a treat, not towards organizers or something practical I went to Fred Meyer (for those of you not in this neck of the woods, it's like a Target with a grocery store, but somewhat nicer, as well as having a huge hardware section), and I decided to see if they had any bedding and curtains on sale.

I've been wanting new bedding for awhile (what I have is 7 years old; I still like it, but I wanted something new), and I need new curtains for my bedroom terrace door. The apartments come with curtains, but they're those generic, white, heavy ones you find in every TravelLodge and Motel 6 from here to Florida. Not all that pretty.

I found a really nice bedding set that's all satiny and sheeny and velvety gold, sage green, cream, burgundy and garnet. It's beautiful, and came with accent pillows, too. I then found some beautiful curtains that pick up the tone of the sage green of the bedding; it's really luxurious (OK, all I need to say now is that there's a "pop" of color and I can fully sound like every cliche decorator host out there....)

I learned from my mother well. The bedding and curtains pulls in the colors I have out in my living room, keeping the design "streamlined." (Thanks, Mom!)

I fully intended to rehang my old generi-curtians when I left, but I was mortified to discover as I went through my suitcases for donation that I'd donated the suitcase in which I'd stored them...with the curtains still in it. Oops.

The manager said she might have to charge me for them, but that's okay; I'm going to take the ones they put up down again, but I'm going to be squeaky certain they stay put with me.

I still have some packing to do, of course, but what's irksome is that I'll realize I've been staring at an item I should have packed up already; some knicknack or a book that's still floating around. And the funny thing is how bland my apartment smells without all my candles and stuff out; the whole place feels dead and closed up, like I've packed up the place's "personality".

I ran out of boxes this weekend, which meant a call to my mom to please let me borrow some more; though I wanted to get more done this weekend, I was glad. By the time I'd taped up the last box I had, I was sick to death of packing, and I was glad to stop. Plus it was just too hot to do anything; we had about 4-5 days in a row of 100 degree weather, and by the time Saturday rolled around, I was equally sick to death of feeling damp, hot and sticky -- despite the fact I'd taken a long, cool / cold shower and had dried off using one of my fans to up the "cool factor."

Today is much cooler, and is even rainy. We had a thunderstorm going this morning, too. Hopefully when I move Labor Day weekend it won't be raining, snowing, sleeting, hailing, slushing -- and sometimes all of the above at the same time -- like it was when Andrew and Hanne moved into their new place.

I'm not sure which would be worse -- moving in the weather we had this weekend (dry but only a bit cooler than what Death Valley was reporting) (I kid you not), or the weird sleety weather.

Something in-between would be most preferable, please and thank you Weather Gods.

I'm only moving to the other building, but I realized a truck would be needed for my bulkier things; Dad suggested I rent a big 4x4 kind of truck, but the cheapest I could find, even using my car insurance discount, was $65 a day, and I think they wanted to charge me for both Friday and Saturday, despite the fact I wanted to pick it up at 6pm Friday and return it 6pm Saturday; so it would have been $130, and that's before all the miscellaneous taxes they tack on.

So I went to U-Haul instead and got a decently-sized truck for $30. Much better.

I also saw that the building I'm moving into allows for easier windchime hanging; my terrace roof is concrete, and I had to hang my chimes using plastic hooks attached with super glue; my new place has wood, it looks like, where I can put in metal hooks. Much better.

Hmm. I just realized I need to get new hooks for my bird feeder, my hanging geraniums and my hummingbird feeder....

All the little details of moving. I have the electricity, digital cable and phone / FiOS (Verizon's uber-speedy Internet service) scheduled to switch over, and then it's a matter of remembering all the other places that need my new address. I was able to schedule the forwarding for my mail online, but the USPS charges $1 to do that, oddly. Oh well. Cheaper than what I'd pay in gas driving to a place to get a form.

And I'm going to have to get new cleaning products; Windex works terribly on stainless steel appliances (it streaks badly), so I have to get a special cleaner for that (thanks, Dad, for that advice!), and since granite is porous and requires a sealer every now and again, I can't use my Mr. Clean solution that I use now; the suggestion is a damp, soft cloth and mild dish soap; to seal it I can just use Johnson's Wax (thanks Gramma, for that advice!)

Fancy new items needing fancy new cleaning products. But oh-so-nice! I'm so excited! (I'm sure you guys had no idea that I was, even just a little...)

So that's the latest update.

Could I please stop packing sometime soon -- ?!

-- H

Mi Casa on Paper

I found a floor plan online on the manging company's website. Thought you guys might like to see it:




This is my old floor plan (mirror image of what I have / had):



I'm still thrilled about the size difference of the patios! Yes, I'm losing a lot of space, but I'm so looking forward to it.

-- H

Yay!

I don't have an exact date yet, but I heard today that a new unit is open for me!

It's going to be on the 3rd floor, but the way the other building is situated, the floors are sort of between the ones here; the first-level floors are actually lower than the ones here, and the 2nd floor apartments (which I was looking at) are therefore slightly lower than mine.

I was a bit concerned about that, as I like to leave my terrace door and windows open all the time, and the terrace level on the 2nd floor units, I noticed, were lower than my 2nd floor terrace. So for safety purposes, 3rd floor will do nicely. It's only one flight of stairs up, no different than what I have to get to this 2nd floor unit. Be a touch warmer in the summer (but with two big doors I can open I can get more air moving), but the upshot is it'll also be warmer in the winter, thanks to the physics of heat.

Looks like it'll be next month (I'm hoping she might let me start moving stuff early, as the unit is open!). The pile of packing in my office has grown, and I'm now down to packing up the stuff I left out -- things I get to a lot. Well, not everything I left out was. I was just plain sick of packing by the time I got to my pantry.

Whee!

Car news.

I got the new engine in, but after only having the engine for 24 hours, a factory defect became apparent, and back to the shop Angus had to go. He's actually at Landmark Ford at the moment, getting a cylinder head fixed.

I'm really excited about the news about the unit; now hopefully the weekend I have to do the big push will be cool. At the moment it's 102 degrees outside at 6:31 pm. Ooog.

But...still better than when I lived in Texas and it was 102 and humid. It was the only time in my life I felt like I was actually melting. Free perm action for my hair, though, with the humidity making the curl go nutso.

Later, all. Water's boiling and I need to go throw in the pasta. I was going to grill something, but the idea of cooking over fire when it's this hot out is borderline insane.

-- H

Insert Title Here

I can't think of anything clever or suitable at the moment.

So on goes the sorting and packing. I've gotten things culled down to a decent level, and I'm sure once I get over to my new unit, I'll find more things I can get rid of. Rather, of which I can get rid -- so that I'm not ending my sentence in a preposition.

I think I'm likely going to simultaneously find out that I both have more space for storage and less. So I'm banking more on the less part, and thus being pretty ruthless. There's some things I think I could likely donate, but I want to wait first and see about space. I have more stemware than a single woman needs, and since I bought two sets of my new dinnerware I have about 12 or so matching mugs. I kind of hesitate about donating those, as they match the set. But nor do I need 18 mugs.

Plus I am on the waiting list for storage space, so I'll have a bit more room for that. I can put my two bins of Christmas decorations in storage, along with things like the extra mugs and even my Christmas wrapping paper. Stuff I rarely touch. And my flattened boxes. Random stuff.

But all in all, it's been really fun. That may raise an eyebrow or two from you, but I actually really like sorting and organizing, and I try to do it once a year, usually in the Spring. I heard about the impending refurbishment of all the apartments in February, and, at that time, I thought I was going to move out of mine and then back in. But I kept waiting to hear about it (I was told a few months) before I did any culling and organizing, as I wanted to just do it and pack at the same time.

I've done a pretty good job of keeping what I have tamed, but after 7 and a half years in a place with four closets, I did kind of get lazy about some stuff. I think I've done a pretty good job of culling it down, but wowsers. Am I pooped and sore.

I'm to the point now where I've pretty much gone through everything. Now I just need to pack up my pantry things and my kitchen. And I can't wait to get moved in and settled; I think the unpacking's going to be a lot easier than the packing, given the lack of sorting, culling and 82 thousand trips to the recycling room.

Plus it'll be like what my mom said when she moved into her little house (the one she just moved out of earlier this Summer / Spring), that it's fun to find new "homes" for all the framed pictures.

I think I may also finally have room for a nice bookcase. In my old apartment, I had a long wall where I could have put one, had it not been for the electric baseboard heater that ran the entire length of it. We'll see. First I need to get organized and settled, then I need to get new curtains for my room (the apartments come with the generic kind of curtains you find in motels), and then I can see about a new bookshelf.

Ooo...an "excuse" to go to Ikea....

So there's my semi-update. I've kind of wound down, but I have to admit, it'll feel good to be as fully packed as I can be, so that I can just slide into my new place easily, and have a break -- rather than having to pack and move at the same time. Bleah.

I did have a "Grr" moment earlier today. I carefully measured my sink unit thing in my second bathroom, as I knew it would be approximately the same size as my new one. I also remembered it was slightly shorter, so I shaved off a few inches from the height.

I went to Fred Meyer this morning before work to peruse the plastic storage bins, and found two drawer units that I thought would fit, given my measurements. Then, at lunch, the managers let me pop into one of the refurbished units to see if they'd fit and....

I found out they're about 5" too tall.

Sigh.

So now I have to rethink my bathroom. I know what I can do for some stuff, but I'm losing my drawer where I keep my toothpaste and a few other things. I'm also losing counter space, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my makeup organizer. I do have a unit that hangs on the wall above my toilet that can provide a cupboard space, so that will help.

And I discovered that I had four extra lids for Rubbermaid bins -- but no bottoms. I did find one bottom in my pantry where I was using it to hold cleaning rags, so that solved the mystery of one of the lids, but now I have 3 others without mates. I've been through everything where they could be -- so where on Earth did they go?

I was thinking perhaps I could just take the lids in, show them to someone at Fred Meyer to show they came in with me and then find bins to match, but I noticed this morning that all the Rubbermaid bins have changed design, so none would fit.

To quote Ace Ventura, Allllllll righty, then.

Ah well.

Oh -- car news. It's still at the shop, awaiting the engine, which is supposed to get there tomorrow. So my old pal Angus should be back with me next week.

Anyhoo. That's all for now.

10-4, good buddies. Over and out.