Stephanie wishes she was more motivated.
So wow. My boyfriend and I are finally in our apartment. Today was the first day the internet got connected, but we’ve been so busy I haven’t really missed it.
We got the keys on Friday and moved some stuff in.. you know, the junk in the car that we didn’t feel the need to bring up to the hotel room. Then, we spent a relaxing evening at the hotel for our last night. We ordered our UHaul truck on the computer so we wouldn’t have to worry about it the next day, and just spent the evening hanging out.
The next morning, we were up bright and early, packing our stuff from our week-long stay at the hotel, and we trekked it all across town to our little apartment. We started a load of laundry, because after traveling across the country for a week and then living in a hotel for a week, we were kind of running out of clothing, haha. Then we went and got our truck and headed off to our apartment complex’s overseer’s house (such a mouthful!) to pick up a mattress and boxspring. She was so nice! She had a spare bed and offered it right up to us. It was a $100+ we (meaning my boyfriend, hah) wouldn’t have to spend.
Then we headed off to this mega thrift store in town and got some furniture. Just the bare minimum… a couch, a coffee table, chest of drawers and two stools. There’s a bar separating the kitchen and living room area, so it saved us the trouble of getting a table and chairs. We thought it would be harder than this and we’d need more time, but we really didn’t. Boyfriend and I managed to get all the furniture up the steps into the apartment with the exception of the couch… it was so heavy. So he went and found a guy in the complex to help him. People here are so nice.
We went and returned the truck, then we headed off to Target in Portland, Oregon to pick up… everything else we’d need. Haha. Do you know how much it costs to stock a kitchen with all the necessary accouterments? No room in the house costs as much as the kitchen. But we were good and picked good stuff that was still inexpensive. It still was a lot of money, though.
We hauled it all back to the apartment in Washington and began taking everything out and apart and washing it all. I refuse to use things that I’ll be eating off of without washing them.. you don’t know what’s been handling them, where they’ve been stored, if anything’s been spilled on them. I just feel like it’s necessary. We didn’t really forget anything, either. I made an extensive list, haha. I think we forgot hand soap for the kitchen and something else that was stupid.
After that, I offered to buy the groceries. There’s a Safeway grocery right across the street. I thought, how bad could it be to stock a kitchen with all the necessary things, right? Hah. I didn’t realize how much more expensive everything on the west coast is. Because it really, really is. I’ve never paid seven bucks for a box of cereal in my life. I mean, really. We discovered the Super WalMart the next day. We do our shopping there, now. I blew all of the money I had, basically, on food. But eh. We have a stocked kitchen, and I don’t feel so guilty about him spending so much money on everything else.
Our biggest problem (now that we’ve got internet, haha) is our garbage disposal not working. There must be some old food down there, and god it smells something awful. And our garbage, because we have to scrape the plates. Ugh! We didn’t have any lysol or anything, but we were sure to rectify that yesterday. I spray the trash constantly and the sink. So nasty. We’re both pretty bored, though. We’ve been doing a lot of reading. We’re going to a Rent-a-Center today to get a TV so we can watch movies and stuff (the disk drive on my computer is not working… need to get to the Apple store in Portland :x ).
But really, other than that, it’s amazing. I never could keep my room at home clean. But now, it just comes so naturally. I guess it’s because I got to pick everything, I got to pick where it goes. It’s mine to do what I want with.. my boyfriend’s too, of course, but you know what I mean. No parents looming overhead and yelling at me for being ungrateful of the things they give me when I don’t put them away properly. Which I suppose is true, but it’s so much easier to appreciate things you have for yourself.
I love living here. It’s gonna suck to go back home at the end of the summer and have to go back to dorm living. Ughhh.
