Apartment Life
By CW Ross
All of my life I have lived in houses so when I moved in to my apartment last year it was my first taste of apartment living. I want to share with you what I've learned about apartment living in that year, both good and bad.
Let's start with the good.
You don't have to worry about any maintenance because it is all handled by the building owners. If something breaks just dial up the building maintenance guy and let him take care of it. Also you can sale that mower or snowblower if you live in an area like me that gets snow because all of that is taken care of too by the building's owners.
The apartment I live in has all the utilities, except for the electric, included in with the monthly rental charge so you don't have a lot of different bills to worry about paying each month.
Most apartment buildings also have built in amenities. For example mine has a game room with a pool table, a computer room with free internet access. Also a big community room complete with a 75” big screen TV. In the community room also is a kitchen area where several of the building's ladies make meals to sell as a way to raise money. Unfortunately all all of these perks have been shutdown for now until the Covid virus restrictions are over.
Nice neighbors. If you're lucky enough to have good neighbors they keep an eye on you. The other day there was a knock on my apartment door and it was my next door neighbor just checking to make sure everything was okay since he hadn't seen me in the building for awhile. Last year I done him a favor when he bought too much food and needed to borrow some space in my freezer for a few days.
I'm lucky enough to be on one of the upper floors of my apartment building which is located in the downtown area of my city so I have a good view. Out my windows I can see one of the main rivers that run through town and several of the main highways. I also have a view of the mountains and local sports' arena.
The last positive is the building has good security with needing to have an electronic key fob with a sensor on it to enter the building. If someone wants to visit you they need to use the building's intercom system to dial your apartment up and then you have the choice of whether or not to ring them inside of the building.
Now lets get to the not so good things about apartment living.
The biggest is the noise. My building has over 100, 1-bedroom apartments on its eleven floors. So there are well over 125 people living in the building. As you might imagine with all of those people in one place there is a lot of noise. It's bad in the Winter months but even crazier in the Summer months. Rarely a day goes by that I'm not woken up by yelling or screaming as early as 5 am in the morning. Usually it's a fight between a couple and at least one of them is drunk so instead of normal talking it's loud level screaming.
Another negative is forget your privacy. Everywhere you look in the building are surveillance cameras, several of which anyone in the building who has cable TV can watch. Plus the gossip is flying in the building so if you tell anyone something it will be known throughout the entire building by the end of the day.
The way my apartment is setup I have no control over my heat setting. So even when its only 20 degrees outside I'm still setting in shorts and a t-shirt with a window open trying to stay cool. The temperature in my apartment rarely drops below 75-80 degrees.
Then come Summer time since the building has no air conditioning and they charge a crazy fee to put a whole in the wall to have one, plus the cost of the AC unit itself. During what was a very hot Summer last year it often was 85-90 degrees inside of my apartment. Which was made worse by my living room windows having a Southern exposure, so lots of solar heat to deal with too.
I went as far as building myself a homemade cooler AC unit that I found plans for on YouTube that basically uses a fan to blow air over ice and freezer blocks to produce cold air. It worked with limited success.
Another problem is constant checking of my apartment. There are always inspections going on in the building and apartment checks to make sure smoke detectors are working or the condition of the apartment along with four times a year pest control spraying.
Summing my first year of apartment living up I would say it's okay but not my favorite thing. I like the no maintenance aspect of it with the older I get and the fact that all the bills are combined into the rent is nice. I also like the one floor aspect of things and not having to go up and down steps all day. In a perfect world though I still prefer living in a house (preferably a ranch style one) then an apartment because I really enjoy my privacy that you give up with apartment living.