Eternally Apart from Apartments

My friend Jen--a homeowner like myself-- just wrote a miniature paean to apartment living. I love Jen dearly, but holy God is she out to lunch on this one.

Here she is, with three reasons she misses living in an apartment. My comments to follow:

1) Security. It's rare for uninvited people to just show up at your door when you live in an apartment building. Once a week or so, I get door-to-door salesmen, or Jehovah's Witnesses ringing the doorbell trying to sell me energy providers or a new faith. I miss not having to deal with those people in as polite a way as possible.

Jen, I too have lived in apartments...several different ones. I was never rich enough to live in an apartment building with any real security. Unless your complex has a doorman on duty 24/7, the security in any apartment building is pathetically easy to outwit. I've done it myself, on the numerous occasions when I forgot my front door key. The trick is to wait until somebody legitimate approaches an entry and either unlocks the door or is buzzed in. Then you just sort of unobtrusively and nonchalantly stroll in behind him or her. If a resident can do it, so can some ne'er-do-well with nefarious purposes. You call that security? (And if somebody comes to my door here in this house I own, I can look out the window and see who it is...and then answer or not, as I choose. Try that in an apartment building--one of the older ones, without closed-circuit television connecting you to the lobby.)

2) Neighbours. While I currently enjoy being able to play my music at any volume I choose, and not have a guy named "Ian" be worshiped sexually on the other side of the wall while I am trying to sleep, I do miss the nods in the hallway, and the pleasant half-conversations in the elevator. Right now, I barely know the neighbours on our right, and I don't know our neighbours on our left at all. At least, I knew Ian's name, and that he was good in bed (though obviously, not from personal experience).

Ack, the thing I hated second most about living in an apartment. You just can't get away from it. The weird smells that permeate the entire floor. Are those guys in 1A having garbage-truck potluck for supper? The noises at all hours, with no recourse but to call (and wake up) the super--usually an old guy whose hip would break just looking at that monster in 404.

Okay, I admit it...I'm definitely a "man's home is his castle" kind of guy, and said castle should always come equipped with some sort of symbolic moat. My friend Jen is a people person. With certain exceptions (my friend Jen being one, the other readers of this blog being two through four) I'm really not.

But here's where Jen jumps right off thediving board of sanity and into the Whirlpool(tm) of Madness. Read on:

3) Laundry. Weird as it may seem, what I miss most about apartment living is the laundry room. Where else (besides a laundromat) can you get six loads of laundry done in less than four hours? Currently, it takes me 8 hours (or longer if I don't time it correctly) to do the same six loads of laundry. This is frustrating, because it's a whole day dedicated to one thing. On the other hand, it does allow me to play The Sims 2 with impunity.

I think my first piece of advice is, Jen, get a bigger washer. If you have to do six loads a week in your household, you must have the Liliputian Mini Teeny-Weeny Extra-Small size. That aside...

Having my own washer and dryer was one of the best enticements to owning a house. When we lived in an apartment, laundry day was a hellish chore. I'd gather up the laundry, leave the apartment (the door locked automatically behind me...one piece of "security" I'd as soon have done without, for reasons which will become obvious in just a second), go downstairs, unlock the laundry room door (there was a sign on the door saying it was to remain locked at all times, but I figured, hell, how else was I supposed to get in there?) cart the laundry in..oops, forgot the $1.75. Back upstairs, unlock the freakin' door, get the money, go back downstairs, unlock the laundry room door, enter, go to my storage locker, unlock THAT, get the Tide and Bounce out, and start a load up...oops, wait a second, somebody's using the washer. Or at least they were. Their load's still in here, at any rate, getting mildewy. So: wait. Or go to another building, where their washer might be in use too.

So I'm paying $3.75 per load to wait around for somebody else to finish their laundry. And I've got to remember to lock my storage locker up again afterwards. If I don't (and once, I didn't), somebody will steal my laundry soap. Or something else.

(Ken, why not carry your laundry soap downstairs with you? Because I only have six arms, that's why not. And those huge Tide boxes from Costco--bought because I had to feel like I was saving some money at $3.75 a load--don't carry well even when you're not trying to haul a laundry basket in your other hand.)

Yes, I have lived in buildings with more than one washer--still no guarantee than even one of them will be available when you want it. And an awful lot of people just forget about their laundry and go off to Zanzibar or somewhere, and there you are, wondering whether you should leave their unmentionables in a heap on the dryer or just throw them across the room.

Now, I do laundry when I want to. I don't need coins. I don't need keys. And our three loads a week take no more than an hour of actual work, tops...most of that's folding it and putting it away. I'll bet, too, it costs me a damn sight less than $3.75 a load.

Sorry, friend Jen. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You couldn't pay me to go back to an apartment. I'd rent a house first. With its own washer/dryer.

But I love you anyway. Peace?