Basements.

I never really gave much thought to basement apartments until we moved into one. I was offered a job in Mississauga and had a week to find a new apartment and move.

First, the cost to live in Mississauga is unbelievable if you ask me. We are currently paying almost double for half the space of our previous apartment.

We were very blessed when we started our marriage to be able to live in an ideal location. We were down town Chatham, on the top floor of a building. With two bedrooms, high ceilings, exposed brick wall and recently remodeled it was wonderful.

Now we are in a basement apartment that we had to spend a lot of money on to make not smell like curry, and then even more money (on a dehumidifier) so that our stuff would not mold and our towels would dry. The ceilings are low, the storage is practically non-existent and you can hear everything happening. We can hear word for word conversations happening above us, we now know the difference between slippers, shoes and high heals as they walk (heavily) above us. Also, how many times can people move a chair? Here it happens about every ten minutes and is loud enough to wake me up. So with paper thin walls, weird smells, and lack of space we are learning to live in different conditions.

Then, to add to the current situation we JUST (yes 2 months after moving in) got a working oven. I was so excited, I love to make homemade pizza, cookies and muffins and I was finally able to use it. So yesterday I was working hard making some cookies when I discovered that the tray does not fit in the oven. Actually, none of my cookie sheets fit in the oven, not my pizza stones, nothing except a metal pizza pan that we thankfully own. So everything now has to be cooked on the pizza sheet.

Living in these conditions has made me very thankful for the first year of marriage and where we were blessed to live. It has also made me realize I have a very long list of 'must haves' in a dream location. Starting with either sound proof walls or the top floor, and ending with my own laundry room.

However to add to the list of complains I now feel obligated to share what I am thankful for here. I love that I am 15 minutes from work. I love that everything we need is close by, that I pass our ideal grocery store on my trip from work. I love that we are close to various attractions even though being away from family and friends is killing me. We are adjusting, slowly, but we know we need to make sacrifices to advance our careers.

I would love to hear your horrible living experiences in order to make myself feel a bit better about ours. So please leave a comment I would love to hear from you.

PS. I wish I had a photo of the before and after of the grossness of the bathroom that we spent 6 hours cleaning to share with you. It would give a wonderful understand of the conditions of this apartment.