How Apartment Living Has Changed My Life

Any change in your living arrangement is apt to set off major changes in your life style. Moving from a suburban area into the city or making the change from the relaxed south to bustling New England certainly would make some alterations likely. But simply moving from a house to an apartment? How difficult could that possibly be? What minor changes in lifestyle would that necessarily provoke? I had no idea, nor would I have ever predicted how apartment living changed my life.

1. Deciding What "Stuff" I Really Needed One of the most obvious drawbacks I encountered when I determined to move from a house to an apartment was that I vaguely knew that I would have less space. For some reason that understanding didn't immediately take me to the bottom line which was there would just plane be less places to put all the things I had gathered over a lifetime. I was faced with the immediate and continuing crisis of where to put all my "stuff".

Certainly as I boxed things up for the move, I threw some things out, but not nearly enough as it turned out. In the apartment itself I discovered there were far less places to put all the little things that move with you from day to day. Everyone, even neatniks, needs a place to put keys, newspapers, the mail, your hat and coat, a wallet, loose change, and of course candy. The apartment just didn't seem to have all those little places to deposit things that I seemed to require.

When you reduce your living space by one half or more you find that you are overwhelmed by the house trimmings you were so used to in your old home. Where do you put the clocks ( three of them), paintings, mirrors, lamps, books, calendars, end tables, telephones and all the other corner fillers you have lugged with you? You learn quickly that no matter how you try to cram things in, you can't put everything that was in eight rooms into three. When I also discovered that my cellar storage space was much smaller than I thought it was, I I began to see how apartment living had already changed my life.