Short and sweet version: LOVE IT! Love living with TS, love the pretty kitchen, love having laundry IN the apartment, love having a gym in the building, love the view of the monuments out my window, love love love.

Okay, it's not all rainbows and gumdrops. Our front lock sticks and requires a pull-handle, lean-into-door, turn-key combination that took us a week to figure out. (Not sure why it hasn't been fixed yet, since we put in a request 10 days ago.) But hey, it would surely dissuade any potential burglars.

The kitchen, while gorgeous, has some of the most annoying cabinet space ever. It looks so big, but they are set up in the most inconvenient way... drawers are too tall but not very deep, wasted space in the corners, strange shelf and drawer heights, no obvious place to fit a garbage can or recycling container. But, we've managed to sort of figure it out for now, although our aluminum foil and freezer bags currently live on the counter.

The living room light switch is hooked up to the most inconvenient outlet (the one that would logically be used for tv/cable/etc.), and the bedroom light switch is hooked up to... nothing.

Other than that, the place is amazing. And that's a pretty short list of complaints, so I'm not really complaining. :-)

Our building is a "green" building and in that spirit, we've switched to the fancy lightbulbs (can never remember the proper name) and cloth napkins and towels instead of paper towels (although, admittedly, we are not paper-towel free), and we're growing our own herb garden indoors (my mom gave me an AeroGarden for my birthday, with which the Fios installation guy was apparently fascinated). We already used predominately Method cleaning products, but the apartment gave us some Seventh Generation products in our welcome kit which are also quite nice. (I might try adding in some homemade cleaners as we run out of our current stock.) We also freecycled and donated most of the stuff we didn't want to take with us, rather than just trash it. (I've developed sort of a complex about throwing things out lately, which conflicts with the other complex I've recently developed where I want to stop owning so much unnecessary "crap.") And we even bought our new couch from craigslist for the insanely low price of $120 (seriously, it is a very nice couch).

TS and I knew we worked well together and spent enough time at each others' places before moving in that we didn't expect any problems with the transition, but it's almost scary how smoothly things are going. We already have a routine down already for getting ready in the morning. (I've been making it to work earlier this past week and a half than I had in months.) We prepare meals together and clean up together, or if one of us cooks the other does the dishes. We're even already splitting cleaning duties. Anywhere potential conflict with roommates could come up, we seem to have that covered... and without argument. I'm still a bit in shock, waiting for the "honeymoon" phase to end. My past roommate experiences have prepared me for the worst, but things are just going so swimmingly.

And now I must go... time to make my final trip to my old apartment to clean the fridge and oven and run a mop over the floors. I loved that place, but I can't say I am going to miss it now.

Posted by: Sarah | March 25, 2009 2:56 AM