Follow up regarding my move to a new apartment.

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Well, the move started on New Year's Day (Tuesday), but I had relatives moving me, so it took a couple of days, and I wasn't able to move myself there till Wednesday. Although the new place is smaller than the old place, the rooms are big, as it's handicapped accessible, so it needs to have room for a wheelchair to maneuver around. I don't use a wheelchair, but was able to qualify for this place because of all of my health issues, including 2 very bad knees--I use 2 canes to get around. Before moving day I figured out what furniture I wanted to leave behind, and then made a floor plan to figure out how to fit in all the stuff I was bringing with me to the new place, and the floor plan was a big help. Thanks to the large rooms, all I brought with me fits in without making the place cramped. There is a good "traffic flow" throughout the apartment.

I feel lost in the huge bathroom, which has a step-in shower the size of a bathtub. There are grab bars in the shower and by the toilet, and a large linen closet with shelves in there, too. I wasn't able to put my two hampers under the lowest shelf in there, but there is a big gap between the sink and toilet, which has enough room for them. There is room next to the shower for me to store my laundry cart, which I will use to go 2 doors down to the laundry room here in my building. Because the step-in shower has a fold-down bench seat, I'll be able to use my old tub chair to sit on at the laundry room. The room is very small, and has no chairs or tables. My tub chair is light enough to turn upside down on top of my laundry cart, so I can easily bring it along on top of the laundry cart.

The bedroom extends across the whole width of the apartment, with 2 closets going across the whole side wall on one side. The bedroom is also wide front to back, and is roomy enough for me to put a giant hang dry rack in it when I buy one I've picked out online. I had to throw out one of my old racks, as it was shot. The other one is barely big enough to hold half a load of hang dry clothes. The giant rack is more than twice the size of the one I still have, so I will even be able to dry some of my dryer loads on it, which will save me the cost of drying it in the dryer in my building's laundry room. I will also save washer money by washing very small loads in the sink here at home, and then hang drying them.

Most apartments here have a galley kitchen, but the handicapped apartments have a full-sized kitchen, open to the living room, and both rooms are a good size. My new kitchen has lots of cupboards, and lots of counter space. My old place had very little of both. I was able to put my normal sized kitchen table in the kitchen, and still have plenty of room to get around it. I did put the kitchen chairs elsewhere, tho. I use a cushioned folding chair that's a little lower at the table, as the ones that go to the table are a little too high and uncomfortable for me--no cushions. I wasn't able to put my bench chest in the new bedroom, but decided to put it on the living room side of the kitchen table as bench seating for 2 people. The top has an upholstered cushion attached, so it works good there. The 4 wood kitchen chairs have found homes elsewhere around the place. One broke years ago, and I did a partial repair, but it's not safe to sit on, so I use it in my bedroom as a clothes horse, which I did need. Another kitchen chair now serves a small desk in the living room. The other two are serving as a double chair bench at one end of my bed in the living room. I had left behind a giant, too long sofa, and am using my bed as my sofa here in the new place. I've seen pictures of beds with one or two chairs at the foot end being used as a kind of bench, and figured that it would be a good place for my kitchen chairs, since I won't be using them in the kitchen. They are still available for guest seating, if necessary. I have some old blankets that I will roll into bolsters to put around the back and one end of the bed/sofa. I also have a giant backrest to put at the other end of the bed/sofa, and while packing I found a lot of spare pillows, which I will add to the bed/sofa, to provide some back support to anyone wanting to sit on the bed/sofa, otherwise it would be too deep for seating comfort.

The hall in the middle of the apartment is huge, and I was told by the manager that people often use it as another room. They even included a cable port, phone jack, and outlets in the hall, in addition to the cable ports in the living room and bedroom, and the phone jacks, in the living room, bedroom, and kitchen. I have designated the hall as my home office, and it's working out fine. There is a large hall closet for the usual hall storage, and there was room for my shortest (side to side) bookcase in the hall. There is also a spot for one of my tall wheeled chrome shelf units, once the crates and boxes that are parked in that spot are unpacked.

I still have a lot of stuff to unpack, and a lot of shifting around and organizing to do. During packing a lot of stuff went in drawers and boxes mixed with stuff it didn't belong with, so I am going to be spending a long time playing a cross between an Easter egg hunt, and one of the computer games where there is a picture of a room loaded with all sorts of stuff, and you are given a list of stuff to find in a limited amount of time. I have all the time I want, and I can use tables and carts to spread out the contents of drawers and boxes, so I can sort things out better, but that game feel is still there. It feels great when I find something I really want. I took Sunday off from unpacking, but will be back at it today.

After several days without internet service I finally got my cable internet hooked up and working Saturday evening. After that I spent the night and part of Sunday catching up on my usual web sites, then watched several movies. At one point I fell asleep at the computer for a while. I do that a lot. I also listened to several podcasts of my favorite radio talk show, to get caught up on that, too. The hall/office is right next to the bathroom, so I was able to listen to podcasts or music each time I was stuck in the bathroom (IBS), without having to have the sound up loud enough to bother the neighbors. I really like my new home office in the hall.

The windows in the living room and kitchen let in plenty of north light, and the ones in the back door, and a matching fake side door let in tons of south light. The fake side door next to the back door makes them look like a pair of French doors, so they look really nice. All of the windows already had blinds on them. Saturday I had trouble lowering the blinds. They raise easily, but all of them are almost impossible to lower all the way, so I made a rule. From now on I will leave the blinds down, and only open the slats. That still lets in lots of light, but without the stress of fighting to lower the blinds. There is also a danger of damaging the blinds if you have to fight to get them up or down. It's not worth it, since the slat controls all work fine.

The apartment seems to have very good soundproofing, as I haven't heard any sounds from any of the neighbors, except when they open or close the outer doors. Nobody has been hanging out outside, so it's very quiet outside, too, but it's cold here now. I expect that at least some of my neighbors will spend some time outside once the weather warms up.

There is a back walkway outside the back door, and I will be able to use part of it as a patio, as I have the first side facing apartment in my building, so no one needs to pass by beyond my back door, so I just need to keep the area around the door clear. I won't be buying any patio furniture till the warm weather moves in, and I will keep it simple when the time comes. I'm not fond of sitting outside to feed the bugs, and I am a hermit type of person, so my only visitors are relatives, and an occasional service person, which means I don't need a big seating area for guests. Both the front and back doors are level entry, which is a big help for someone with 2 bad knees. My old place had half a flight of steps to get up on the porch, and it was very hard and very painful for me to use them.

Overall, I am very pleased with the new place. So far the only flies in the ointment are the Honeywell programmable thermostats in most of the rooms. For some reason there isn't one in the bathroom, even tho there is a baseboard heater in there. That has me puzzled. I am also clueless about how to adjust the temps. I followed the instructions for changing the temps, but it didn't work, so I have been freezing ever since I moved in, except when doing anything strenuous. Every time I raised the temps, after a couple of seconds the temp setting dropped back down to a lower temp. I did change them all to manual mode, but they are still acting like they are in either auto or econo mode. I went online to find out if I've been doing it wrong, and what the right way is, but the info I got just said to do what I already tried. Gonna hafta contact the maintenance man here to find out what to do.

I left my dark, ugly shower curtain behind at the old place, as I was tired of showering in a cave, but I don't have a new shower curtain. I will have to use some bed sheets until I can buy a new shower curtain, liner, and rings, but I am not looking forward to showering in the cold bathroom. I left all of my portable electric heaters behind when I moved, as my new place has electric baseboard heaters in every room. Unfortunately, they aren't much use if I can't adjust the temp on them. I'm thinking of using my hair blower in the bathroom to warm the room up when I take a shower, and then, once I'm cleaned up, I can have the maintenance man over to show me the right way to adjust the thermostats. I'll be sure to keep the hair blower away from anything wet or flammable, so it will be okay till I can find out the proper way to adjust the thermostats. I still don't know where the heat control is for the bathroom baseboard heater tho.

Anyway, except for the thermostat issue, the place is great, and due to my being on SSI, I am getting it for a very low rate, as this is a govt subsidized place. The way the rooms are laid out here is very good, too--giant bedroom in back, split living room and kitchen out front, and large bathroom and large hall in the middle. I think I am really going to like living here.