How Pinteresting: White Picket Fences
Its not that I want a house with a white picket fence, but I want a home that gives me the same feeling. A home that feels like home. A place I can walk into at the end of the day, look around and know that it is my personal paradise.
This is one of the biggest problem of living in an apartment; while it's home, it's hard to make it feel that way when you have so many restrictions against what you would like to do to the place. Which is highly understandable. If it weren't set up like this, who knows what a place would look like when the tenant(s) have come and gone. Still, the lack of hardwood floors and pure white walls (and you know, kitchen space to actually cook) are starting to grow heavier on my heart.
Don't get me wrong. I love my little corner of the earth that provides a roof over my head when it rains and AC when the temperatures exceed 100. I love the little nook that has become a hybrid of an office space and storage unit. Actually, I think this is all I love about my apartment. I could have sworn I had more to add to that list. Oh well, some things are just short lived.
I know it's primarily because of the amount of crap I've accumulated over the years. As I've explained in earlier posts, moving out of my last apartment meant getting rid of 8 pieces of furniture, 4 garbage bags of clothes (that I now wish I had held on to for my store), enough plates to use at a wedding reception and junk that had been unnecessarily building up over the course of 6 months. When I was in the 2-bedroom apartment before that and my studio apartment before that, I had been still pretty fresh out of my parents' house and making enough money to stay out of it. I think the raise I got when I was in my cheaper 2-bedroom turned me into a tiny bit of a hoarder. A house cleaner and a full day of organizing later, it's still too much stuff. *Insert As Seen On TV commercial and puns here*
It's harder to find a house for cheap in a decent neighborhood here than it is to find a house. The whole reason for me coming back to my old complex was the proximity to the freeway for my work commute and the fact that it was a gated community. Because there are so many people working in the Bay Area (in and around San Francisco, for you non-locals) and living in Stockton due to cheaper living costs, houses even with just 2 bedrooms can set a person back $1k/month. For someone supporting themselves, its a pretty steep price to pay.
I suppose for now I shall just flood my Pinterest "Home Sweet Home board" with as many ideas as I can so I'm fully prepared for any future home I happen to find myself living in.
