A typical dorm room picture that I pulled off of the interwebs

I bring up this discrepancy in age versus real-life experiences because of my recent purchase of a new home. I have yet to write about the purchase, though I’m working on a blog entry that describes much of my reasoning for buying a home. More on that to come. In the meantime, though, I didn’t want to miss out on sharing some of the great experiences that I’ve had getting used to my new place. Take this post, for example. I’ve noticed that since I now own and live in a three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath townhouse (complete with a living room, dining area, kitchen, another eat-in dining area, and garage), that I’ve been living a very dormitory lifestyle up until this move. In other words, my prior apartments – and pretty much my living arrangements since I moved from home to go to college back in Fall 1999 – have been either directly in dormitories or closely resembling dormitories.

And that got me to thinking whether or not that was actually a true statement/thought and – for better or worse – it really is true. Just thinking about the last place I lived before I bought this place, I lived much of my life in my bedroom. This was easy to accomplish because my bedroom had a large walk-in closet where I could put all of my stuff and a master bathroom where I could use the facilities if necessary. I never spent any time in the living room because it was filthy (the rug was a disaster and the landlord refused to change it, plus the furniture wasn’t mine or my roommates’ so we didn’t have any connection to anything in there) and I never spent any time in the kitchen because it was an extremely dated room with a dated feel to it. The interior of the place I just moved out of was pale and drab – my roommates and I didn’t really paint the place because we didn’t own the house. The carpets were old and cruddy throughout the house, but I was able to salvage some semblance of normalcy by restricting my “living space” to my bedroom alone. I had a small office area set up in one part of the room, all of my clothes crammed into the closet, and a small entertainment center area next to the office area.

It worked.

I didn’t realize until I moved into my new home and started to make the new place my own that I had been restricting myself to living in a dorm-like lifestyle by staying in the old townhouse as long as I stayed there. Just to help provide some substance to the time I spent as a renter in the old townhouse – I moved in there in July 2008 and I moved out in May 2014. That’s nearly 6 years living as a de facto prisoner in my own bedroom!

Now that I’m in my new place, I’ve painted every room in the house except a half-bathroom on the first floor. I’ve started to fill my garage with my belongings with plans to retrieve more of my belongings from my Mother’s house and bring them down here so I have them in my possession. I’ve started growing vegetables and herbs in the area outside of the sliding glass doors in my eat-in kitchen. I’ve purchased brand new furniture and furnished my living room with a brand new coffee table, two new matching end tables, two new lamps, a brand new sofa, and a brand new loveseat. I’ve outfitted my dining room with a brand new dining room table with six chairs (and plans to buy two more dining room chairs). I purchased a brand new bedroom set complete with two end tables and a dresser for my bedroom. In my master bathroom, I’ve laid down new carpet runners along the jacuzzi and outside of the double sink and I also installed a brand new shaving station mirror as well as a deep medicine cabinet. I also installed my television above the gas fireplace in my living room, which sits in front of the new area rug that I bought from IKEA along with a very large piece of art for the wall from the same store.

The point here is that I’m living in the entire house versus living in one room of a house. At the end of the accounting, it is more expensive to buy and live in a house by yourself versus living with roommates in a shared house or townhouse. However, the ability to customize the space you live in to turn a house into a home is priceless.

When I write “lack of ownership” what I mean is that owners have a different approach to their living space than renters. Owners want to improve or stabilize their living space in an effort to increase the value of their homes. Renters, on the other hand, by and large don’t care about increasing the value of the property (in some respects, they are against the value of the property increasing because it forces a higher rent on them). What I’ve noticed, though, is that people living in rental situations actually accept a lower standard of living. Let me explain with a visual example.

The picture below is what my rug looks like in the living room of my apartment:

Some spots on the rug before OxiClean

No, that’s not some weird modern art pattern on the rug – that’s filthy dirt and stains. It’s disgusting. It looks like they purchased this rug from a battlefield hospital during the Civil War. It’s gross. Now most folks would look at this and think, “Just clean your rug, Joe. Stop being a pig.” And those people would be morons.

The rugs were like this when my roommates and I moved into this place a few years ago. After a few years of complaining, our landlord paid for the rugs to be professionally cleaned. Like most professional cleanings, the rugs looked amazing when the job was done… and then a few weeks later they attracted an incredible amount of dirt and filth like magnets.

But my roommates and I are trying to take the typical property owner mindset and fight back a little bit. Below is a picture of what the same spot on the rug looks like after we hit it with some OxiClean.

Rug after OxiClean

Not too bad, right? Sure, there are dozens of disgusting stains all over the rug, but hitting them with OxiClean and getting this result is a good use of our time because it improves the feel of the living room. Who knows? Maybe after two or three applications of this stuff the stains will actually be gone.

Note: The pictures above were taken over a month and a half ago and the stain is still gone. I’m beginning to think that OxiClean can actually clean the rug and keep it clean for good. That would be a nice change from the “professional cleaner” that the landlord spent several hundred bucks on last summer.

Which brings me to a website that I came across the other day called MoveMe.com. MoveMe.com helps people who are looking to rent or buy homes, move to a new home, or look for finance to take care of their homes. It is what you’d call a removal company – in other words, this is a company that will come to your place, prepare removal quotes to move you from one location to another, and then do the actual move for you. Talk about a service that I could have used over the summer! MoveMe.com provides a man and van power for your move – in other words, they’ll get you the manpower and the right vehicle to make your move a success!

Now, I should note that this service is for my readers based out of the United Kingdom so be aware of that as you consider whether or not you want to use this service. If you head over to the MoveMe.com site you’ll notice that there is a very intuitive interface. You enter your current postal code and which postal code that you’ll be moving to and then their internal engine does the rest for you. And bear in mind – this is a free removal quote for your consideration. I strongly suggest that, when you plan your move, if you’re over in the United Kingdom you consider using a service like MoveMe.com…and I say this as the voice of experience!

Now that I’ve found this site, I hope to find similar services in the United States. Lord knows that the next time I move, I’ll need a service like MoveMe.com to help me get the job done quickly, efficiently, and professionally!

Landlords in Monmouth County are weird.

And now we have an absentee landlord who lives in Kentucky. Fine, whatever. Like any other American, he has the right to live where he wants and own what he can afford – even if that means he owns a property thousands of miles from where he lives. Whatever – good for him. He’s not a good “people person” as he is one of those rich guys who never really listens to what you say, but rather just talks over you. Also, he is quite condescending and thinks that my roommates and I are just a bunch of “kids.” Bear in mind, I’ll be 28 years old in a few months and both of my roommates and I have Masters Degrees and we’ve been working professionals for the last 2+ years (we’ve all actually held jobs for much longer). But, like all Monmouth County landlords, this guy is just weird.

My roommates and I sent him August’s rent on July 21st. Talk about sending the rent early, huh? We try to be good tenants and we wanted to start the relationship with the new landlord on the right foot. Get this – the landlord doesn’t cash any of our checks until August 22nd. That’s 32 days later! In the interim, he complains that we sent three checks (one from each of us) and he demands that he gets one check from me from now on. I told him that he wouldn’t have to worry about this in the future as we’ll be sending a money order or cashier’s check.

Why a money order or cashier’s check? Well, my roommates and I have any number of monthly expenses that we each pay – cell phone, car insurance, utilities, rent, car loans, student loans, etc, etc. Every single one of our bills can either be paid instantly online or we can send a check that is cashed within a week. None of us (and I would assume none of you) EVER pay one of your monthly bills and have to wait 32 days for your checks to be cashed! Why a money order? Because I live my life within a tight budget and in the real world! With all of the bullshit that I have to deal with in my financial life, I don’t have the time or effort to let a check sit out there for over a month.

I write this because the landlord has now recommended that we do NOT send money orders to pay the rent. I don’t know what his angle is, but it’s not going to work. I’m sending these money orders as certified mail with return receipts. He mentioned something in an e-mail about “what if they get lost in the mail?” Ugh…

There are enough fail-safes in the money order system in the year 2008 to track where these money orders are and who is cashing them. Plus, they are sent as certified mail to HIS OWN ADDRESS!

Folks, this is an unnecessary complication in my life. I do not want to talk with my landlord or have an adversarial relationship with the guy. I want to pay my rent on time, take care of my apartment, and I want him to cash my checks in a reasonable time frame. Why must this process be any more complicated, damn it?

One of my roommates and I went to get the box truck on move-in day at about 8:00am. We were back at the old apartment by 9:00am and the moving began. First we moved the heavy and awkward stuff like the living room couches (by the way, “moving” items meant taking them from the apartment, down the hallway, across the roof, down two flights of stairs, and then into the truck). Then we moved out our beds (more on this in a minute). And then it was time for the televisions.

I have a 27″ cathode ray tube (not flat screen – think old school) TV that we use in our living room. I’ve always been able to move this television on my own. Well, I went to move it and it seems that either I remember it being lighter or I’m not as strong as I once was…most likely the latter. At that point I got a little annoyed at myself because not only was I winded from moving a few of the heavy items down the steps, but I couldn’t carry my old television. I took the next half an hour or so to get myself mentally ready and I told myself that if I couldn’t move that television by myself then I ought to be really ashamed. After the mental preparation, I picked up the television on my shoulder and brought it down to the truck.

And that’s all she wrote.

I was spent. I told myself that even though I may like to go around thinking that I’m still a college-aged kind of guy – I’m really not. It was at one time both depressing and exciting. Depressing for obvious reasons (who wants to realize that they’re old?). Exciting because I told myself that while I may not have the strength of a college kid any more, I advise a bunch of college kids and I have some money that college kids don’t have. This is obviously a perfect combination when you need some muscle to make a move go easier.

To make a long story short, three of my undergraduates came over and the entire apartment was moved out of the old place and unloaded into the new townhouse in three hours. Incredible. The strength that those kids have is unreal. Very impressive.

Getting back to my bed – we moved my old full-size bed into the new place and after sleeping on it for a few nights, it just didn’t feel right. There were some lumps, some bumps, and some indentations. Here I am in this new townhouse which is only about 20 years old itself and I’m sleeping on a mattress that is about the same age as the building! Plus, it was a used mattress that I took from a friend. Anyway, I went out and bought a brand new mattress, box spring, and bed rack on Friday afternoon and it was delivered yesterday. The bed is a queen size and it is completely awesome!

All in all, a good move and a nice new place to start some new adventures and make some positive lifestyle (*cough* go to the gym *cough*) changes! I’m very pleased!