It's high time for a post about our new apartment. On or around July 1, SM and I moved into a new apartment in Chicago's North Center neighborhood. It's pretty awesome. The surrounding area is quiet, but has a bunch of cool restaurants and bars and cultural activities. We're pretty much just as far west as we were before, but we are 12 big blocks north. Also, we're now a 5 minute walk from the Brown Line at Irving Park, which is a huge improvement from the 20 minute walk we had before. I don't mind walking of course--the nice walks around the neighborhood was one of the things that attracted us to this spot--but when it comes to getting to work in a timely fashion, a 5 minute walk can make all the difference.
I've explained it this way: at our old place, if I was ready to leave the house 8am, my choices were to wait for the bus and get to the train station (to wait however long for a train) in 5 minutes or walk to the train station in 20 minutes. If I use CTA Bus Tracker to discover that there's a bus in 10 minutes, it saves me 5 minutes, but I'm still starting my commute at 8:10 instead of 8am. These days, I can leave whenever I want, and 5 minutes later, I'm at the train station on my own two feet, and there's usually a train (and a seat!) about every 5 minutes during rush hour. I'm getting to work consistently in an hour or a little less, instead of an hour one day, an hour and 10, 20 minutes the next.
If I'm going some place other than work, the CTA options are still plentiful. There's the Brown Line to the loop (or the Brown Line to the Red Line to 95th), the Ashland bus south but staying west, the Lincoln bus to the west of us going southeast, the Clark bus to the east of us going southeast, the Damen bus to the west of us running north and south, and the Irving Park bus down the block going east and west. Each of these options is within a 10 minute walk from our door. It's transit heaven!
Inside the apartment, it's absolutely beautiful. The building was built in 1931, and it's all brick on the outside, old wood on the inside (dark wood door with glass panes in the dining room, old style windows). It's large, with a sizable living room and bedroom, 2 closets, a hall way, a bathroom, a linen closet, and a kitchen with a separate dining room area. There are lots of built in cabinets and, as I've implied, tons of storage place, which was something we were adamant about on our search. There is also a dishwasher and a microwave above the stove. There is free radiator heat, which is pretty cool, because that's how I grew up. It's very much a practical and awesome place.
Another thing I like about our apartment is just the new perks of living alone. Alright, so I'm living with S, but he's no roommate or anything. We even have similar cleanliness and organizational habits and design desires, so most roommate differences don't even count. Anyway, there's so much you can do when you live alone. All the space is yours. All the food is yours. You don't have to move anything you don't want to. The TV is always yours. The living room is always yours. You can go into another room whenever you want. If so inclined, you can do any business you want in the bathroom with the door open.
But my #1, most favorite perk of living alone is that you can wear as little as you want at all times. (Gross Out Alert) You can walk around completely naked. It is in my top 3 most liberated feelings. One of the first things I do when I get home from work is take off my pants. It's awesome. And some days, you just need to strip down. It's your right; it's your place. If you don't already, I highly suggest getting your own place for that reason alone.
As my good friend OBM once said, "nudity and happiness go hand in hand in living in one's own place." If you don't like where you live or you're feeling down in a rut, I recommend shedding some of that clothing and taking a tour in your birthday suit. Go ahead. DO it. Take a deep breath and feel renewed. There's really nothing like it.
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