We have been living in our apartment for 3 years and 3 months. That is 3 months longer than I’ve ever lived in the same house or apartment since I was in first grade.
This summer, we got the itch to move to a new place, but found nothing we liked as much as where we live now. We love the city, the neighborhood, the building, and our apartment with renovation required to the windows, garage and fences. Yes, I do agree that some do-it-yourself projects for home renovation can prevent some cash, but when it involves replacing home windows, you’re more happy leaving the work to the experts. Some mistakes and accidents may happen if you’ve got not done this before, or if you allow the work to an innocent .
What I love about our neighborhood:
Our neighborhood is hands-down the best neighborhood in our city (sorry, everyone else). It’s walkable, quirky, and full of community.
- Within a 4-block walk, I can get to the library, a movie theater (that’s still only $5!), several bars and local restaurants, a Chipotle, a coffee shop, a Walgreens, a vintage clothing store, a dance studio, and soon, a grocery store. (!) Plus, I can walk to Gabe’s preschool. Score. Sidewalks everywhere! We are able to have just one car because of all the walkability.
- During the summer months, there is a farmer’s market one block away.
- There are two playgrounds less than a 10 minute-walk away.
- Despite being so walkable and fairly densely populated, there are tons of big trees (great for running).
- There are arts and music events all summer long. (And this weekend, too!)
- Our neighbors are like-minded and are proud of the community. It feels like home.
What I love about our building –
- My sister lives here, too! She moved in this year and it’s awesome.
- We live in a high-rise, but still have outdoor space to garden:
and just hang out:
- Speaking of high-rise – it’s pretty awesome to be able to leave our doors and windows open all the time without worrying about someone breaking in. (And walk around in our underwear without worrying about someone seeing us…)
(this is the view from our apartment. See? No one can see us!)
- Our maintenance folks are amazing. They fix things the day we tell them and are so kind to Gabe. So: people fixing stuff for us quickly (for free!) and everyone in the building loving Gabe.
- Related, I never have to shovel snow or rake leaves or scrape off my car.
- The walls are THICK. This is key for apartment living. I don’t want to hear my neighbors and I don’t want them to hear me. (Our next door neighbor always tells us how Gabe never cries. See? Thick walls.)
What I love about our apartment:
- It’s airy and spacious. It’s not huge, but it suits our needs so perfectly with the large living/dining area we spend most of our time in.
- THE BUILT INS. We have a built-in desk in Gabe’s room and a built-in bookshelf along one wall of our living room, our furniture are unique, Check this antique store with a selection of antique beds, daybeds, and antique bedside tables. We have handmade luxury sofas I love it fulfill the bed function too. There’s so much history in our building and I love how each apartment has different built-ins!
- Outdoor space. Again, we live in a high-rise, but we get to spend time outside! We have a huge balcony that we spend time on – coloring with chalk, eating dinner, reading, or just watching the sun set.
- It feels like home. After 3 years, so many memories in this place! It’s cozy and perfect and I’m still not sick of it.
And that’s why I love where we live! In a year, we might be somewhere new, so I’m trying to really treasure all of this awesomeness.
I’d love to hear about where you live and what you love about it! (If only to come up with a list of acceptable places Mike can apply to for internship… ;))
We live in a neighborhood in the middle of a cornfield. Our neighborhood is surrounded by a bike path and backs up to a conservation area. The back of our house faces south, so we get a lot of light streaming in. I love this because when it is the dead of winter, ( I am not a winter person), I enjoy all the natural light and even the snowy views. Many mornings, and just this morning in fact, I look out my kitchen window and marvel at the clouds hanging low in the conservation area. So pretty! The natural beauty of the area can’t be beat. We are just 10 minutes from a mid sized city( a Rockford, IL), where we do shopping and send the kiddos to school. We are conveniently located 90 minutes from Chicago and 90 minutes from Milwaukee.
Well that is all very lovely! (I do love that Ohio has ALL the seasons. Especially fall.)
I live in Pittsburgh and I LOVE it here. We’re not too far from Akron and many of the things you mentioned are the reasons why I like Pittsburgh. I love that it’s affordable and we have seasons. I love living in the city — we have loads of access to good food, entertainment, and parks. Not sure what your husband studies and is looking for, but Pittsburgh has a ton of schools. ;)
He’s done with his schoolwork for his PhD (hallelujah!) – but had to do a 1-year internship at a university in counseling! :)
Renting, and thus not being on the hook for repairs, is so awesome. I also love living in a high rise and leaving the windows open for 5 months straight!
Yes!! I do love not spending my fun money on repairs. Definite perk.
I love all this- your view is absolutely gorgeous with that tree, beautiful! I love my house and my neighborhood, but I would definitely like for it to be more walkable. I can walk to a Starbucks and Trader Joe’s which is nice, but it’s definitely not 4 minutes haha and there is a BIG hill involved. However, in my area for the price, this is the best I’m going to do :) I do love my proximity to Boston, but then how I can get to beautiful country areas very quickly as well. I would like more outdoor space but I have a playground about 3 minutes away, which will be key!
Starbucks & Trader Joe’s are pretty essential in my life! :)
Where you live seems so homey and welcoming : ) I love where I live (Boston) because it’s near my friends and family. Fall is gorgeous. I’m close to a lot of fun, beach towns and vacation spots.
Sounds like you have an awesome apartment…it’s hard to find good ones with thick walls! We now live on a farm right outside a small town near Rochester, Minnesota. I love our farm’s locations because we’re only a half mile from town, which means we can ride our bikes to the park, to the store, library, etc. but still have all the perks of living in the country, too. Our town doesn’t have a ton of cultural stuff going on (it’s less than 3,000 people), but I love that we’re only an hour south of Minneapolis/St. Paul, which I’m pretty much in love with.
Oh! My friend Miriel just moved to Rochester!
That sounds like a seriously perfect setup, being in the country yet being able to easily bike to town! (and I’m from the suburbs of St. Paul and LOVE Minnesota, so that part sounds pretty perfect too :))
Sounds wonderful!
We live on a family farm in NE. I love it because my husband grew up in this house, and HIS dad grew up in this house too. It holds so many memories for the family. We have chickens, a dog, ducks, a small orchard, and a pond. Our twins have room to run and just be kids. I wouldn’t change it for anything!
I love where I live- Charlottesville, VA- but NOT because it is affordable. Because I don’t think it is. Housing prices are a sick, sick joke that this area plays on the average UVA employee, teacher, or police officer. (Or counselor! Like me!).
We worked the system and found a cheap rental, which we love. I do miss what you describe from your place, though- our last apartment was on the second floor and I loved the privacy of it, and feeling like I could look out over our street. We had hardwood floors, however, which meant our poor downstairs neighbors heard all of our two-children stomping and noises.
I’ve never lived in a place like I do now, with walkability. I grew up on a dirt road. So having access to a coffee shop, two local grocers, two libraries, a few playgrounds, and UVA- all within a 15 minute walk- is pretty great. I love it!
Your little city and apartment sound wonderful! I live in a suburb of Edmonton, Alberta and I love where I live because there are lots of trails and trees and green space, and my neighbourhood is very walkable – almost everything I need is within a few blocks except my workplace, which I use transit to get to. Also, I love that my little city is safe and friendly and a lot of my friends live nearby.
yep your apartment sounds quite lovely. and actually has a few similarities to mine. i love our neighborhood because we can walk to the library, the grocery store, the bank, dry cleaner, a gym (if we used it, ha), walgreens and a dive bar. i also love that i can work out by taking long walks into the neighborhood and it’s gorgeous. i also love having a big ole balcony now, it’s perfect for relaxing and hanging out. as much as i want a house someday i am quite content in an apartment for now.
Come to Columbus…..it’s so close.
I can see why you like Akron, we have many of the same qualities & it’s 2hrs away. Less snow too.
If you ever come for a visit, I’ll give ya several recommendations :)
Ps-I went to Grumpys last month-not impressed. Mostly too greasy for me. Have you tried Luckys yet?
I own a house in a suburb of Houston — and, although I was very hesitant about buying, having my own place has been uh-mazing. I can paint it whatever color I want, hang things on the wall, host large parties, and I have a big yard with a deck. Our yard backs up to greenbelt, so no one lives behind us, just trees. I DO wish my neighborhood was more walkable. I think the only thing I can walk to is a gas station, and it’s still pretty far. Having one vehicle is not an option for us, unfortunately. If I could walk to all the places you listed, I would never ever move!!
xx Abby a geek tragedy
We live an hour outside of New Orleans and it is not walkable at all. My neighborhood has 400+ homes and no sidewalks. We have no seasons here, other than hot and hotter than hell. But the crime is low, the community is friendly, and we both have great jobs here. If it were’t for our jobs we’d be out of here but it’s not easy to start over when you are 38 and 44! I love our actual house but I wish I could put it somewhere else! My brother lives in Monterey, CA and I get a major case of envy when we visit him there.
This post is so awesome. I like how you broke it down. Also, some of your points about your apartment are things I’ve never considered- like the benefits of being high up :)
I also live in Edmonton, AB. I live downtown in a very walkable neighbourhood where I can walk or bike to many restaurants, a farmer’s market, public library, coffee shops, a bakery etc. I love that I also live near the river valley where we have the longest network of trails in North America. In training for half marathons, I can go 25 km without getting sick of the scenery.
Well, congratulations for that beautiful place. It’s really seldom to find a place where you can be comfortable and happy as well. I actually love that kind of neighborhood wherein you can go outdoor and take a walk without any fuzz. You’re family is so lucky to be living their.
I love this! I really, really love my town. (St. Petersburg, a suburb of Tampa.) It’s not super walkable but everything is still so convenient to get to and there’s always something fun going on. I mean, sure, we don’t get seasons here. (Miserably hot, really hot, hot, cool, FREAKING COLD) But I love living in Florida. It’s so easy to take cheap vacations here (I’m a short drive from Orlando, 5 cruise ports, Miami, Key West,… I can go on. HA.) I don’t really want to ever leave! :)
You make me want to move there! :)
I love being close enough to D.C. where it’s accessible, but no so close we have to deal with the more congest areas. Maybe I’ll do a post like this soon! Happy Friday!
Love Highland Square! I live in Akron & work in Cleveland. If I ever make the move to Akron, that’s where I’d choose to live.
Well I live in South Nashville, where it’s not really walkable… just cheaper rent! We *can* easily walk to a few places.. Wal-greens, Sonic, the liquor store (hah), a cupcake place (Which is now gone?), putt-Putt, and a Dollar store… so it’s not so bad, but we don’t walk to any of those places often. Mostly because the heat of summer is killer and our neighborhood is not necessarily the best.
I do long to move to a place that’s more walkable, but for now we we will stay here.
Amazing pictures! Trust me on this one, being near friends and family is such a huge huge perk! We have been away from home for as long as you have been in your apartment, and we get homesick like crazy! I love our condo in Belpre, Ohio. BUT we hate being over 2 hrs away from friends and family. It just far enough away that no one has come to visit us but our parents. When we go home, it’s a tug of war between who we spend time with and I never get to see as many friends and family as we would like. Ross’s job is amazing, but we miss our loved ones. P.S. Akron’s leaves are changing so much faster than our’s here!
I was just thinking that you have an adorable apartment, have an adorable family, and just live an adorable life overall! I love reading your blogs and seeing glimpses of your life through pictures :).
It does sound pretty much amazing! Our last apartment was a sky rise as well and I also enjoyed the windows open – no breaking in aspect! However, they charged for the parking garage so we parked outside and I absolutely loathed scraping my car.
I live in Tulsa, OK and I like the idea of doing an exercise to focus on the things I love about it, because my boyfriend and I moved here a year and a half ago from Pennsylvania and usually we just like to complain about it a lot :) (the heat! the Oklahoma-ness of it all! ahhhhh!)
As far as Tulsa in general, I love that we are in a part of the country neither of us has lived in before so there’s a whole new world of weekend road trips available to us (though everything is definitely farther apart than in the northeast!) So far we’ve only done Dallas/Fort Worth and Eureka Springs (a really sweet town in Arkansas), but hopefully Kansas City is next! Also, despite not being a large city there are always tons of events going on… we never get bored. (not that we’re the kind of people who “get bored” anyway I guess, haha)
We definitely live in the best possible location in Tulsa for us, on the edge of downtown. We live a mile from where I work, plus within a ~1 mile radius or a little more there’s the YMCA, library, TONS of bars and restaurants (including a restaurant and liquor store where our friends are the managers, and a bar/art gallery owned by another friend), THREE farmer’s markets, parks where we love to walk our dog, and we’re a block away from a bike path that goes all the way down to the river and connects up to Tulsa’s surprisingly impressive path system.
I love our house because it’s a rental (we are nowhere near having any kind of down payment!), and it’s downtown, yet it’s a house! with a privacy-fenced backyard! (Seriously, there are maybe 5 inhabited single-family homes within the limits of actual downtown and we live in one of them.) So amazing for entertaining and for our dog. Plus we have front AND back porches, where we spend a ton of time, and a basement, which is super rare for this part of the country (and gave my mom a lot of peace of mind). Plus washer and dryer hookups, which for me are a must :) It’s the perfect size for us (~1100 square feet, 2 bd/1 ba) and affordable. Plus we have good friends that live just down the street.
Whew, that was long and I don’t expect anyone else to read it, but thanks for the exercise! I loved reading your post and it sounds like there are some similarities between the things we love about our homes :)
Just drove through Akron a couple of weeks ago. My husband’s grandmother lives in VERY small town Ohio. :)
I love where I live! Ten minutes to DC, we live in a charming old neighborhood full of brick buildings and huge trees. Restaurants and shops and the grocery store are a ten minute walk away. We live right by a nature trail, which is a lovely place to run. Our apartment is small and bright and I love it because it’s so easy to clean!
Love your blog and this post. It made me happy!
Ummm why would you move? haha, where you live sounds pretty darn perfect. I love the gorgeous fall colours in these photos too!
You are so lucky! living in such a beautiful place with beautiful outdoors, streets and so many amenities near by and the place looks open and not congested at all.