Moving

Greetings all,

I was apartment hunting and found a place. It's pretty hard to find something decent in Toronto. The vacancy rate is about 2%. I will be within walking distance to my school and I will be living in the trendy neighborhood known as The Annex and not the up-and-coming-ghetto known as Parkdale.

I was looking for shared accommodation since it's a bit cheaper then getting a 1 bedroom. I will be moving into a house. I was looking at a few places last year and in the beginning of this year but didn't really find anything that I liked. I looked at one earlier this year before my semester started that was by the school but the room was super tiny and would not work for me.

I looked at a few places last year but they mostly were slightly too far. Still within walking distance but more like the walking would be 40 minutes. Not bad and something I could manage but since it was still early, I decided to keep on looking.

Last week I looked at a place and the woman was a therapist. She talked like one and I think for me, it would drive me batty to be living somewhere where I always have to talk about my feelings and dialogue. I'm a doer damn it, sometimes I just don't want to talk and want to get things done! I already had my reservations about the place going in because she had a few other tenants and they all participated in this shared cooking arrangement where you cook one meal a week for everyone and so does everyone else. I think 4 people would be in the house so you would have to cook for yourself 3 nights of the week. It's not too bad sounding and she seemed flexible about the arrangement but I think for me, it may not work and may feel too stifling. I am a very fussy eater and I wouldn't want to burden someone else with my weird food quirks and basically limit what they prepare for me since there are so many foods I don't like to eat. They did have someone in the house who had to eat gluten free but I think my level of fussiness surpasses that.

The room ended up being too small for my liking and was basically smaller then my old room. And that room was pretty small to begin with!

I am glad that I don't live in my old apartment as I was having issues with roaches and that's always a drag to have to live in. I guess I could have moved and put effort into finding a new place as I was there for 3 years but I hate moving and I at least knew my place was in my budget. I really think if I had a better job, I'd be able to have a better life and be willing to spend more but I remember reading that your housing costs should be 1/3 of your income but it never has been in my case. It usually ends up being 50% of my living costs.

The thing with living with the roaches was that it wasn't horribly bad. It seemed worse in the summer because they would probably hide in the winter in the walls. I would use my own baits. I would use orange juice with a bit of dish washer fluid. I also used boric acid with peanut butter.

The super would get someone to come in to use some special dusting to get rid of them. It would help but because it wasn't done regularly, after 3 months you would start seeing more.
The person who lived above me who is no longer there said he had roaches too but the super lived a few rooms down from him and said she had no problems. I wonder if she was just lying because her room wasn't that far away. My building was a small one and only had 3 floors and a basement so I think it was possible that the whole building probably was infested.

It made me feel very shameful to have to live with that. It wasn't always bad as there were times when I wouldn't see any for about 4 days and then I would see 3-5 in one day. I think when I first moved in, I didn't see a problem for about 3 months. I think the place probably got sprayed about 3 times in the entire 3 years I was there. I think it made me paranoid.

I hope my new place doesn't have any. I would Bed Bug Registry to check out places to make sure they didn't have pest issues. Unfortunately when I was looking online at apartments, I did notice according to that site that some places had a pest issue as people also list roaches and not just bed bugs. It certainly was a handy resource because it would save me the time from visiting places that have this problem.

I think the probability of having roaches is pretty slim in a house, although I had one friend tell me his parents had them in their home because of their neighbor. I didn't notice any reports for my new place. I guess it's possible but I am hoping there isn't. I didn't notice anything particular.

My room is a fairly decent sized room. I will have to leave my kitchen table at my parents because it has a kitchen already. There is no living room but I did look at another place in a nearby neighborhood had also didn't have a living room. This place was better since the room was bigger. It would have been nice to have a living room but I didn't want to risk not being able to find a place for the fall since I am planning on going to school full time and didn't want to commute every day from Hamilton.