I live like a 19 year old man who just moved out on his own, but doesn’t yet quite understand the importance of furniture or how the appearance of your apartment can lead to future friends or the lack of said future friends. The only difference is I’m 26 and I’m a girl. I should have a pretty apartment filled with rustic antiques and flowers and pictures held within frames that I’ve decorated myself. This apartment concern was never an issue for me before. In college I always had a messy room. And I never cared what people thought about it. I would yell at people who stepped on my various piles of paper.
Me: “Watch out! You’re ruining everything!”
Friend: “What?”
Me: “You’re mixing the piles together!”
Friend: “You’re kidding right?”
I never kid about paper piles.
Although my room looked like a mess, I knew what the various piles meant and moving the papers around was the equivalent for me as someone putting a cup on a wood table without a coaster for an actual adult.
Things changed when I graduated and got a job. I felt the need to act more like an adult. This didn’t necessarily change the way I lived…it just brought a lot of shame to the way I lived. It took me months to actually unpack due to a smoke issue. So, I lived like a vagrant that happened to stumble upon a storage unit to take shelter in.
My neighbor was a heavy smoker and the quality of the wall/vent setup was comparable to if the builder had decided to create a building out of plywood and connect the various rooms with paper towel tubes to allow for air flow. So, I had smoke pouring in through the air vents, power outlets, and, for some reason, an abundant amount from behind the fridge. My only safe zone was my bedroom. It was the only part of my apartment that wasn’t connected by air vent to the smoke apartment. So I kept everything I could in my bedroom – mostly within my closet because it had no air vents. I lived like this for over a month.
After breaking down and crying in my leasing office, I was given a new place to live. My brother helped me carry all my belongings across the parking lot to my new place. We luckily finished right before a huge thunderstorm hit.
At this point I was now in the apartment I currently live in. I continued to live the shameful way I had chosen for over a year. My apartment had organized paper piles and I didn’t have real furniture.
My whole perspective changed when I bought a new sheet set. That’s all it took. I bought some fancy sheets and I decided they didn’t fit into my bedroom setup. The set came with a bunch of pillows, so I would need to prop them up against something. But, my bed was right below my window (my window that doesn’t keep cold air out, so I would have to wrap my head in a blanket in the winter months).
I was going to need to move my bed out from under my window so that my pillows could lean against something. But it would look stupid if they were just against the wall. I was going to need a real bed. And a real bed deserves a real nightstand. And the plastic drawers that I was using as a dresser would take away from the overall grownup look of my bedroom…so I’d need a real dresser.
I went furniture shopping and found the perfect set. I would fill my bedroom to the brim with an entire new furniture set. It was beautiful. Furniture isn’t exactly that cheap though. I knew things were going to be tight going into this, but I underestimated my need for food. My plan was to take the money out of savings to be able to afford the furniture. When I got my bonus and tax refund a few months later I would put that money directly into my savings account to repay myself. I took out the bare minimum required from my savings. This left me with less than $50 to live off before I went home for Christmas (which was a month away).
I couldn’t do anything. I was living off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese and mustard sandwiches, and some carnation instant breakfast that I found in my cupboards. People apparently began to get pretty concerned about me when I started bringing odder and odder things for lunch. By the end I was bringing in a bowl, spoon, and packet of cream of wheat to heat up in the microwave. Several people offered to buy me lunch, but I wasn’t looking for handouts! I could do this. I remember a few days before I headed home I had less than $3 left to spend. I was eating grated parmesan cheese for dinner and sugar and graham cracker crumbs (that I had bought a few months back to make a cheesecake) for dessert.
I also resorted to limiting my electricity and water consumption. I was on a very strict morning workout plan at the time, so I would save on water by showering at the gym. This wasn’t anything new since I was working out in the mornings before the bedroom furniture and after the bedroom furniture, but it was added pressure for why I HAD to go to the gym in the morning. I also kept my heat very low. Warm pajamas were all I needed – especially since I was no longer sleeping under the drafty window.
Looking back on this all I can think is: It was totally worth it.
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