apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My first summer apartment: Hyde Park, four bedrooms, six girls, barely any furniture (it was only for a summer!). I think I paid $250/month in rent. I didn't get a summer job until the middle of August so there was plenty of time for drama and watching tv on the floor.

Oh, this is terrible ... 1996: Warminster, PA, three-bedrooms, one bath, 5 guys, four of them smokers. Once vindictive cat, no dishwasher. This was not, as you may be thinking, associated with a fraternity--quite the opposite, actually.

The bedrooms were miniscule, but it was okay, since we didn't own anything. At least the living room was huge ... we had all collected old furniture from our parents' places, including a spine-deforming sofa we called the Satan Couch. Furniture was chosen for its paraphrenalia-hiding attributes. "Decorations" included a tie-dyed tapestry, an enormous "Reservoir Dogs" poster, an empty fish tank, and a miniature Christmas tree that no one decided to dismantle. Christmas lights, too, of course. The carpet was chocolate brown, which went well with the orange and black Satan Couch. I fortunately had my own room.

In the year we were there, we had three automobile break-ins and a large piece of asphalt through the window, and the complex endured a completely immolated Chevy and a few shootings. There were little kids in the complex who could help you jimmy your car door open if you locked your keys inside, too, which was a bonus.

We managed to survive despite our one sub-moronic roommate leaving the oven on at 400 degres all night five or six times--several times with a cardboard box on top of it for some reason ... At least the standing water in the interminably-filled sink would put out the blaze. That same roommate worked as a line cook at Perkins, and would "wash" his uniform in the shower, leaving it to dry on the towel rack, so the 20 Sq Ft. room smelled like chicken-friend steak. At least the sound system was nice ...

Things have gotten considerably better since then.

Bucktown, top floor of a gorgeous red stone 3 flat. Sunny. 3 huge bedrooms. Huge kitchen. Huge dining room with french doors. Nice living room.

One roommate. We each paid $325.

I swore I would never move out of that place as long as I was in Chicago... and then (ahem), I met a boy...dammit.

This was actually my second apartment, but the first I hunted for myself. It was a two-bedroom with a closed living room, but my roommate and I didn't actually get to see the unit. We were shown the mirror-image apartment next door, with assurances that our unit was the same. It wasn't.

I called the place 'the slanty shanty' because most of the floors were slanted, most noticeably in the kitchen. We had to kick the water towards to drain to empty the bathtub. Cookies and pies were thicker on one side than the other. But the real kicker was the linoleum floors everywhere...ugly as sin!

The upside: dirt-cheap rent. We got ourselves a third roommate and each paid only $150 per month. Only stayed one year...

One of my first apartments was a small, but clean and new studio in Albuqerque for $250. This gave me a very inaccurate gauge of what Life costs.

When I came to Chicago, I packed all my belongings into my '79 Celica. The backup plan was the dorms at Columbia College- apartment-style lofts, not bad but around $400 a month and the bedrooms slept 2 and you shared a bathroom with 4. I thought I'd see if I could find something better. I didn't know about the Reader, and I don't know if Craigslist was around yet (I didn't have internet anyway) so I went to an Apartment Finder service to see if there was anything in that price range in the South Loop.

She laughed at me! Told me to come back when I knew what I wanted.

So I stayed in the dorms for a semester until I got my bearings on Chicago prices and neighborhoods.

I know a couple people who have come here and lived way beyond their means in the Mag Mile or River North, not knowing what else was out there...

Live and learn...