sup, google. (Arlington, VA)
We moved to Arlington, which is right outside of Washington, DC (literally 5 minute drive..I'm not kidding) in July and let's just say I had no freakin idea what we were doing. I've always relied on my mom or my alma mater to figure out the whole living situation and I just kind of tagged along, because like the blog says, I'm not a grown up. Just bein honest. I lived on campus all 3.5 years: 2 in a dorm, 1 in an on campus townhouse with friends, and half a year in the sorority house. After I graduated I lived with my mom and brother, so much fun, but not. So when the time came to leave the nest before I lost my mind living with my overbearing (but lovable) mom and angsty teenage brother, the boyfriend and I looked at some apartments and just kind of said, yea this one is nice and we can afford it...we'll take it. Looking back, I'm sure we would have looked at more apartments in the area, but what can ya do. We love it for the most part and Tiger hasn't bitten anyone yet, so we're happy.
The most daunting part of finding an apartment for me was that it was basically the city, and I've grown up in the suburbs my whole life. Ya know, the whole soccer moms, minivans, people talking in the streets and waving as you drive by, 30 minutes from the nearest mall....yep that's me. So this whole fast paced living thing was a bit much. Add on rent, gas, power, and cable bills and you've got Crystal panicking/rocking back and forth in the corner with wide eyes.
Once I got past that, and we moved in, the fun part began: how do we make it ours? Naturally, I decorated, after Leon said he liked the colors black and brown as accents....YEA NOT HAPPENIN BRO. I, on the other hand like bright colors, because bright colors make people happy. Which is why I was thrilled to see our bathroom was all white!
You can't see it, but our towels are the same blue, with yellow cloths. All from Target for under 30 bucks!
To kind of match the theme, we got a kitchen mat with the same blue and other bright colors.
This is literally 3/4 of our kitchen. Tiny is not even the word.
Told ya..and we share it with the dog's bowls. ugh.
Moving on. I found that even little details make a difference in an apartment. To me, you don't have to go all out with decorating, and let's face it, you're too poor for all that anyways, so stick to the basics and make them pop. I'm super fortunate to have a mom that wanted me out as much as I wanted to leave, so she helped out and bought a lot of the essentials! She even gave us her sectional couch and bought us a table from IKEA (Note: IKEA will be a lifesaver for new apartments. Everything is cheap. And durable.)!
Part of the couch and our table. Grumpy boyfriend included.
The picture above the table was a complete luck of the draw from the thrift store down the street! Again, use your resources, don't be afraid of the thrift stores/secondhand stores/dumpster.. no lie, we most definitely grabbed a table from next to the dumpster.
Anyways. Anywhere in the vicinity of DC is gonna be expensive. Our apartment is only 1 bed, 1 bath, but let me tell ya, we pay a pretty penny for this place. And it's not that great.. The apartments were built in the 70s so the whole windows sealing thing is not happening very well. And the dryer doesn't work for more than 1 load every 2 hours (it gets overheated...weird). I don't know, its just that we pay a lot for not so great things happenin in here. Why? Because we both work around here and Arlington is like young professional central! So much to do and see. Sure I would love to go crazy with decorating and exploring the city, but again...POOR.
Which is whyyyy, I felt like I hit the jackpot when I found out about the website Urban Compass! Basically it helps you to find apartments in NYC while giving you the scoop on what you're getting into, what the neighborhoods are like, all while telling you everything you need to know about the actual apartments you're looking at. WHY don't they have this for DC?!?! This would have been a God Send while we were apartment hunting. You can adjust listings by price, bedrooms, location, and it has pictures! I'm in love.
Of course now that I'm trying to screen shot the website to show you all how freakin amazing it is, my computer decides that it doesn't wanna do that right now. Awesome. Whatever. Go to the wesbite and browse around because I'm about to start a petition to get this loveliness down here in the nations capital.
Sorry my computer sucks and doesn't do screenshots well, but here's my face to make up for it.
-Crystal
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