Apartment Hunting for Hoarders and Madmen

I'm encountering the two classic problems of apartment searches everywhen:

1. I cannot find an apartment cheap enough to live in on my own, and

2. I cannot find someone to pay half the rent on a larger place.

Basically, I'm in that opening season of FRIENDS,where Rachel has no money, no marketable skills, and no place to stay. Except I'm also experiencing problem number 3:

3. I have way too much furniture.

I-

I've never encountered this problem on television. FRIENDS did nothing to prepare me for this. Over-sized couch stuck in the stairwell? Sure thing. Hilariously wide entertainment unit blocking your bedroom doors when you could easily just put it against the exterior wall by the bathroom? No problem whatsoever.

But how do I handle actually having furniture? And pots and pans and forks? I know how to live in a hole with nothing but three shirts and a computer, I've seen WB sitcoms with young female leads. But I have, like, thirty shirts. And pants? I've got like a bunch of pants! I can get rid of my mannequin torso, I guess, I've got other conversation starters enough, but come on, guys, where do the couches and recliners and love seats and dressers and hampers go in the $600 studio world?

Best I can tell, they just miraculously show up after I inexplicably become a professional chef.

Goddamit, I'm such a fucking Ross. I wish I was a Chandler.
Damnit….

Moving Supplies | What Do You Need to Furnish Your New Apartment?

Remember: It's not "dumpster diving"
if it wasn't technically in the dumpster.

Let's consider this an advanced class.

If you're anything like me, your parents have been buying you "presents" for years encouraging you to get the hell out of their living space. Stainless steel cookware, Chef Tony Miracle Blades, your own spice racks. Alright, your parents are probably nothing like mine. But I've got the basics down, so let's talk about making your new place swank instead of a crash pad.


Artwork

First off, you're going to want some pop art for your hallway and possibly living room. Prints are preferable, but movie posters are acceptable if more than 20 years old, vintage, and/or signed. Everything must be framed. This is not up for discussion.

Large photography may also adorn the living room itself. Try to avoid architectural landmarks, especially within your own city. This is the yuppie equivalent of going to see a band wearing that band's t-shirt. Don't be that guy.

Linens

You want to be classy, but not ludicrously baller. Spring for much higher thread count in your cotton sheets than you would otherwise. Your skin, and preferably someone else's, will thank you for it. Jersey sheets should be worn like gym clothes: not when you're expecting company.

Likewise, stay away from the red satin sheets. Black works just fine, and can be played off as a joke. Plus, they're really, really cool in the summertime, which will save you on A/C. An any-occasion alternative can also be found in bamboo bedding. Bamboo fiber is sweat-wicking, cool to the touch, and highly breathable. You may find yourself needing a blanket in the middle of the night.

Furniture

Bed: Full size or larger goes without saying.

Couch/Chairs: Sets will be tightly packed, bean bags are unacceptable unless they are Sumo sized. Cheap alternative: Ikea. Cheaper alternative: scope out your new neighbors. Odds are somebody has a chair or two that doesn't fit in their new pad. Snatch it off the street before the weather or hipsters take it and you just leveled up your living space.

Kitchen

You're already going to have a stove, sink, fridge, and microwave. Improve upon this with a toaster over for class, individual pizza stones for healthier snack foods, and as stated above, a quality set of knives with a solid cutting board. Throw in a sizable wok and at least two glasses of each of the following:

Red wine
White wine
Champagne flutes
Highball
Tumbler

Miscellany

Lastly, always remember to remove sex toys, drug paraphernalia, embarrassing photos, and any other incriminating evidence from your parents' home in the move. It'll be a lot less embarrassing for Cliff the rough-and-tumble, seen-it-all laborer to find a box of bongs, black dildos, and pictures of your ex than your mom cleaning out your closet.

Just label that box "Tax Forms" or something.

On Masonry Masturbatorial Materials

Years ago I found a copy of Playgirl rolled up and wedged rather poorly behind a toilet in a book store men's room. Moderately amusing. In fact, moderately more amusing that had it been the expected Playboy. (Statistically, I'd imagine this accounts for approximately one in ten rolled up spank mags wedged behind toilets in men's rooms.)

Recently, I found a copy of Home Decor.

You sick fucks. I'm sorry, I try to be as open-minded as the next guy, but houses? I mean, Jesus Christ, guys, there's a limit. Don't get me wrong, I find gazebos as threateningly attractive as the next dude, but looking at all those houses with their reupholstered living rooms and bare floors … that's just so exploitative. I mean most of those houses have kids rooms.

True, some have a double-wide garage, but now we're just starting to make excuses for a perpetually biased and degrading industry.

For shame, sickos. For shame.

On Man Repairs

All men are going to agree with this statement:

There are exactly 5 ways for a man to fix something:

Hitting
Prying
Sticking
Bending
Cutting

That's it. Every fix ever is one or more of those..

Today I tried a Japanese soft drink called Ramune. It's sealed with a little glass marble which you pop down into the bottle using a plastic stopper. Afterward I wanted the marble. I then spent about half an hour trying to pry off the top, cut through it and bend it awkwardly until–eventually–I gave up, placed the glass bottle daintily in a plastic bag and hit it with a hammer. Marble in 3.5 seconds. I hit all the Fix Plans other than taping the thing, but I finally found the one that worked. Certainly it was not as classy a solution as I intended, but it has its own simplistic elegance, I believe.

Before that I "fixed" my new desk chair. Turns out it was not broken. Rather, I had not learned how to utilize its many functions properly. A few minutes and a screwdriver-used-as-a-prybar later, well, let's just say I'm now typing from that chair in a relaxed and reclined position.

Yes, sometimes it's as simple as deconstructing how a thing works and then ensuring it functions properly. A couple years back one of my housemates returned home, went to pull her key out of the front door and somehow managed to wrench the key and the deadbolt into unnatural positions. The key we were able to bend back and remove rather easily. And be "we" I mean "I."

What did I end up doing? Well I was an English major, so obviously I had no homework and plenty of free time. I grabbed a couple screwdrivers, a hammer and a pair of pliers and I very carefully took the thing apart one piece at a time, only removing a component after determining its proper function mechanically and geometrically. To this day I do not know how my housemate twisted and bent at a right angle a deadbolt by simply turning her key (best hypothesis: she is an amazon), but I do know I rebuilt an entire deadbolt lock mechanism in a couple hours using only pliers and a hammer.

Pry.
Bend.
Stick.

On Game Strategy

Whenever I play little computer games, I've usually got two ways of working things.

If it's a game based on running around achieving goals, well, I'll usually avoid it because I never quite got the hang of First-Person games. (Joysticks do not like me.) But everyone else I know tends towards the normal mode of thinking: achieve the mission objective as quickly as possible, then run around racking up bonus points or something.

Normally, I go the complete ass-backwards route: I either inch my way to the goal achieving every completionist goal along the way, or I get as close to success as possible and then stop, racking up all the bonuses I can and only after total domination complete that original task. You can imagine how well that works out. "Castle Defender" games: usually pretty awesome. Scores are either astronomical or the accidental failure is complete and painful.

Real life? I'm not sure which endgame I'm heading towards. I've already got most of the furnishings for my own apartment, which is really pretty sweet, however I don't have the apartment or, say, a job to pay for it.

But man, every time I spend the money a game gives me to start with on something I think will be useful later, it turns out I should have saved up and gotten the flamethrower later on. I hope a home and job aren't like a flamethrower.

Actually, I really hope a home and job are in no way like a flamethrower.

On Geometry

Not my bedroom, but I'd totes live there.
Totes McGoat.

Looking around my room in the dead of night, a deeply telling, almost disturbingly so character trait emerges from my furnishings. The least secure part of me believes it must be a horrible flaw to my personality, an obvious tell, it seems. A lighter part of me hopes it is simply indicative of order and a firm knowledge of what I want out of life, but this part still is worried by how obvious this observations seems now, and how until just moments ago I was completely unaware of it on a conscious level. The great middle-ground of my mind has no idea what to think, because at the very least it has never uncovered such a self-referential truth.

Man, there sure are a lot of rectangles in my room.

On Knowing Your Limitations

I think when I finally get my own place without any family or roommates, I'm going to conveniently forget to hook up my cable for a few weeks.

It'd just be really convenient for finishing the six-year backlog of unread novels sitting by my bed.


On a separate note, these are the types of plans I make. In some distant, nebulous future time, I own my own house in which I forget to turn on the cable, hang pop art in the hallways and keep an old motorcycle in the garage under a blue tarp.

How I get this house? I think someone eventually pays me for typing this stuff. That's never really been more a concern than interior decoration.

This is the exact couch I've always imagined myself owning if I get an apartment, except in scratchy fabric, not upholstery. It's a basic Ikea model, incredibly uncomfortable and pretty much what they had on The Daily Show for the first ten years of interviews. I think they auctioned that one off for charity.

On Growing Up III: The Curse of the Growening

So I finally decided to get rid of a bunch of the crap that's been sitting around my room making me feel goofy.

Another way to say this is I wanted to make my room seem somewhat more mature to match myself.

Another way to say this is "There ain't no way in hell you're getting laid with Optimus Prime watching."

Now I can't just turn the guy around, that's not the problem, you see. Quite frankly, I am not giving up my toys for anyone. I fully intend to keep them in my office, once I own my own house with an office. Unfortunately I do not own a house. I in fact live in my mother's apartment in a room and I am quite lucky to have my own bookshelf and free use of the public bathroom as long as it stays nice looking.


So, what to do, dear friends? How does one cram 80% of an apartment and a full childhood bedroom into the same spacial location? (For the purposes of this discussion we are ignoring the folding of space-time and other extra-dimensional physics because if I could afford to produce a tesseract I could just buy a damn house.)

Well the answer is you get sneaky.

Last night around 5 a.m. I had an epiphany, and emotional call that said, "I don't remember what half this memento crap is from so I can throw it away. Also, buy a cabinet and hide your toys."

So this afternoon I took some measurements, checked the Walmart website and then braved the white-trash mecca of our local superstore to snag the one remaining white storage cabinet.

Now let me be clear. 1) I thought it would be taller, but I'm okay with how the height turned out. 2) I originally intended to move (hopefully) all of my complete manga series, comic books or Star Wars novels into this cabinet, closing the doors and reserving visible shelf space for what didn't fit and my more mature literature, thus showing I am an adult with refined tastes.

Well, the top shelf is a couple Nerf Mavericks and my old N64, the PS2 I bought second-hand to play Guitar Hero on and the Sega Genesis 16-Bit I bought on eBay so I could play Sonic 2 again.

The second shelf is a pile of Transformers/hot chicks from movies action figures and a plethora of booze, albeit very refined, expensive booze.

The second-to-last shelf I removed. That's not true. I never installed it. Because this way I can store all my Nerf guns like an ammo locker.

Yeah.

Now fine, I regret that I spent $50 to store a lot less than I thought I would and yes, I still have to put another storage unit of un-eBay-able toys back in the attic, but honestly, I think it was worth it. I have a piece of furniture I can use in my eventu-home. There are far fewer things around my room that can act as a sexual Trapper Keeper. It is much neater and more mature than it was this morning.

Also, I totally have a cache of Nerf guns chilling next to my dresser. I'm like the Wacco ranch of foam-based maturity.