This week I experienced something that most everyone does in his or her lifetime sooner or later: I leased my very first apartment on my own. That may seem a little surprising at this point — and yes, I have been out of the nest for quite some time now. However, currently my landlord is also my family member, and I have never had the opportunity to pick out my own place before. This week, I had my fill of that and more.
The first thing that I learned from my apartment search is that I have been spoiled for not having to conduct one until this point in my life. The quest took two long days over the course of two weekends with a different team of people each day. That leads me to the second thing I learned: I’m so very lucky to have a team of people who helped me find my new home.
I know it would have been exponentially harder by myself. I had no plan put together on Day One of my search. I expected to call up some apartments who would be excited for me to come by on a moment’s notice. I thought surely they would be ready to impress their prospective new tenant.
That was very wrong.
Apparently many apartment complexes are closed on the weekends, or open by appointment only. The ones who were open acted as though they had little to no availability. Some said they even lease unseen. With no real leads, my mom, my little sister and I started the day driving around aimlessly, trying to call different complexes from the road in hopes of finding the perfect apartment, only to find ourselves lost … literally and figuratively.
We were a hopeless trio, until we met with the rest of Day One’s team — let’s call them Team A — my older sister Morgan and brother-in-law. They are much more experienced in the game of apartment hunting than I am, and they managed to get in touch with a a couple of complexes and we even managed a few tours. Each complex seemed to say the same thing: “There’s only one available, and it will go quickly.”
Day One featured no apartments that I really fell in love with, but I only had two weeks to find a place, so I was eager to fill out some applications. But “two weeks is a lifetime” in apartment-finding time, Team A said. Having limited availability is just a “sales tactic,” they said. I was skeptical, but I agreed to wait.
However, for Day Two, I vowed to be prepared this time. I wasn’t going to let another day go by without appointments.
So naturally, I made eleven of them and scheduled them within 30 minutes of each other.
And that’s when Team B, which just consisted of Morgan and my friend Rachel this time, voted to take away my planning privileges.
I had to narrow down my options and call at least five places to cancel my appointment. Little did I know that those would be the last calls I would make with my poor phone.
During my very first tour of Day Two, I dropped it on some nice hardwood floors and cracked the LCD, which made the display go out completely.
This forced me to have my second new experience of the week — going without a cell phone for more than 48 hours since I’ve been old enough to drive. (Yes, still spoiled here).
Throughout the remainder of the day, my phone would still ring with text alerts and phone calls that I was not able to answer or see. My ringtone was set to a song called “Everything is Awesome” (from the “Lego” movie), which had its own way of being both sad and funny with each unanswered ring. Everything was not awesome.
Luckily, the rest of Team B still had working phones, which made the rest of the tours and scheduling possible. And even though I was armed with several appointments for Day Two, things were still looking dim. Altogether, we probably looked at about 15 apartments, and any place that was half-way decent had vanishing availability. It suddenly felt like I was playing a game of musical chairs — and the music was about to stop.
The day was almost over and I had only one place left to go. We were running late to this last appointment, which was surprising since I scheduled them so meticulously. When we called, they informed us they were closing up the office early for a pool party that day.
So then we had to beg, and somehow convinced them to stay a little longer for us. My sister, who last week said we had a lifetime to find a place, suddenly changed her tune.
“If it’s not on fire, you’re signing,” she said.
Luckily for me, nothing was on fire, and now I have a new home. It felt like it was meant to be, because once we wrapped up the paperwork, there was a pool party right outside waiting for us, and we were able to celebrate with some much-deserved pizza and sunshine. It was the perfect ending to a not-so-perfect day.
Finding my own place for the first time was very exciting and stressful, but I don’t know if I have ever felt as much gratitude toward anyone as I do for my wonderful Team A and Team B. It was more difficult than I had ever imagined, but t was an experience I’ll never forget.
This is a weekly series about following through with a New Year’s resolution to have a new experience each week. To suggest topics or experiences, email alaina.akens@elizabethton.
Alaina O'Neal 