No notices this week -- really!

This week many apartment dwellers make their way out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday. Light timers are set and other precautions are taken to give the apartment a lived in look. But, the best burglary countermeasures can be undone when a landlord leaves a notice in your door while you are away. If you are a landlord, don't stick notices on tenant doors during big holiday weeks. If you are a tenant don't patronize restauramts that stick menus on your door. Notifes and take out menus mark apartments for burglars. It's that simple.

The Truthful Apartment Reviews

If you are considering a move into a different apartment, apartmentratings.com is an indispensable resource.  But I suspect that many landlords know this and write false positive reviews for their complexes.  False positive reviews tend to paint the women who work in the rental office as beautiful, cheerful, and helpful.  It's their own vanity that gives them away.  In a sea of suspicious positive reviews, the "no" reviews on apartmentratings.com become much more important.  When we are considering an apartment complex, my wife and I look at the negative reviews first.

 We tend to discount all reviews that are written by people who pay their rent late or who were hassled for making noise.  If the person got into a hassle with the rental office because they didn't pay their rent on time, the issue lies with them.  If you are playing your stereo too loud or hosting large parties, the police should simply take you out to the trash compactor and summarily execute you.  You'll get NO SYMPATHY from us.

But, if a negative review addresses problems with bugs, vermin, crime, noise, or maintenance, we'll tend to listen and file it away.  When we can identify with a tenant's complaint, it triggers our spidey senses and we listen. If the apartment complex responds, we want to see an aggressive solution to the problem.

All the Tools You Need

I've been carting a full-sized toolbox from apartment to apartment as we've moved around the country for job opportunities.  It's kind of crazy.  All the tools you really need are contained in an inexpensive Fixa tool kit from Ikea.  Here's a complete review:

Tool Review:  Fixa Tool Kits from Ikea

The Trash Fairy Doesn't Visit This Apartment Complex!

Sometimes people in our apartment complex are just plain gross.  Lately, some residents in our building have decided that they should just put their garbage bags out in the breezeway.  While this makes local vermin happy, it makes the apartment complex look very trashy. 

There's no place like the dumpster!  There's no place like the dumpster!

 Since our wooded apartment complex is home for plenty of possums, raccoons, and rats, trash in the hallway can easily attract pests.

Possums Love Garbage!

Since the trash fairy doesn't come in the middle of the night to magically whisk garbage away, people should keep their their trash inside and take it to the compactor or dumpster when the bag is full.  It doesn't go in the hall.  Are we the only adults living in the complex?

Don't Do These Things In An Apartment

I was 24 and stupid once.  Buying a big stereo was one of those things.  I was proud of my stereo.  It looked cool.  I set it up.  It was awesome.  However, I couldn't crank the volume up above 3 or so because I lived in an apartment!  Here are some other things you shouldn't do in an apartment:

Seven Things Not to Do While Living in an Apartment

A Solution for Mail Theft at Apartments

A few years ago, we had problems with mail theft in our apartment complex.  We moved away and when we returned the problems with mail thieves had been solved.  It's mail in a cage!  However, we still use the UPS store for important stuff!

Rents are like seats on a plane

We toured an apartment complex a few weeks ago and an apartment manager told us . . .


Rents are like seats on a plane.  When the plane is full, ticket prices go up.  When the plane is empty, ticket prices go down.  When we have a lot of vacancies, you'll see specials.


It's a common sense observation about the price of rent at any apartment complex.  It's something to keep in mind if you are looking for a new apartment or even if you are anticipating a renewal notice from your current landlord.

Reducing Energy Bills in an Apartment

These are the hottest days of summer and it seems like the air conditioner is running non-stop.  We can only imagine what our electric bill will look like.  When you live in an apartment, there doesn't seem to be much you can do to save on electricity.  But, actually, there are quite a few things that you can do that will reduce your power bill.  Read more at -

Six Energy Saving Tips for Apartment Dwellers

A fan really helps!

Checking Out a "New" Apartment Complex

Choosing a new apartment complex is always a big decision.  The quality of your apartment is a big determiner of the quality of your life during the lease term.  It's also expensive to move from one apartment complex to another.  When finding a new apartment, it pays to choose well.  Here are some tricks that we use to thoroughly check out an apartment complex before we move:

Apartment Life:  How to Check Out a New Complex Before You Sign a Lease

Stopping Smokers Outside Your Apartment

Is the atmosphere of your apartment being ruined by a smoker lurking outside your door?  We had the problem.  We wondered why the air was so stale in our apartment.  As it turns out we had a pesky smoker hanging out in our breezeway smoking like a chimney and leaning up against our apartments exterior wall.  The smoke was coming right in!  Nauseating!  But, we got a solution:  Vaseline, Spit, and Confrontation.  A little dab on the wall where a smoker might lean.  A little dab on the railing where he might run his hand.  We asked him to move and then made the environment outside our door uninviting.  It worked.

By Med Chaos (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Look Ma No Leaks! - Conquering Dripping Faucets

Hip. Hip. Hooray!  Hip.  Hip. Hooray!  After 7 separate maintenance requests, we no longer have any dripping faucets in our master bathroom.  Other maintenance requests tackled a running toilet and other leaks.  It should save us about $10 to $15 per month on our water bill!

Maintenance Requests You Should Submit Today!

An apartment with leaks, drips, and other problems could be wasting water, energy, and your hard-earned cash.  If you want to save yourself some serious money and aggravation, here are some maintenance requests that you should submit today:

Apartment Life:  Maintenance Requests to Submit Today

Apartment Perks: Professional Landscaping

One major advantage of apartment life:  professional landscaping!  It's so cool to enjoy park-like common areas without having to maintain them ourselves!

We never take the beauty of your complex for granted.  We don't litter and leave a bunch of trash around for our groundskeepers to find.  That's just plain rude!

Rug Rats and Apartments

Oh what a feeling, it's rug rats dancing above our ceiling!   There's nothing worse than having a family with young kids living above you.  In one complex, grandma and grandpa lived above us, repeatedly had the grand kids over, and encouraged them to put on dance recitals.  The chandeliers and ceiling fans were rocking. It was pretty much like living in London during the Blitz!  When we finally had a face to face meeting with the grand parents and the rental office staff, the little old people had the audacity to lie and deny that they even had grandchildren visit.  It was shocking.  Grandma and Grandpa aren't supposed to lie!  But, if you get angry enough, old folks will tone their behavior down out of fear alone.

There's a better way to have kids exercise around an apartment complex.  Here are some tips for living with kids in an apartment:  Eight Tips for Living with Kids in an Apartment.

Not our chandalier!  Photo By Andreas Praefcke (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons