Married Housing

I have been hearing of so many engagements recently and many of my friends have sought my advice on married housing. While I am not the authority I thought that it might be worthwhile to explain the situation here. Starter housing is some of the most comical, frustrating, and fun part of marriage.

As many of you may identify with, my housing situation is not the most ideal. When I was single it wasn't too much better but then since I lived in cheaper housing I had extra spending money. Now that I am married and housing is 3x more expensive things are a lot tougher. I remember when we originally found this apartment on Craigslist. Both my husband and I were living in Missouri at the time so finding married housing in Provo was not the easiest thing to accomplish, especially housing that was within our budget. We thought we hit the jackpot when we finally found a basement apartment that was only $425 a month and was within walking distance of campus. It wasn't all roses, the landlord raised the rent to $460 and the slow mailing system combined to almost have us lose the place, but we got it!

I also recall the day we moved in: having driven straight through from Missouri we were SO ready to unpack, roll out our sleeping bags and rest. Imagine our surprise when we enter the apartment to find out that there had never been an exit check done when the last couple moved out. There was food on the floor, crumbs and dust and dirt in the cabinet, and black mold covered the entire back wall of the bedroom. To this day I'm not too sure why we didn't just move out right then. I took enough pictures to have easily gotten us out of the contract. Still, we couldn't find anything else that fit the budget so, we stayed.

Seven months later we are still here. The door is still broken, there is still wood missing from the workers who removed the termite infestation that was at the root of the mold, and the 1960s oven is also now finally broken but we are still here. We look around from time to time and sigh but we also laugh to each other that this will truly be a memory to look back on for years to come.