In May 2015, in anticipation of selling my home, I leased a one-bedroom apartment at the Towne. I needed a place to continue to run my P.R. business and at the same time manage the multiple moves required to transition out of a home I had owned for 26 years.
The Towne apartment was tiny. I used the bedroom as the office and a sleeper sofa in the living room did double duty as a bed. At $1,935 a month the rent was pricey, but the other add ons included a parking space, a storage locker, and monthly pet rent of 20 bucks for my cat. The monthly nut fluctuated around $2,250. Plus I had to pay water, sewer and garbage that was monitored by a meter and a separate electric bill to Seattle City Light. All told, I was paying about $2,400 a month to live at the Towne, which was more than my mortgage for either my home in Queen Anne or my home on the Oregon coast.
I knew I wouldn’t be staying long and signed a short-term lease. I made it clear to the rental manager, Luna T., that the apartment was being used primarily for my business, so I could continue to live and work uninterrupted by swarms of realtors descending upon my home. Luna wrote the name of my business inside of the apartment mail box. My husband and I leased another apartment a few blocks away to store his home gym. This was not an easy move!
The first day I moved into the Towne apartment, the toilet clogged for no apparent reason. I tried plunging it but had to call for maintenance, which came several hours later. Within a month the toilet clogged again. I went to use the toilet in the 3rd floor Towne Club Room and found not only was it clogged, but it was overflowing with feces. Later in the day, the maintenance guy told me I had clogged my toilet with a string of dental floss. I soon learned not to flush toilet paper and waste down the toilet at the same time, but to flush separately and in stages to prevent a full blockage that would cause the toilet to overflow. I made it a habit to plunge the toilet after each time it was used. Fortunately, the sale of my home had not yet closed, so I had a back up toilet.
The apartment building experienced some minor crime: car break-ins, apartments were broken into and even the leasing office was ransacked. Occasionally, we received emails alerting us of trash being left in the hall. But these things are a normal part of apartment life.
Growth & Funding Strategist