Week #5: The Search for an Apartment

This week’s free time has been dedicated to finding an apartment in Arlington. I am looking for a 2 bedroom that is conveniently located to the metro line, isn’t a dump, and less than $1000 a month. Impossible you might ask??  Well we thought so at first.

Monday morning, my best friend Emily and I set out on a seemingly inconceivable adventure to find our first apartment together in D.C. We had looked on craigslist, google, and every apartment search website you could find before hand, so we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for. I am one of those people that likes immediate results, but I refuse to make decisions without weighing all the consequences ahead of time, so it was really hard to find anything we were willing to commit to until we had seen all the possibilities.

Of course, the weather on Monday was perfect for walking around the Ballston-Clarendon-Rosslyn areas (it was raining and sleeting all day). We were on a mission to learn about the apartments in the area so we could see how much we would have to sacrifice to pay as little as possible. After about 10 minutes into the search, we learned that we would really be struggling to even eat food if we moved to Arlington.

The apartments are so expensive and soo tiny! And of course, Emily and I have much too good of taste to live in an old building with stained floral carpet that smells like Indian food. Also you can’t make a 7.4 x 7.4 den in to a bedroom unless you put the queen-sized bed in it and literally make it the “bed room” and just plan to jump in through the door like the ball pit at a McDonald’s (we seriously considered this).

So we came home after hours with our heads held low. I watched a lifetime movie and slept on the couch in my current home, which is over an hour commute from Arlington.  Then, this morning I work up with newfound apartment searching energy. I got on Craigslist and searched for 5 hours straight, sent out at least 10 email inquiries to strangers telling them all about myself with hopes of striking a chord that would begin a friendship. Which brings me to the question: What do you tell a stranger that you want to live with, really? How do they get to know who you are? I figured some general information is good but how will they really get to know me over the Internet in a short period of time?

I decided, the best way for them to get to know me without taking all time to really meet me (instant results people) is to follow my activity online. I have a really unique blog that covers a lot of topics that they could read and understand my personality. I am pretty active on facebook, and if they were to follow my actions, they would see all my likes and dislikes, what kind of stuff I think is interesting enough to post, what I look like in pictures and if we have any friends in common. Of course, this idea is slightly stalkerish (it takes one to know one), but if they were really into searching for me, they would notice that my blog, facebook, and twitter are all interconnected and they could learn even more about me. Maybe they would also see that during lunch on my apartments search the day before, Emily checked us into foursquare, which would even establish how serious I am in looking. So I decided to send a link to my blog. I have been using all kinds of tools to link my facebook and twitter accounts so this will hopefully increase my traffic as well as be helpful in an actual real-life activity of finding an apartment.

I did get a response, finally, from a woman subletting her condo in Clarendon. SUCCESS. She unfortunately, had not read my blog, but I figure maybe I made some friends along the way, and if this condo doesn’t work out, I have used the Internet once again to widen my broad range of friendly acquaintances (who have rooms for rent!).  Domination.