My Darling New Apartment

My new neighborhood

About a week ago, something glorious happened – I moved out of the hostels and into my new home for the next three months!

I’m staying in a cute two bedroom, one bathroom apartment in Darlinghurst, an adorable suburb of Sydney. The location couldn’t be better – it’s only a five-minute walk to the train station and an easy 15-minute walk into the main bits of the city.

The street we live off of is lined with cute Victorian style homes, some with honeysuckles, others with neighborhood pets.

Toby, the Clapton Place kitty

 

 

 

I’m sharing my accommodation with two fellow Americans. After months of sharing 6 to 10 bed dorm rooms with people from all over the world, it’s great to have my own space with people I can relate to and communicate with easily.

I met my new roommates, Brittany and Jess – two Florida girls, through one of my best friends back home. She knew Brittany was heading down under and connected us two on Facebook. After a few weeks of messaging back and forth, we finally met at a hostel and the rest is history.

My new American roommates Brittany and Jess

We found our apartment on GumTree, of course.

Looking for a two bedroom place with a short term lease was incredibly difficult, so we were lucky to find our wee home.

With everyone wanting to move to Sydney for the upcoming holidays, we were frustratingly finding overpriced, run down units, with renters unwilling to negotiate a short term lease. Just when we were about to give up and accept the fact that hostel living is our destiny, we found an opening in the Sorrento.

Now, it wasn’t love at first sight. Our place was, in fact, completely unlivable when we first inspected it. Our landlord is a sweet, old Chinese male nurse who also is, unfortunately for us, a hoarder. The collection of crap and clutter this man accumulated in such a small space was impressive. With not many other options on the table, we decided to roll up our sleeves and commit to helping this guy clean house.

As part of our moving in agreement, we convinced our landlord to remove the majority of his personal belongings, as well as the excessive amount of extras laying around (including a set of lockers, three extra mattresses, six phones, four stereos, storage stacked on top of storage, the car battery in the kitchen – the list of random finds could go on for weeks).

Before moving in, we hit up K-Mart to stock up on cleaning supplies and cockroach traps (yes, like all apartments in Sydney, we have a bit of a roach situation). After a couple hours of scrubbing walls, cleaning out drawers and sweeping away cobwebs, it was clear our landlord hadn’t cleaned this space out in ten years. While nauseating and exhausting, the makeover has made such a difference, and seeing our landlord’s reaction to its transformation made all the hard work worth it.

Our living room, old school TV and refrigerator didn’t make it into the photo

Our humble kitchen

Sun room converted bedroom. You can take the girl out of the hostel, but not out of the bunk bed

Since the dreadful day of hoarding reckoning, we’ve slowly made our Clapton Place apartment our own.  It’s not the best place I’ve ever lived, but it has character., and hey, it’s pretty amazing to have a place to unpack my suitcase for a couple months.