Nebulous Mooch

We’ll be moving soon. The funny thing is that we have no idea where we’ll be moving. My husband and I have just about as many organizational skills as tadpoles. Speaking of tadpoles have you ever seen this?

Nature is beautiful and all that, but sometimes it is horror movie worthy.

Anyway, back to moving…

Part of the reason we’re moving is that realistically our flat is kind of dreadful. In this case dreadful means moldy and damp. Now that we’re moving out our landlord is trying to re-lease the place. She’s also trying to raise the rent by 50  pounds a month. The real estate company or estate agent or whatever you call it has been showing people around our home. Even though we’re packing things in boxes we have the keep the place looking nice so perspective tenants can view the property.

Normally keeping this place looking good would be easy, but when sorting through long forgotten drawers and random boxes in closets–oh wait we only have one closet–the task is a bit more challenging. This is a tiny apartment, but we have somehow managed to ram so much stuff in here its unbelievable.

We’ve recently sorted through our stacks of CD cases. My husband has put them all in a bag to go out, but he doesn’t know that the next time he goes out I’m going to build an igloo out of them. All I need to do is to buy a hot glue gun and the building can commence.  I think a CD case igloo would be a wonderful feature that would justify the new rental price for this place.

The funny thing is that when we rented this flat the estate agent seemed kind of shocked. Apparently, they had been trying to rent it out for a while with no success. We were desperate enough to move in anywhere so we took it. Now when new people come to view the property I can see by the looks on their faces that they arent’ going take it. If I ever get a moment alone with any of them I always mention the damp problem. That  doesn’t help the situation much.

If I build the igloo maybe it would make up for the fact that I keep telling everyone about the damp…and I’ll have an excuse to buy a hot glue gun. Every woman wants a hot glue gun.

We’ve been doing a lot of apartment hunting. We’re staying with friends right now and want to get out of their place as quickly as possible. So we spend our days getting lost on the complicated streets of London and showing up late for appointments with estate agents.

Today we saw the best apartment that we’ve seen and the worst. The best was small but had a very nice kitchen. All the apartments are small. But who wants to hear about the best apartment when the story of the worst one is much more interesting.

Richard, the landlord was twenty minutes late to the appointment. This wasn’t his fault but I still thought it was worth mentioning. The apartment was on Penge Road. Penge just doesn’t have a good sound to it. When Richard finally did arrive to the appointment he forgot the keys to the flat. He let us into the building, but we had to wait on the landing of the stairs for him to come back with the keys. It was worth the wait.

The flat had just been “fixed up” so there was dust and dirt everywhere. He was bragging about the renovations when my husband noticed some rust on the refrigerator door and decided to open it to investigate. Inside the refrigerator lurched the foulest odor he says he’s ever smelled in his life.

“Everything is brand spanking new,” Richard said, motioning to the ten year old radiator on the wall.

Some of the other great features of this newly renovated flat were the dirty toilet, view of a pile of trash in the back garden and paper thin walls. Needless to say we’re still looking.