Goodbye to our clean apartment

One week ago we moved out of our apartment. I can't believe it's already been a whole week. I took a few pictures on that final day and wanted to post them as documentation of the awesome job that we did cleaning everything out. Our apartment looks so different without all of our stuff there! Wendy and Sam had come over the night before and helped us move the majority of the things that were left in the apartment but we still had several boxes of cleaning supplies and all sorts of hodge-podge items that were still hanging around. My wonderful friend Ashley was like a blessing sent straight from heaven. She came over and helped me make a last load over to our storage unit. I thought that maybe I could fit it in my car - but I wouldn't have been able to. It's amazing how much stuff you can fit in a minivan! I'm so grateful that she was willing to come and help me out because I never would have been able to do it without her.

As it got closer to Lydia's naptime, she got grumpier and grumpier - but I still wasn't done with all of the last minute cleaning items. My sweet baby had just about had it with all of my last minute cleaning. I felt awful as I set her on the ground in the back bedroom so I could vacuum the carpet. She didn't want to be set down and was scared of the vacuum, but we made it through. Finally I nursed her and then set her down in her carseat in the back room while I tried to finish everything up. I was planning to make one last  trip to our storage unit to drop off the vacuum, mop, and a few other things before packing up all of the bags that we needed to live on over the next two weeks, but as I was taking down the vacuum - my landlord showed up. I had told her that I planned to be out by 3 but that I would call her when I was leaving. I was running a little behind and it was 3:30. She was super nice and told me that she didn't mean to rush me - but I still felt rushed. Instead of making a trip to the unit and then back again for the rest of our bags - I miraculously was able to fit all of our bags into my car. Thank goodness that David stayed home for a little while this morning and packed his car to the brim. It's a blessing that he wasn't feeling well - because if he had gone into work as early as he had planned, I wouldn't have been able to get evrything packed and cleaned, he wouldn't have put as much into his car, and I never would have been able to squeeze everything in.

Thankfully, I was able to make everything fit. Lydia slept through the whole thing and just started to wake up as I was headed out of our apartment. I was feeling a little bittersweet as I grabbed my camera and snapped a few last pictures of our wonderful (and very clean) apartment on my way out.

The hallway to the back rooms.

Both rooms emptied of all traces of our lives. (Dramatic much?) I didn't get a good picture of the kitchen. Mostly because it looked pretty much the same because you can't see into the cupboards to see how empty they were. But at least here you can see how empty things looked.  

Lydia showing off our fantastically clean walls and our disgustingly dirty carpets.

Her face: Mom, what the heck are we doing. I'm tired.

Our keys laid out on the counter. I may just be sentimental - but I had to take a picture. It was hard for me to leave my keys!

We left our landlord a bag of gourmet popcorn, partially to thank them for being good landlords and partially to put them in a good mood so they wouldn't ding us for anything on our cleaning check/deposit refund. Also, you can see that little bit of gold sticking out behind the popcorn? Sad story. Here goes: I don't know that I would call myself a perfectionist. (At least not anymore.) But one thing about me is that when I am doing something for a grade - I do everything as above and beyond as possible. This is how I was able to get such good grades all through high school and college. If the assignment said to cover a certain area - I made sure that it was covered. If a rubric said to do 8 of the 10 things listed. I made sure to do nine of them (if not all ten). I give you this background information so that you understand.. when our landlord gave us a list of cleaning items that needed to be accomplished before checkout - I did all of them. I wiped down every wall, every baseboard, every closet. I cleaned every individual blind, including taking down each vertical hanging blind and washing it with soap and water. So when it said "clean all lightfixtures" - I didn't feel like I could just lightly dust it with a rag, oh no, I pulled down every lightfixture in the house and deep cleaned it with soap and water and even ran them through the dishwasher. I let them air dry and then put them back into place. A few hours later, while I was cleaning the oven, I heard a cracking noise behind me. I turned around but didn't see anything. Lydia was in bed and  I had the windows open to air out the chemical smell. I figured it must have been something from the freeway. About a half an hour I heard the noise again except for ten times louder. Again I looked behind me and saw nothing. Later, after I was all done with the oven I was walking through the kitchen and saw that one of the light fixture hoods had completely severed along the top and was hanging by the lightbulb. I don't know what happened - but somehow the whole top piece of the glass part had split off, leaving just the half-sphere to hang. I was SO sad. It serves me right for trying so hard. I should have just dusted it and been done. Grrrr. (I'm still upset about this, can you tell?) More on this below.

Moving on. I packed up Lydia and snapped a few more pictures as we headed out the door.

My sweet baby girl.

Our doorstep. We left the "4B" for the next renters, because lets be honest - what are we going to do with a 4 and a B? (I thought about waiting until Lydia's 4th bithday to use the 4 as a decoration and decided that goes againt my anti-clutter policy, because you know we wouldn't even be able to find it in three years.

The front of our apartment. This place has been really good to us - it's a little sad to be leaving.

The place where we parked our cars -we were lucky and got to park our two cars right by each other fairly close to our apartment. The only bad part is that even the car that was under the covered parking was only half protected from the snow. Otherwise it was awesome!

Another view of where we parked and the side of our apartment.

 

Then we were off! We  headed over for a quick stop to our storage shed:

Our friends recently had their storage shed broken into and so we were really nervous about this - but this place seems really secure and we made sure our renters insurace covers everything. However, if you are reading this and looking at this picture, please don't break into our storage unit. We would be really sad.

It was a miracle that everything fit into our car. You can see Lydia is surrounded by piles of things. Our trunk wouldn't fit another item and the front seat was full as well. (I leaned down the front seat and put the vacuum and mop up there and just let the handles kind of drape over her carseat.

 

I was so relieved to be done with our apartment and SO exhausted that we just took things slow from there on out. I had to return some library books so we stopped at the library and I picked out a few new books. Then because we were tired, I found a soft chair and read one of my books while I nursed Lydia. It was so nice to sit down and take a break after such a hard day. We headed to West Jordan, then the next morning David went to work and Lydia and I went to Morgan. We are so lucky to have parents who are willing to let us bounce back and forth until our house is finally finished!

 

Oh, and to finish the story - we just got our deposit refund in the mail.

 

 

Other than the $150 that they take out automatically for the carpet cleaning we only got docked for one thing. Can you guess what it was? Yep, the stinking light. I slave away for hours and hours and days and days - and I STILL get dinged for that stinking light. I feel like my teacher gave me an A- after making one mistake on my final exam! Sigh, oh well.

 

Although it's a little sad to say goodbye to our old apartment, we are SO excited that our house is so close to being completed! Just one more week and we will be closing on our loan and getting ready to move in. Hooray!