I found my apartment guys!
And let me tell you it was no small feat. We drove down to Atlanta on Monday and stayed overnight so we could check out more places on Tuesday. We went to 11 different places in total before I decided on where I would live. As it turns out #11 turned out to be my lucky number. 
On our way to the second stop on Monday, my sister noticed an apartment building and commented that it looked nice from the outside. I made a mental note to check out their website once we were done with tours for the day.
50 million hours later (really just seven) we were done for the day and exhausted. We had gone to 8 different places, and the Atlanta heat showed us no mercy. As tired as we were, I made sure to check out that one apartment we drove past earlier. Based on what I saw online I thought it was deserving of a tour so I added it to the list for Tuesday. Full disclosure: While I thought it looked nice from the pictures, I wasn’t expecting it to be a game changer.
The next day I made that apartment our last stop for the day. At that point there was one property from the day before that I was seriously leaning toward. It had everything I said I wanted in an apartment – spacious, updated kitchen, space for my dining room table, good-sized bedrooms and bathrooms, and a washer and dryer included in unit. It even came with my own dedicated parking space (say whatt?!). I was all but certain I would choose that one. This last stop was really just a formality. I wanted to check it out for the sake of comprehensiveness. Little did I know I would not be scratching it off the list.
As soon as we walked into the lobby, I knew this place was special. There was so much visual stimulation (in a good way) that I didn’t know where to fix my eyes first. As beautiful as the lobby and common areas were, I told myself to contain my excitement until I saw the actual apartments. It’s not uncommon for apartments to go all out making the lobbies beautiful only for the actual units to fall flat. This wasn’t the case here.
The apartment we saw was #naturallight goals. Basically floor to ceiling windows so I would rarely have to turn on a light (yay for low electricity bills). The biggest and pretty much only drawback to this place was the size of the kitchen. There’s no getting around it – it’s small. It’s definitely much smaller than I’d like or am used to. It’s workable though. I’ll just have to be a bit more creative with how I use the space. Thank God for Pinterest.
When we finished touring #11 I was torn. We went out to lunch at Zoe’s Kitchen, both got a bomb Harissa Salmon pita, walked around a little bit, and I still couldn’t decide. Why was this choice so difficult? I’d watched this scenario play out countless times on House Hunters lol. I just knew that I’d choose the place that met all or the most of my criteria rather than going for “character.” Based on my criteria, I should have chosen the apartment from Day 1, but something kept bringing me back to the Day 2 apartment. 
I wasn’t being irresponsible in considering the Day 2 apartment though. It did have all of my criteria except one (albeit an important one), it was significantly cheaper, close to some good gyms, and had a closer and highway-free route to work (which is a BIG deal considering Atlanta traffic). In the end I felt like I would be getting so much more than I was giving up so I went with the Day 2 choice.
That’s how an apartment that wasn’t on my list, that I didn’t even know about, and that has a small kitchen ended up as my new home in Atlanta. I have no regrets about it though. I’m excited to decorate it, to walk around in house slippers on a rainy Sunday afternoon, to host family and friends, and to hopefully make lots of new friends here. A big thank you to my sister for not just her patience with me as I was making the decision (it took me hours y’all lol), but her eagle eye that spotted my future home in the first place. She is so awesome. <3
I hope you all have a great week!
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