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On Places Where I Have Lived
Oh man. I have too many of these for being so young. From my mom's house in a lower-income, north-central Illinois farm town, I moved to the dorms at my mediocre state university (NIU) for two years, and from there into several different apartments. The first was a tiiiiny 2 bedroom that I shared, and paid $310 a month for, followed by subletting a place with my then-boyfriend for $350 a month, then a one bedroom for all of two months for $795, a room in a townhouse with 2 boys who kind of screwed me over for $350, right around the time I dropped out of college in my junior year, half of a two bedroom with a terrible abusive ex for $400 a month, then, gloriously, into a mis-labeled "efficiency apartment". Three enormous (12x12 or 12x10 with 12 ft ceilings) rooms, kitchen, bedroom, living room and a bath over an old Main Street type building for $500 a month and electricity. The hallway and stairwell were shady as hell, and it had a floor to ceiling stripper pole in the living room when I did my walkthrough of it, but I loved that place. Rents were so low because we were 30 miles from the nearest suburb, and about 60 miles from Chicago itself. Now I live in Madison, WI with my boyfriend in a 3 bedroom house.
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On Stop Buying Useless Crap, and Other Tenets of Militant Minimalism
Oh man. Whenever I lived alone, this was me. I rarely bought clothes or anything else for that matter, and I saved almost all of every paycheck and my tips that didn't go to necessities like rent and food, etc. Then I moved in with the boyfriend. He NEEDS to buy things. Last fall we experimented with him doing things my way and walking away from stuff unless it was a necessity or a once-in-a-great-while splurge. He actually got, like, angry. At not being able to just hemhorrage money. I just don't get it. So we went back to me having money my way, him having money his way. He still has a ton of THINGS in his house, though. I dread moving. This article makes me want to talk to him about starting to pare some stuff down.