Furnishing an apartment

When I last left off we had finally, after much hand wringing, decided to take the apartment. We then had 24 hours to sign the lease agreement, and send the deposit. The agent asked us to take a screen shot of the deposit and send it to him, along with confirmation that we had submitted the least. Sure, no problem.

So we meticulously go through the lease (because we are those people). Its all pretty standard, and it seems like Victoria (the state Melbourne is in) is pretty reasonable with their tenant rights, so that is nice. Sending money internationally is actually a giant pain in the butt, and takes way longer than you expect it will (up to 5 business days!), so we decide to send the deposit from our newly minted Australian bank account. You know how you can nickname your bank accounts in your banking app? Well of course Justin & I have always done that. In Canada, we called our joint account 'The War Chest'. When we got an Australian joint account, we of course named it 'The War Chest - DOWN UNDAAA!'. Oh yea. We're adults.

So we sign and submit the leases. We sent the payment, and take a screen shot of the confirmation. I write a lovely, professional email to the agent to let him know that everything is completed on our end, and the screen shot is attached. Its only when attaching the screenshot I realize the confirmation shows the account nickname on it, and that we are sending these funds from 'The War Chest - DOWN UNDAAA!'. This will no doubt be forever documented in their files. I'm horrified.

There is this thing in psychology where once you make a decision that isn't easy to undo, you brain immediately starts working to justify and prove your decision was the right one (I think I have actually talked about this before - its called post-decision dissonance. Its categorized as 'dissonance' because we are working to reduce the dissonance, or lack of agreement, that our decision wasn't the right choice. This happens regardless of whether the decision was the right choice or not.). Between this effect, and the reality that this place meets all of our needs, we are mostly convinced that we made the right choice.

Due to what I am sure is a perfectly valid real estate reason that I'm not aware of, we don't actually move in until March 17th. And rather than pro-rating for the rest of the month and then paying on the first, our rent is due on the 17th of every month, and our lease ends on March 16, 2024. Things are crazy down here.

While we would prefer to be in our own place as soon as possible (living in an Airbnb gets old pretty fast), we don't actually mind the extra time. First of all, we have our Airbnb booked until the 20th (which, in hindsight I'm glad we booked it for so long. Props to past Laura & Justin for that one), and this gives us time to figure out how to do all the things you need to do to make a place livable: water & power hook ups, internet, and some very basic furniture and appliances.

As a reminder, we left all of our furniture, housewares, linen, etc back in Nova Scotia. We originally thought we would ship a couple of boxes, but it quickly became clear that its really not worth it. Sending letters and small light packages isn't too expensive, but as soon as you get into parcels, shipping costs are in the hundreds of dollars. We ended up bringing a couple of small creature comforts with us: our favourite mugs, some of our fridge magnet collection, our preferred fork and spoon. Other than that, we have nothing in terms of housewares, kitchen equipment, linens, etc. When we were packing everything up, it was a constant game of 'is this worth keeping?'. I suspect we are about to play the opposite game, 'is this worth getting?'. But this time we will be playing on hard mode, because we don't have a vehicle. Anything big needs to be able to be delivered, while everything else needs to be small enough that we can bring it on transit with us.

We've already decided that a big Ikea order is inevitable. That will cover the bed, bed linens and towels. Similarly, we decided to order a washer & fridge from a discount appliance place, so they will also be delivered. The only other thing I absolutely need to make a place immediately livable is a kettle. Only savages live without coffee and tea.

In my mind, as soon as the basics are covered, the fun part begins: the scouring and searching of thrift stores for pots and pans, lamps, end tables, etc. I really like looking for kitchen stuff. So many other things end up as a debate between Justin & I about what's ugly vs tolerable. Turns out we have very different tastes and aesthetics. And yes, if you are curious, we have already talked about the fact that we are going to have to buy hangers.