mturek's Profile

yeah you might be "clean" but you've got lots of oils in your skin that muck up your sheets. my fiance is a clean but oily guy, and changing the sheets frequently is a must.

also, you might be "clean," but the air in your home isn't. for people with allergies (both my fiance and i have pretty bad allergies), changing the sheets often cuts down on the indoor allergens that settle in your sheets.

Haha I was thinking the same thing DreamShop

Hey Tammy,

I live in the West Village, too. I'm in a place that's kind of in between a studio and a one-bedroom. When we (I live with my fiance) started looking almost two years ago, we asked to look at one-bedrooms. But we hated all of them - for what we could pay (our max was $2700), the one-bedrooms felt cramped and dark. But then the studios were often too small and open for two people to live in.

What's nice about the place we ended up in is that there is definite separation and flow between the "rooms" but the apartment is open and bright and airy. You can tell that at one point there were french doors separating the spaces, but those french doors are long gone, leaving walls with large door frames in them. I have a real kitchen with four walls and a table. That makes the place feel less like a studio/ dorm room, I think. It's also a good size - 450 square feet, and in a good location, and we only pay $2000/ month.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that you've got options! If I were you, I'd just poke around and see if you can find anything you like better. I'm always curious to call the phone numbers I see on the signs hanging off buildings advertising rooms for rent - maybe give that a try? I know that there are apartments for rent in my building, and I'm sure that there are more of these studio/one-bedroom hybrids in this part of town, so hopefully you won't have to move out of the neighborhood :)

Good luck!

How about Marilyn Monroe's? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/dining/10marilyn.html?_r=1&ref=dining

I'm not an expert on evictions in Chicago, but I do know that unless you've got a written, year-long lease, your landlord can't evict you just because he doesn't like you. The landlord needs to give reasons, like you don't pay your rent, you've damaged the property or you've broken the lease. If you're served an eviction notice, the notice should indicate the specific reason - in this case, which provision of the lease you violated. In NYC, where I live, the landlord is required to give you a chance to fix the problem before you're evicted - maybe the same is true in Chicago. Anyway, if you don't act on the eviction notice and stay put, the landlord might take you to court. However, if you haven't done anything wrong, the judge might find that the landlord's eviction notice is improper. If you really haven't done anything wrong and the landlord is just harassing you by serving you with the notice, I wouldn't even expect the landlord to take it to court, but you never know.

I think it would be unlikely that the landlord would try to evict you especially since you only have three months left on your lease. Right now, landlords are lucky to have paying tenants, so as long as you pay your rent, you probably shouldn't worry about getting an eviction notice.

As for your neighbors, that's a different story! I'm not sure that there's anything you can do to pressure the landlord into helping you out unless what the neighbors are doing constitute a housing code violation. If there's a code violation problem, you can probably report it to the city or take the landlord to court to require the landlord to make repairs. But annoying neighbors are probably not code violations. I think your best bet is to leave your landlord out of it and make a noise complaint to the city by calling 311 every time your neighbors play loud music. Once enough complaints pile up, the city will investigate, leaving it so that you don't have to go through the landlord to get some relief.

Good luck!

i've sold things for more than i paid, too. Not too much more, but I list them for what I think someone would pay. When I try to buy something, I always offer a lower price, and it often works. I don't see anything wrong with trying to make a profit on craigslist - if the price is too high, ask for a lower one!

My fiance totally eats three times more than I do, but he also follows the rule that she who cooks does not clean!

I am a student during the school year and an intern during the summer, so we share duties differently depending on whether I'm on a student or working schedule. During the school year, I don't mind doing the shopping, cleaning, and cooking because he's the breadwinner and at the office all day. During the summer months, though, he cooks twice a week, I cook twice a week, we cook together on Sunday (that's our try-something-new-and-fancy night!), and we might eat leftovers or out the other nights. The person who's cooking does the shopping, and we clean together on Sundays. It works out well!

As for expenses, we never really found a system that worked. Both of us are fairly laid back about it, so it all evens out in the end. We don't count receipts or anything. It's not worth going gray over.

When can I move in? ;)

thanks for the diy advice! that makes sense!

how do you diy a rug?