I hate moving season. The very notion of having to box up my belongings and relocate to another space, re-paint my walls to white, paint my new walls away from white, make friends with someone that owns a truck (which usually means putting out), and convincing others that they should help me move the few pieces of furniture that I have all add up to a big fat headache.

I spent a portion of yesterday looking at apartments. Five apartments to be exact. I rode along with “The Apartment People”, a “free” service here in Chicago that lists and shows apartments. To her credit, she picked out 5 pretty good places that they were close to where I was looking to live. She showed me the perfect place (with a god awful color palette). This place had a garage with remote, 2 bedrooms, brand new kitchen, big fenced yard for Stella to run around in and the rent was reasonable. Then the landlord asked for a full month’s rent as a deposit for Stella. He asked for a $795.00 pet deposit! I told my apartment guide that I would take the place on 2 conditions, one being that he allow me to paint and the other that he make the pet deposit reasonable like $200-$250. He countered with half a month’s rent. So totally move-in cost to me would have been, and I’m bad with math, cause, well, math is hard, but my total move-in would be, 3 carry the 5 minus the 2 plus… $2,200 roughly. I told him he could shove that 2 grand, well, my guide did so much more diplomatically than I did.

So I settled on another place that is very nice, walking distance to Wendy’s, upstairs from a coffee shop, next door to a Hot Dog stand and across the street from both a CVS and a Sears. This apartment too would require close to $2100 in order to move in.

I don’t get it. Why is a full month’s rent as a deposit so damn important?

Alas, I came home and went back at the classifieds and found a few more apartments to look at today. These take dogs and have reasonable deposit requirements. No parking, but at this point, I?ll hunt down a garage at a later date.

Off to find a new abode.