Three Years In My Downtown Toronto Apartment

I have reflected recently on my three years at Acquia and my three years living in Toronto, and today marks three years living in my downtown Toronto apartment. I got the keys to the place on December 1st, 2015, and spent the next two weeks slowly moving in, making multiple subway and streetcar trips from a friend's basement to Queen & Spadina to bring over the stuff I had bought over the course of a month, and waiting for my Ikea furniture to be delivered and then put together. I would go several months without a couch, its purchase being a story of its own. I still rent, having failed to convince the landlord to buy the place off him, and have done two rounds of looking for a similarly new (my building was built in 2013 or so) and similarly tiny apartment to buy, without any luck.

The location of my current place couldn't be more ideal. It's a 17-minute streetcar ride to work, and I'm located on one of Toronto's best shopping avenues (Queen St.) and its entertainment district (King St.), at the intersection of two streets with dedicated streetcar paths (both King and Spadina). Every music venue I end up attending seems to be half an hour away by transit for some reason, but at least it's only ever that.

My proudest moment, aside from the couch purchase, has been the addition of a Muskoka chair. The dream of owning a cottage in Ontario is the dream of owning a car, and I'd just rather not. So instead of bringing me to the cottage, I brought the cottage to me. Would you believe I'm the only one in my building with one? You wouldn't, and that's because I own two now.

In order for it to have a name in Foursquare's Swarm app, I gave my apartment the moniker Hvalhús, which translates into "Whale House" (because I love whales). The English translation of if gets a "The" and there's an infrequently updated Twitter account and Instagram account for it every time something significant gets added to it.

"Space is at a premium" every time someone suggests I buy something for it, so I always order the smallest version of that thing. Three years of stuff has accumulated, and hopefully the winter months of January and February will be boring enough for me to want to part with some things. Overall, though, I'm very happy with it, and do things (like cook and hang art on the walls) that I would never have considered doing when I lived alone in my twenties. Now that I'm in my forties and living alone again, my apartment feels like a place to live in.