For a reason unknown to me in some parts of Cincinnati people have the unruly habit of depositing their crap in public places like it’s their own personal storage unit. Not all of Cincinnati is like this. In fact, throughout most of Cincy people tend to keep immaculately maintained yards, gardens, and homes. We live in Anderson Township, and we chose to continue to live in Anderson Township with this current move because it’s a really nice area. Generally speaking, it is clean, quiet and safe. People don’t deposit rusting bikes, muddy tires, old furniture, or anything else of this nature in their front lawns. They mow their lawns, shovel their snow, keep their stuff contained within sheds or garages, and all the neighborhood kids gather outside with a parent or two to play touch football after school. This is our area of town. It reminds me of the 1950s that I did not live through, so I suppose it would be fair to say it conjures images of Boerne, or the 1950s, in my head. With, of course, the exception of one of our new neighbors at the apartment complex. Part of why we chose this apartment over others is because it was quiet, peaceful, and appeared to be well-maintained. Except for the one building we oh-so-luckily ended up in. Really, it’s not that bad. But I’m an anal retentive freak so this consumes me with annoyance. Dumping the junk you don’t know what to do with under the public stairwell of your building is rude and I think any normal person could see why this would irk someone who doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy. No I don’t, in fact, want to open my door every morning and see an old tire or three cobweb-riddled bicycles in an otherwise pretty area. If you have too much stuff then you need to man up and throw it away, store it on your private balcony, or rent a storage unit like the rest of us had to do. We did express our disappointment to the property manager, who had the cleaning crew remove the bikes, cobwebs, and dirt and clean up the stairwell since residents aren’t allowed to store stuff down there anyway. But no sooner were the bikes gone when a tire appeared, mere days later, and it’s been there ever since. I’m struggling to fight back the temptation to laminate a sign that reads “This is not your personal storage unit. Remove your shit or I will do it for you.” and slap it on the wall at the base of the stairwell.
This is a lesson in letting it go. I do not “let things go” very well. I’m working on it. Maybe this little obstacle was a precisely timed challenge from God to me. Some things in life I cannot help, and this I think, is just one of them. I can continue to alert the property manager every time a new dazzling piece of crap appears, and I can urge him to put a note in the mailbox of all 6 residents of our building reminding them that they are not allowed to store their junk under the stairwell, but really, that’s about all I can do. I have to let it go. As I’ll be needing to learn how to let other things go. Like the 200 lb. dog and teenage boy who likes loud metal music that live with his parents above us, or the apartment’s maintenance man who sloppily soaked a broken kitchen drawer in glue instead of actually fixing or replacing it and didn’t even bother to repair the timer on the stove despite the fact that our maintenance request list has been in his hands for nearly two weeks, or the snooty woman who lives above them who muttered under her breath that parking our vehicle in front of the complex “isn’t going to work”…..we were moving in. It leads me to question where precisely she parked her moving truck when she moved into the building? Likely in the exact same damn spot we did.
Though we don’t even actually live in the apartment yet (we’re moving in this weekend), so we haven’t given it a fair chance, Ted and I are already a little worried we may not like it here. Part of it may be that a house in a peaceful, lovely, private area really spoiled us. After a year we need to get re-used-to general apartment noises – footsteps above you, slamming doors, woofing dogs, public areas that people seem to be under the impression are private storage, a maintenance person who inevitably seems poorly-trained for the work he’s supposed to know how to competently do (I’m sure this is not an uncommon problem), etc. Maybe we’re just not used to these things anymore. Maybe I’m just sulking because I’m sad to leave our house behind. Maybe this place will grow on us and we’ll discover we like living there once we give it a shot. And maybe I just need to work on letting things go. Because I can’t fix all annoyances in life, and though it may irritate the heck out of me, is it really worth wasting the energy to get upset over? Honestly, no. But even though I know it, I have a very hard time accepting it and just letting things go that bug me.
So this move will challenge my “let it go” skills. I only hope it can teach me a thing or two.
