There are a lot of things to get used to when you move from an apartment into a house for the first time.
I had grown so accustomed to hearing neighbors at all hours of the day that I was pleasantly surprised when a week went by in the new house with virtually no noise bleeding in from outside. It felt so calming and relaxing to finally get peace and quiet. No longer will I hear footsteps and pounding from above at 6am or at inexplicable times in the middle of the night. On the flip side, there are definite disadvantages to living in a house after leaving an apartment. In apartment buildings, the property manager covers maintenance and upkeep on everything outside each individual apartment unit. The grass is mowed on schedule and a fresh coat of paint is applied every two years as the old ones grow dingy from environmental abuse. I’m also not used to having such a high electricity bill. It’s easy to accidentally leave on lights throughout the house if you forget that you turned something on. There are more appliances and more outlets to power machines and electronics. Worst of all, the cost to keep the interior cool and climate controlled is much higher than I was expecting. There is an additional 400 square feet of interior space to climate control. But, the thing I least expected was the house retaining less conditioned air as the HVAC system runs. Every external wall of the house is exposed to sunlight at some point during the daytime. This extra radiant heat makes the cool air inside get warmer much faster than in an apartment that is wrapped by other apartment units.