toronto living

Things I have learned living in Toronto

1. Do not live on top of your landlord.

2. Do not live below your landlord.

3. It’s nice if your landlord doesn’t live in another country, you might get things fixed once and a while.

4. If you engage in 1 or 2 check the sanity of your landlord. A landlord with compulsive disorders or schizophrenia may direct their disorders towards you.

• I once had a landlord convince herself that my roommates and I had stolen her electric smoke detectors and replaced them with battery powered ones.  She nearly evicted us, but realized, thanks to her husband, that they had installed electric smoke alarms in one of their other apartments, but not in ours
• Denise was whole other kettle of fish. She even threatened to kill us in our sleep and forged documents to evict us illegally.
  Enforce your rights to personal space!

5. While renting an apartment it is your space! Landlords, that are not commercial landlords, view their properties subjectively, and will often, perhaps not purposefully, encroach on your personal space—letting themselves in without proper notice, overstaying their welcome, etc. Now, it is easier said than done.

• I currently have my landlord and his wife spending almost eight hours a day hanging out in my apartment. We have subletted a furnished apartment and with 8 days left on the lease they are already moving out the furniture in preparation for future tenants.

6. Keep it professional. You are not friends with your landlord. Sure, be courteous, but you don’t want to be involved in their melodrama.

• My landlord’s wife once showed up pregnant and claiming that her husband abused her, she asked us to hide both her and his documents. She assumed that since we were renting their personal house she was still entitled to live in it. They are now back together; they are the ones currently abusing our cordial nature.

7. When things get broke’d don’t wait till they accumulate, tell your landlord right away.

• Household wear and tear is their responsibility to fix. If you wait for the broken things to amass until the end of the lease they may try to extract money from you by refusing to return your damage deposit (which are illegal), or by suing you.
• Denise tried to sue us for 10, 000 dollars worth of water damage as we moved out. Luckily we had documented the flaws of the apartment when her craziness started to poke on through.  Perhaps if she had caulking around the walls of the bathroom and a proper waterproof floor there would be no water damage. We should have demanded a properly waterproofed washroom when we moved in. Lesson learned.

8. Paper trails! Don’t just e-mail your landlord, print things out and send them to them via snail mail, and keep a carbon copy.

• This can come in handy in a situation like 7 (with Denise & the water damage allegation). It may seem excessive, but if you start to smell something fishy it’s a good idea.

9. I’ve never lived in a commercial building, but it seems nice to have a law abiding, object repairing, faceless someone, who takes rent and respects your tenant rights.

10. A household requires a cleaning schedule.  Entropy is abound!

11. Be forward about what you expect from your roommates, don’t get passive aggressive. This might not work all the time, especially if you live with someone who is disrespectful. Typically, however, asserting that you are discontent and providing a solution is better than beating around the bush.

• A roommate once took the undone dishes of our third roommate and placed them around the apartment on the floor and in her room. This did not result in getting the dishes done, but in sowing the seeds of dissent.
• Living with someone more slovenly than you are can drastically improve your own propensity for cleanliness.

12. Everyone has different standards of clean. Some like things scrubbed to the pith, others are content with the appearance of orderliness, and some just don’t give a fuck. For your own happiness, try to live with people who mash up well with yours. You’d be surprised how much this affects your happiness level and your relationships with your roommates.

13. Not everyone will follow the cleaning schedule; someone is always likely to have to carry the slack.

14. Garbage—it’s gotta get out! A lot of the time we miss the garbage truck, either no one’s home, or it’s just forgotten. If you’re a keener, maybe putting a post-it on the door is a good method. “Garbage tomorrow at 9pm, please remember!”. Or something to that effect. We’ve never done that, but maybe I’ll give it a go in my next household.

15. Personal space—when you live with friends it can be hard to find time to think outside of your closed bedroom. And even then things like loud conversations and music can find their way to encroaching upon your space. That’s just living with roommates, find new places to read, paint, or think—try the library, park, or a café—or maybe it’s time to consider a one bedroom.

16. Sharing—we do all our shopping communally and often have family style meals together. I’m not sure how regular households work. I usually go by a if you use something that belongs to someone else replace it policy.

I guess that’s living with people though— you learn how to navigate around pushing each other’s buttons. Or you don’t and someone moves out.

Advertisement