This is a sort of sequel post to the one about my unfortunate first night in Dublin. But while that ordeal lasted less than 12 hours, this one lasted 9 months. In this entry of the tales of frugality, I’ll take you through the harrowing story of my first apartment in New Hampshire. There’s inexperience, bad roommates, a sleazy landlady, and Mushroom Guy. So strap in, it’s going to be a long one.
Striking Out on My Own
It all started in the summer of 2018. I had just received my bachelors in mechanical engineering and was offered a research assistant position at UNH. After talking to some current grad students, an off campus apartment seemed to be the best choice. Based on the local housing prices, I focused my search on Dover, NH. I looked for a place with roommates to defray the cost of renting. After responding to a Craigslist ad, I drove up with Marisa to check the place out.
The Bait and Switch
The house I toured was…not good. The carpets were old and looked dingy. The kitchen and dining room areas were small. The place didn’t look like it was well cleaned or well cared for. Marisa, the quality assurance advocate, made sure that I knew her opinion: do NOT rent a room here.
I wholeheartedly agreed. I told the landlady that I wasn’t interested. She told me about her other property that was a little more expensive but still reasonable. So we drove a few minutes and arrived at a duplex. It was worlds better than the other house. Feeling like I found a decent landing spot, and not wanting to drive 4 hours round trip again for tours, I agreed to rent a furnished 3rd floor bedroom.
The Weirdness Begins
After I moved in, I realized a funny thing. The house seemed worse than I remembered it being. Without the first terrible house as a comparison, it didn’t seem like such a great find. It was good enough for a grad student, so I figured that it would be fine since I only had a 9 month lease. As for my roommates, I never really saw one tenant but he was moving out the second month I was there. The other was a fellow grad student who I got along well with. The fourth bedroom remained unoccupied for the time being. Then the first roommate got replaced by another one. And that’s when the tolerable but kind of shabby apartment started to get intolerable.
The New Second Floor Tenant
The new guy started off okay. He seemed friendly enough. But then the sink started to get filled with dirty dishes. They sat there for a week and I mentioned the situation to both my roommates. They both acted as if they weren’t theirs. But since I had been living with roommate number 1 for a couple months now, I knew that he was neat. I confronted the new guy about washing his dishes and he finally did a couple days later. This was a process that would repeat for the next 7 months. Overall, his lack of cleanliness really strained our roommate relationship and I couldn’t stand him after a couple months.
Landlady Issues
The landlady was a bit odd and got more sketchy as time went on. From talking to other grad students, I heard stories of previous tenants having strange run-ins with her. I also heard that she screws people out of their security deposits (which turned out to be true). Also, I noticed that there were no smoke alarms on the first floor after I accidentally burned some food. It took a couple weeks of bugging the landlady about it before she had someone come and install them. But the place got really weird when the fourth bedroom got rented and Mushroom Guy came into my life.
Mushroom Guy
How do I even describe Mushroom Guy? No, he was not someone who consumed psychedelic mushrooms. He had a business that grew and sold artisanal mushrooms. He sold at farmers markets and restaurants. One time, he even set up a table on the side of the road and sold them. It takes a very bold person to buy mushrooms from a roadside table.The mushroom business is interesting, and there’s nothing wrong with being a little quirky. But mushrooms were his only interest. You couldn’t talk to him about anything else. They were his whole life. Any conversation would be turned to mushrooms. This was an actual conversation that took place:
Him- “Doing anything fun this weekend?”
Me- “Yeah, I’m going for a hike”
Him- “If you see any interesting mushrooms, grab them for me”
Everything was fine though, there weren’t mushrooms filling the house or anything. But then he started experimenting with different mushroom products. He made some kind of spicy mushrooms in olive oil concoction that he placed in a plastic container. He didn’t manage to sell any of these. And then I started coming back to the apartment at night to find the table covered in mushrooms and other materials.
And then, as quickly as he came into my life, he was gone. One day I was making breakfast and he was packing things into a garbage bag. He told me that he was leaving and that he didn’t tell the landlady. With that brief goodbye, he left and never returned. The worst part is that he used one of our $1.50 per bag city garbage bags for his clothes. Plus he left some of the spicy mushroom concoction in the back of the cabinet. We found it months later. It was really moldy and gross.
The Value Issues
It didn’t take long for me to resolve to move out at the end of my lease. I found a one bedroom apartment that I rented all for myself. After the year-ish I spent with the weird and bad roommates, I was done. As a final parting gift, the landlady said that I could stay in the house for the week between when my lease ended and my new one began. That is, until two days before the lease ended when she said that I had to be out of the apartment when the lease ended, or else. So I had to drive all of my stuff from New Hampshire back to Massachusetts, only to drive it all back to New Hampshire the following week. Ah, the joys of renting from bad landlords/ladies.
I ended up moving closer to Dover’s fun downtown, to a small one bedroom apartment. It was more expensive, but well worth it. Yet another lesson in value over cost (I seem to get a lot of these). Overall, I can’t say that I made terrible decisions with the apartments. I didn’t choose the bad roommate and it was impossible for me to tell that the landlady was going to be bad. She seemed nice and friendly enough when she showed me the place. Yes, the duplex and room were not the best and the lower cost was a big reason why I chose to live there. But by seeing the really bad place right before I toured, it seemed pretty decent! My inexperience was certainly to blame, and I learned a lot about where I find value in an apartment.