Living in a rental means that you’re probably living in less space than you would if you owned a home.

While our little place is more than enough space for the two of us, I love that we’re forced not to have too much excess {I can see G rolling his eyes at my ceramic animal collection now:)}  And even though we don’t plan on renting forever, I’m thankful this season is helping us keep things simple and defined to what we really love.

Hopefully, this is a lesson will keep reminding ourselves of daily, even when we have enough space for all my animal friends.

When you’re living in a rental, you may not always be able to change things.  While it can be frustrating to not have my particular aesthetic playing throughout my home, it forces me to be creative with what I can work with – the layout of our furniture, the colors that we bring with our decor, and other ways I try to make our home feel just like that – a home.

Over the last few months I’ve started to key into what I really love, things like open spaces and natural light, and things I may not love so much, specifically tile floor and dark walls.

Use the time that you’ve been given to learn what you like!

Things I never really thought of before living in a home: maintenance issues.  But since living  in our condo the last ten months, I’ve noticed those things alot more.

An oven burner here, a refrigerator leak there, and before you know it you’re spending several hundreds of dollars on repairs and/or replacements.

Thankfully though, most of our home maintenance repairs are taken care of under our rental agreement.  Not every landlord is like this, so it’s important to make sure you understand what they will and will not cover from the beginning.

If they do cover most of the items, that’s extra money that you get to save and put towards a down payment for a place of your own one day, when you probably won’t have someone to call on to take care of your repairs.

Does your landlord cover repairs?