Apartment Life: Jeri Wilburn Don't Live Here No More

It feels good to live on your own. This July marks our one year anniversary of living Han Solo and the thing I'm most proud of is that we landed the place without needing the help of a friend or family member. We scoured newspapers, checked online, and asked around vaguely until the PennySaver led us to our utopia. We put in work, checked out a bunch of dumps, drove through a few cities, and after about a two month process it all paid off.

There's a whole lot of advantages to living here. We both work within five miles of where we live so for an entire year we've saved loads of money on gas. A lot of favorite restaurants are closer and we get our own parking spaces that are safely locked up in the back. There's a pool here that we never use and a post office, grocery store, community college, and freeway entrance all within a few blocks.

But what kind of American would I be if I didn't use this blog to complain about all of the little things that continue to upset, confuse, and frustrate us on a daily basis? In this "Apartment Life" series, I'll shed light on what you should expect to annoy you when leaving the nest. This week our topic is mail.

Mail. Expect to receive someone else's mail from the day you move in until the day you move out. The first week we got here I went to the post office to try and prevent getting mail addressed to the Wilburn family. Filled out the right forms and asked all the right questions to make sure I don't get invitations to the next African-American AARP meeting in Long Beach. But here we are, a year later, and I got my second subscription notice for Essence magazine. I appreciate the fact that they're trying to save me $53.82 but enough is enough.

The simple act of taking mail that's not yours and throwing it away becomes tedious in no time. Most, if not all of my mail is sent to my new address because I did the right thing and changed it the official way. The process is painless. I'm sending this request out ATTN to Jeri Wilburn and the Wilburn family: change your address and save the rain forest.