Condo Blues, instead of Greens

We are living in our temporary home. After a short stint staying in our 350 sq ft guest home, the decision was made to find better accommodations. So after a week long search, we found a brand new, furnished condo on the island. Now, I have never lived in a brand new anything, nor have I ever had a brand new car. So I was very excited to live somewhere new, updated, not needing any work, but most of all clean. So we sign the papers and make the deal. Here's what we have discovered. When you move into a new home, the smell of a new place that is not eco-friendly is extremely overwhelming. We have kept our patio door open for the past 2 weeks despite cold weather to attempt to air it out. Everytime I open a melamine built cabinet, I get a whiff of the toxic VOCs. The first day that we spent the entire day inside, I started to feel dizzy and as though I was looking out of a dark tunnel. Needless to say that rain or shine, my kids and I are walking downtown and going somewhere else with fresh air everyday. Which is actually a blessing in disguise. Afterall, it is the holidays and the town is dressed up with lights on.

But then, the lights went out. A major windstorm hit the area, and we were without power for 2 days. This is when I discovered more problems with living in our poorly planned condo. Starting the list with a non-manual garage door (thank goodness it was so new it was not closed yet), no lights in the garage or stairwell (yes, we are on the third floor, which is fine for us, but what about the elderly) or hallways (though the boys did have fun with their flashlights), no cooking, and no heat. Electricity is truly what makes this condo go. All this was happening as I was reading "Better Off" (by candlelight, I might add), a book about a couple who goes off to live in a Amish-like community to see what it would be like to live without machines, without electricity. They were a part of it for 18 months, they enjoyed it, and almost decided to live there. I thought how far we are from that life. We need an electric key, to go through the electric garage door, and again use the electric key to go up in the electric elevator to go through our electric lit hallways into our electric heated home.

What would it take to just add enough solar panels to the top of this huge lot of buildings to collect energy for emergency use, or better yet, daily use. In this day and age of big money construction, you would think some agency would make it mandatory.

Husband and I have been talking about this for quite sometime. Ideas such as solar and wind power, electric cars or riding our bikes, simplifying our needs and our life have been a regular part of our weekly Sunday what-we-would-like-our-lives-to-be-like-someday discussions. The construction choices of these brand new condos were not planned for the future, and it really disturbed both of us, how with all the technology and new safer products, that these self proclaimed high end condos were built with a new millennium looking design, but with the structural interiors and products of the 1980's.

Another disappointment in these huge condo buildings is their lack of encouraging pedestrians and bicyclists through design. When they built them, they said that there would be no need for your car, as you could walk to ferry and downtown. Sadly, the design of a narrow walkway on one side of the exit, that does not match up to the stairs, but to the garage, with no markings for crosswalks, has made our everyday attempts of going into town with our 5 and 8 year old a bit nerve-racking to say the least. The extremely narrow roadway that has two blind curves towards the garage, doesn't exactly make you feel safe as fast cars of the 20 year youngs and the elderly (the majority of those who live here) come around the corner. Not to mention a missing bike rack downstairs, near the entrance, instead of inside, at the end of the garage lot. It sure wouldn't make me happy to ride my bike in that small space fighting the many cars for space on the road just to get out of the garage.

It is too bad that construction companies that build these places don't go through a more rigorous design process to create a better plans for future thinking and for those who might want to live green, especially on Bainbridge Island.