Chris and I recently got back from looking for housing in Seattle. It was Chris’ fourth time there (he had only been for job interviews.) and my first time. I was super nervous I would get there and hate it, and then think, “Great, I have to live here now.” But I didn’t! I actually really enjoyed it.
Seattle is a very well known city, so I had an idea of what to expect. The rain, it being overcast, lots of water, green, etc. But there were A LOT of things I wasn’t prepared for.
It is hilly. I went to San Francisco last summer and I expected San Fran to be hilly, but i wasn’t prepared for it in Seattle. The city is built on SO many hills! Steep hills too!
It did rain a lot in Seattle. It rained every day we were there except one day. But the rain wasn’t bad at all. It didn’t slow anybody down. No need for umbrellas either. Only one day would I have classified it as a decent rain and that didn’t start until mid afternoon.
Parking and traffic were different than here for sure. Its almost all street parking and if there are parking lots they are super small. I’m definitely going to have to work on parallel parking!
The roads are more narrow, have less lanes, and have slower speed limits. Even the busy highways are more like our surface streets here. The traffic is definitely worse in Seattle.
Their trash cans (dumpsters) are TINY, like a little box. (You can pay for a bigger one.) Even the 2nd biggest size is the size of the trash can in my house that I fill up like 3 times a week. They are big into recycling (which we do know.) but they also have composting. The tricky thing is you can get fined if you throw 10% or more of your trash in the wrong bin. I am going to have to research how to throw my trash away. And we can’t be wasteful at all. This could actually be good for us, but who has to learn how to throw trash away? Yikes!
Housing is expensive, preschool is expensive, (my kids are going to go to a preschool that cost about as much as my college cost me to go to and we are looking at the cheapest we can find!) but most other things will be close to the same.
Everyone was outside. More people were outside in the rainy winter than people are out here in Chandler when its in the 70s and beautiful out.
They have a lot of parks/outdoor space.
They love dogs.
They love the Sea Hawks.
Its like being in the forest, and being in a city, and being on the ocean. Super cool!
People there LOVE Seattle.
People LOVE their neighborhood. (Their section of the city.)
We will definitely have a lot of adjusting to do, but I think we will like it!
