Our first apartment after we were married was located at 736 E 1500 S, Orem, Utah. Our apartment was the bottom left apartment of a four-plex. It had two bedrooms and one bathroom. Our monthly rent payment was $275. We lived in this apartment from June 15, 1990, to July 31, 1992.
Mom and Dad (my parents) gave us a waterbed, a wooden frame couch with an ottoman, and the old family rocking chair. Mom and Dad (Annette's parents) gave us a sectional couch, two card tables, and four metal folding chairs. Kelly and Iris loaned us a washer and dryer. That was all we had.
Our first car was the Ford Probe that Cade and I bought after we finished shearing sheep in 1989. Our monthly car payment was $285. Annette (MBA office) and I (traffic office) both worked student worker jobs at BYU. Most of our income went to cover the rent and car payments. We allocated $40 per week for groceries.
When it started to get cold as winter approached during our first year, we would turn the thermostat down to about 60° before we left the apartment to go to campus. We figured we could not afford to heat the house while we were gone.
When we came home, the apartment was warmer than 60°. It stayed at about 68° - 70°. After investigating, we discovered that when the upstairs neighbor's furnace ran, our vents had warm air blowing from them. What a pleasant surprise!
We typically stayed on campus studying until early evening and got home around 7:00 p.m. We also tended to go to bed early (we were newlyweds after all!). Thus, we found that we did not have to turn our furnace on very much at all during the week and primarily used it on the weekends when we were home during the day.
We did have one issue with the apartment. The oven did not heat up to the right temperature. We would set the dial at 350° to bake something (usually cornbread) and found that it took things much longer to cook than we expected. After experiencing this a few times, we decided the oven was not getting hot enough. So, we bought an oven thermometer (see picture). After a bit of experimenting, we learned the oven was about 40° off (i.e., if we set the oven dial to 350° the oven would only heat to about 310°).
We kept the thermometer in the oven for the whole time we lived in the apartment. We would set the oven temperature dial and wait for the oven to preheat. Then, we would check the thermometer to confirm we had the right temperature before we put anything in the oven to cook.
A couple of weeks before we moved out of the apartment, we were deep cleaning the kitchen. Annette asked me to pull the knobs off the stove to clean under them. When I pulled off the oven temperature knob, I discovered the back of the knob had an adjustable dial that allowed us to change where the temperature selector needle pointed!
I adjusted the dial on the back and replaced the knob. For the last couple of weeks, we lived in the apartment we were able to set the oven temperature using the oven temperature knob because it was adjusted properly.
As I wrote this blog post and started thinking about our oven thermometer, I remembered that we kept the thermometer for a while after we left that apartment. So, I checked our kitchen drawer and found the thermometer (see picture). I do not think we have used it since we left the apartment. But we still have it just in case!
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| the oven thermometer we bought in 1990 |
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