You Make Too Much Noise

I believe that I have mentioned once or twice before that the upstairs apartments in this building have very creaky floors. It certainly isn't our fault that our floors creak and squeak and moan when we walk on them. We've kind of figured out where the worst spots are, and we try to avoid them late at night or early in the morning, when our downstairs neighbor is probably sleeping.

Now, DH starts work at 5:00 in the morning. This means that he has to get up at 4:00. That is VERY EARLY and we realize it, so we really try not to make a lot of noise. We prepare as much as possible the night before by getting the coffee ready, making as much of DH's lunch as we can, and getting out work clothes so DH can just grab them on his way to the bathroom in the morning. There's only so much we can do the night before, however, so for about fifteen or twenty minutes we are both moving around the apartment. Last night DH forgot to get his work clothes out. No big deal, they are all in one drawer, just open it and get them out. For some reason known only to himself, he didn't turn on the bedroom light and was digging around in the drawer by the light from his cell phone (at four o'clock in the morning you aren't always at your sharpest.) So it took him a little longer than usual, like, oh you know, a minute. Then he went into the bathroom. Then he came back into the bedroom for something else he had forgotten. Hey, he's human, right? People forget things! But that meant more floor creaking in the bedroom. Apparently it ticked off our downstairs neighbor because the next thing we knew she was banging on her wall or ceiling or something to indicate her displeasure.

Now I don't know about you, but when I'm doing something that is bothering someone else, banging on the wall does not make me want to stop. In fact it really rubs me the wrong way. I quickly get into my flesh and picture myself jumping up and down, or doing a nifty two-step in the hall while wearing tap shoes. If you have a problem, address it with us. You can come upstairs and knock on our door and we can discuss it like civilized adults. It doesn't have to be right when the problem is going on, if it happens to be early in the morning. You can wait until you are up for the day. If you are unable to talk to us, you can leave a polite note on our door. The way I see it, though, is that if you live in an apartment, you are going to hear your neighbors. That is just the way it is. I realize that creaking floors can be annoying, but five minutes of creaking sure beats all night, like BIL/SIL1 have to hear from their neighbor! Besides, we don't complain to our downstairs neighbor about her thumping bass sound system. If our moving around in the morning bothers her so much she should invest in some kind of white noise maker, like a fan or something. Deal with it. Like the rest of us apartment dwellers. And stop banging on the walls. You might wake up the Boogie and then you'd really be sorry.