If you want to start a good argument amongst a group of people, ask them if they prefer satellite television or cable. With gusto that is usually reserved for conversations about religion or politics, people will plead their case with unbridled passion, trying to convince you which one you should go with. By living in an apartment, you have extra concerns that home owners don’t have to take into consideration. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of cable versus satellite for your Atlanta apartment.

The first thing you need to find out is how the dish you would buy would be positioned. Some apartment owners who don’t live on the first floor are stuck having the dish planted into the ground, with a wire snaking up the side of the building, through the window and screwed into the back of the television. You may have an apartment that simply faces the wrong way and your apartment complex may not allow dishes at all. Until you have this cleared up, make sure you don’t buy anything in advance.

If you are still considering the dish, find out what has been done to reduce reception problems during rain and thunderstorms. It wasn’t that long ago that dish users would lose their signal completely if it so much as sprinkled while they were watching television. You won’t want to be in the middle of something you really want to watch only to lose your picture at just the wrong moment.

Finally, with all things equal, compare cost and channel availability. If you are a pro football fan, the Sunday Ticket package is only available on the dish, while cable sometimes has exclusive programming of their own. Both systems have legions of loyal fans, so you will likely end up with a quality product no matter what.

It is safe to say that the Internet has completely revolutionized the way that most people look for apartments. Not only have the traditional want ads been completely replaced with free online alternatives, but many of these same web sites also have resident reviews of apartment buildings and complexes that are free to read so you know before hand if you are moving into a problem area.

Apartment complexes reviews are fairly easy to find on the Internet. Not only do local online apartment hunting websites have them, many national sites have them, as well. You can start by checking out the webpage for your local newspaper and seeing if they have an online classified ad page for home and apartment hunting. They will likely have a reviews section as well, especially if you are looking for an apartment complex managed by a large company and not an individual.

If you don’t have any locally based recourses like the one mentioned above, don’t worry, many nationally run apartment hunting websites are chock full of valuable information. Simply do a quick Google search for apartment hunting websites in your neck of the woods and follow the links to the apartment review section. You can read about how honest the management company there is and if they are to be trusted as your new landlords. One important thing to keep in mind, however, is that some professionally run apartment complexes change management on a fairly regular basis. A review from 2003 isn’t likely accurate now.

Depending on who you ask, a top floor apartment can be the greatest thing since sliced bread or it can be a hassle that just isn’t worth it. Some people welcome the idea of vaulted ceilings, but others would rather not pay the extra cost every month. Some people love the views, but others hate the fact that they have to troop down dozens of stairs every time some one pulls a false fire alarm. Let’s look at the pros and cons of living on the top floor.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to living on the top floor is that you reduce the number of places where noise can come from. You may still have noisy people living on both sides of you and below you, but not above you and that minor reprieve is more than worth it to most people.

The biggest drawback to living on the top floor for many is the extra cost. Not only do you have the cost of vaulted ceilings tacked on to your rent, but there is often a second fee for a better view. Not only that but if your building doesn’t have elevators, or if they are broken on a regular basis, you have many, many stairs to climb. Add into that the idea that you can’t use an elevator during a fire drill or a fire alarm, and many people would rather live anywhere other than the top floor.

If there is one universal truth when it comes to kitchens, it is that they seem to be shrinking at a drastic rate. The cause for this is easy to pinpoint: apartment space in general is shrinking and since more and more people only use their kitchen to heat up leftovers they got from take out, why waste space on large kitchens. For the rest of us who enjoy cooking, however, we have tiny stoves, no kitchen counter space and reduced size refrigerators. Here are a few general tips you can follow to help yourself get the most out of your reduced sized cooking space.

If you own a microwave, try to utilize it on a push cart that can stand just outside of your kitchen so it doesn’t take up what little counter space you have. Failing that idea, try to bolt it to the bottom of your cabinets so you can at least use the space below it. Microwaves are essential, but nothing else in the world eats up more space.

The same is true for things like coffee makers, toasters and toaster ovens and anything else you sit on your counters. Try to move them up or out to maximize space.

This one can be chalked up to common sense, but do your dishes as soon as you use them, even as you cook, to help reduce clutter and maximize counter space. Not only is this the best way to keep food from crusting on, it helps to keep the after dinner work load to a minimum.

As apartments get smaller and smaller, finding enough places for your belongings can be a bigger and bigger challenge. Some apartments don’t let you install new shelving without express permission, so that reduces your options even further. Here are a few space saving options you can implement in your new apartment.

One of the most popular space saving tools in recent years are shoe holders that can be suspended from a bar in your closet. These holders turn the horizontal storing of shoes or knick knacks into a vertical solution and can be used all over the house in bedroom closest and in hall closets.

If you live in a large city and websites like Craigslist at your disposal, you can find hundreds of cheap, used bookshelves and other portable storage units available for almost nothing. Now, no one wants an apartment filled with nothing but bookshelves, but it does beat storing all of your stuff in a big pile on the floor.

You can also look into installing shelving units that don’t put holes in the walls. You might want to refrain from putting too much weight on these types of shelving units, but they are better than nothing. You can also check with your landlord and see if they are okay with you putting holes in the walls as long as you pledge to fill them in and paint over them once you do.

Storage is a huge problem in today’s apartment world, but there are some common sense solutions out there.

As apartment kitchen space continues to go the way of the dinosaur, more and more people are turning away from recycling simply because they don’t have the space for it. Depending on where you live, some counties in the United States do not require any recycling at all, while others mandate it and enforce it with heavy fines. Here are a few tips you can use in your new Atlanta apartment to stay on top of recycling.

Perhaps the most obvious tip is to not wait for things to pile up to the point where you become discouraged about recycling in the future. Most recycling centers ask that aluminum cans not be crushed but kept in their original form when you drop them off. That means that cans end up taking up a lot of room and need to be brought in on a regular basis. A good rule of thumb to follow is to take care of your recycling once a week, say, on a Saturday morning, so that it becomes routine.

If your apartment complexes or building doesn’t have a recycling area, talk to your landlord or rental agent about setting up a fenced in area that contains the necessary recycling bins that are required in your area. They should have these bins already available to you, so double check the areas around your building to see if they already exist. Many cities require bins be available by law so it is possible that your building manager is doing something illegal by not providing them to you and to every resident in your building.