I moved into my new place almost seven months ago. Whenever I see friends, they ask, “Do you still love your new place?” I always answer a resounding, “Yes!” Recently, though, someone asked me, “What is something unexpected that you love about your new place?”

I thought for a moment. I thought about the known things, those things I anticipated I would love: having a washer and dryer in my apartment (I have never experienced so much joy from doing laundry), having beautiful colors on the walls, living in a neighborhood I love. However, three things came to mind that I didn’t anticipate I would love when I bought this place:

• I never realized how happy having so much sunshine in my apartment would make me feel. My apartment is a corner unit, facing south and east, and I get sunshine almost all day long. Bonus, I’m never cold anymore.
• I never realized how happy I would be in a place that I could actually clean, and get clean. Each of the homes that I’ve lived in for the past twenty years have been over 100 years old. That’s a lot of built up dust that just doesn’t come clean no matter how much bleach you use. Here, I sweep my floors and they are clean. Clean!
• I never realized how happy it would make me to look outside my window at various times of the day and see the sun rising over the San Francisco skyline, the sky a delicate pink; or the sun shining brightly at midday, making all the windows of the skyline sparkle like diamonds; or the darkness late at night, when the lights of the nearby buildings shine like urban stars.