The Six Apartment Lifestyle Apps You Must Have On Your Home Screen

Apartment lifestyle comes with benefits – mowing the grass isn’t your problem, and neither is fixing the roof. But it also comes with some hangups that are pretty universal. Things like roommates, neighbors, and generally having too much to do and too little time. That last one is pretty much universal among Americans in general, actually, regardless of where they life.

Below, you’ll find six apartment lifestyle apps that will help you regain control over your life, your apartment, and your time.

Too Much Stuff, Not Enough Lists?

Everyone should have a home inventory.  If you have Santa Monica Renters Insurance, you’ll want a home inventory so that you can make a claim. While no one should be without the coverage, if you’re one of the fifty-six percent of Americans who don’t have it, you’ll still want to know what you have. It will keep you from buying duplicate things and is useful in replacing stuff after a loss.

Paper and pencil are dead. Know Your Stuff, an app from the Insurance Information Institute, lets you easily create a home inventory that’s then stored off-premises. You can identify where in the house, what kind of item, fill in the specifics, even take a picture of the item.

Pictures are always a good idea for high value items, unique items, or things that might have serial numbers on them. The app is free, and it’s a great way to know what you have and what you need to protect. It can even help you determine how much personal property coverage you need on renters insurance. It’s easy and straightforward to use, and you’ll be surprised how fast things add up.

It’s important to remember that you’re insuring at replacement cost, not at actual cash value. That’s why the app asks for “price” instead of “value,” so that you can make sure you claim the appropriate amount to be able to go buy a new item should there be a loss.

Need A New Pad?

The HotPads app has got you covered. You can search by proximity to your location or another specific location, and you could even walk through a few neighborhoods that you like and try searches by proximity to your current location. That would let you see what’s available in that neighborhood that you love where nothing is ever advertised in the paper.

HotPads has the largest number of data providers of any similar site, which means that it’s able to give you the best chance at getting the right new apartment because they have them all.

Apartment hunting shouldn’t be a painful experience, even in a tough real estate market. You can improve your apartment lifestyle by finding the perfect place to live and by making sure you know everything about it before you even make an inquiry.

You can search on a wide variety of different criteria, since everyone weights things differently. Whether you’re just looking around or serious about getting out of your current digs, HotPads will make the search easier.

Would Decorating Advice Fix Your Apartment Lifestyle?

Houzz Interior Design Ideas gives you the tools you need to envision a better apartment lifestyle and to make it a reality. Whether you want to see whether that lamp would look better in a different corner, or you want to shop for furniture and other things you need for the home and see how they might look, the app can help you.

If you need professional help – with interior decorating, we mean – you can connect with nearly a million active home improvement professionals who are able to assist you with that, right through the app.

While some of the images are pure art, your apartment doesn’t have to be perfect in order to make use of Houzz. You’ll be able to get ideas and use them to improve your space no matter what kind of home you’re trying to spruce up.

There’s a strong community of users within the app, too. One user went so far as to say that “not one question I’ve had about any aspect of my home or yard is original – they have all been pondered, posed, and answered on Houzz.” That community is a great asset to the app.

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• Do You Need Some Time Alone With Your Thoughts? We understand, which is why we created the California Guide To Renters Insurance. 
• Just Want To Watch A Movie Together? See our Video California Renters Insurance Guide!

Got Roommates? Got Bills? Got Chores? Get HomeSlice!

If your apartment lifestyle includes roommates – maybe you’re in college, or maybe you live in the Bay Area and want to save a few bucks – you probably have a whiteboard for who needs to do something, buy something, or pay something around the house. Or maybe a notebook. Either way, it’s outdated and inaccurate.

HomeSlice brings all of that into one private app that keeps you all connected and keeps the information in one place. Just paid the cable bill? Let them pay their share with Venmo – or cash, you can record that easily as well.

Did someone use the last of the paper towels and needs to get more? Add it to their shopping list. As much as no one likes to think about them, you can even split chores through the app. Everyone does their fair share, everything gets done, and your home remains habitable.

HomeSlice even works well when you’re living with a significant other and splitting bills, but haven’t yet merged your checking accounts. There’s no sense in having a fight over who should have paid a bill when you can track it easily and for free!

Apartment Noise Can Make It Hard To Sleep

The apartment lifestyle can be noisy, loud, and difficult to sleep through. The White Noise Free Sleep Sounds app helps to solve all of those problems. Whether it’s loud pipes or your neighbor’s loud bass, you can get a good night’s sleep with the white noise offered by this app.

Better yet, you can wake up comfortably in the morning because it uses an alarm that slowly increases in volume to help bring you out of sleep at an appropriate speed rather than jerking you out like the standard alarm clock does.

Whether you have roommates, or just thin walls, your quality of life is dependent on your ability to get good, productive sleep and to wake up properly without being rushed. This app fills a large need in the lifestyles of many Americans. Some people have even found that it helps them to block out their spouse or partner watching TV before bed so they can sleep better.

No matter what your use case, this free app should be on your home screen.

 

Never Forget A Password Or A PIN Again!

LastPass is both free and the only password manager you’ll ever need. Even on your mobile device, it will manage all of your logins and passwords. You can even add things that aren’t technically logins to it. Do you rarely use the back gate of your apartment community, and have trouble remembering the passcode? Create a site called “Back Gate” and store the passcode securely.

You can install the browser extension at home and work, as well, and your logins and information will be synced across all devices. The data are entirely secure, and you can rest assured that it will be there when you need it. No more writing down passwords, and no more using “mysecurepassword.”

LastPass can even generate secure passwords and prefill them when signing up. Humans are not capable of generating truly secure passwords because we crave patterns. The more entropy that can be introduced, the better. LastPass generates passwords that are secure, and that are used on only one site. If LinkedIn forgets to salt their passwords again and there’s a breach, it’s not a big deal – they only have your LinkedIn password, not your Facebook login because you’re not using “MyPassw@rd1” across all your logins.

Here’s An App Use Case You Don’t Need…

An apartment-dweller in Florida is alleged to have killed his roommate in a dispute over a person the roommate was choosing to date. After killing his roommate, Bravo is alleged to have asked,

Hey, Siri, I need to hide my roommate’s body

Ironically, it’s been said that Siri responded, “What kind of place are you lookign for? Swamps. Reservoirs. Metal foundries. Dumps.”

We suspect that this apocryphal story is entirely urban legend, if only because it’s unlikely that Siri is programmed to respond to that sort of question. But that’s definitely not a good way to improve your apartment lifestyle with an app.

You know what is a good way to improve your lifestyle in an apartment, though? Santa Monica Renters Insurance.  

The national average price of renters insurance is just $187.00, according to the III. That works out to as little as fifteen dollars per month.  The vast majority of families can budget renters insurance easily at those prices.  

Additionally, it's important to note that renters are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing loss than homeowners.  Renters occupy roughly one third of total housing stock in the country, and yet they are fully fifty percent more likely to experience theft than homeowners, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

It only costs a few dollars a month to protect your family, and this cheap renters insurance is a great way to mitigate the additional risks that come with being a renter.

It’s also easy to get right from your phone. Just call (800)892-4308 or click to get covered - whether you need Santa Monica renters insurance quotes online or coverage anywhere else!

Effective Coverage offers the nation's only completely mobile platform to quote and purchase renters insurance right from your phone or tablet in just one minute. Get an online renters insurance quote today and protect your family.

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Photo Credit: PhotoAteller The App Store CC BY 2.0