Growing up, plants were always in my home. Somewhere between university and now, I stopped having green things. That was going to change.

Our new place has windows on three sides, but direct sunlight is all blocked by neighbouring buildings. No problem, we've found some plants that work for us. The plants are basically taking over at this point.

Okay so more plants! Our bathroom's window faces east, kind of. It gets lots of indirect light and it's humid, so we've got lots of tropical plants living in there now. One even in the shower. Fingers crossed it's not too drafty in the winter; I think a bathroom-safe, oil-filled electric radiator might help keep them happy. Plus, I really don't like stepping out of the shower into a frigid bathroom (who does?).

Programming is a pretty creative activity. Our old place, which was basically a studio apartment, was so small that I often couldn't concentrate when working from home. Not only does our new place have a door dividing the bedroom from the kitchen/living room, but it has enough space for my ultimate home office goal: a guitar within arm's reach. Stuck on a difficult programming puzzle? No problem, think it over while playing a song.

For our new place, we prioritized getting a new, larger mattress. We also wanted to avoid that Ikea, everything-is-particle-board feeling, so we bought a "rescued" dresser. It needed some cleanup but now looks really sharp and lends some character to the place.

The kitchen and dining area are really important, but we made some concessions. No dishwasher anymore, and the counter space is limited. To give us some extra prep area when cooking, we bought a counter-high table top and stools that can be stored completely underneath. With no window above the sink, I added a programmable strip of LED lights to the underside of the cupboards. They can produce 16 million colours but are usually white.

As I mentioned earlier, we were in the fortunate situation of having some money to spend setting up the new place just how we wanted. However, we got rid of all our old furniture before moving, so the clock was ticking to buy home essentials once we'd moved in. Things like: a dresser to put clothes in, a table to eat at, a bed frame to sleep on, a sofa maybe. When we moved in, we didn't have much more than a piano bench and a folding TV dinner stand. It was uncomfortable for a while.

I had an idea in my mind that I couldn't quite describe, but I got to see take form over about a month. A sort of, mid-century design meets bohemian style. I wanted clean lines but also wanted rough, ambiguous textures. I really like how it all turned out. Plus we had enough space for a TV, a first for us since leaving Toronto in 2014. I bought a Super Nintendo.

Although she passed away while I was in middle school, I partially trace my lifelong love of gadgets back to my grandmother. Her house was a treasure-trove of purpose-specific things, like magnifying glasses with little lights in them for reading crosswords, or colour-coded shopping list sticky notes. She was the first person I knew who had the internet.

Her house also had many hooks attached to her walls. They were useful, mostly. The kinds of hooks that had a sticky adhesive on the back to keep them attached. Our apartment has a lot of hooks too, and adhesive hook technology has advanced quite a bit in twenty years (I like to think my grandmother would be as excited about 3M Command Strips as I am).

It tickled me a bit when I found a hook in our apartment left behind by a previous tenant – it looked exactly like the kind of hook my grandmother had had in her home: square, with rounded corners, and a dribble of dusty, dried paint to testify to how long it's been living there.

Although the cats have moved across provinces and across oceans, this was the hardest move for them. And between the two of them, it was hardest for Bandita. Our new place's previous tenants also had cats, and this was the first time we were moving into an apartment that smelled like other cats. She hid behind the toilet for her first eight hours here.

Without the pressure of being top cat, Dave is a lot more laid back. He quickly adjusted to the new place and is as cute as ever.