If you’re thinking of moving to Florida, here are some pros and cons to help with your decision!
Pros:
-The beaches are beautiful with clear water and shells along the shore.
– The air and water are warm at the beach making for a great beach day!
-The people are generally happy and nice. (There are a few spots where you find entitled people, such as Worth Ave in Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and Naples).
– The housing is cheap, new, and beautiful.
– It rains lovely big raindrops often which clears the air. The thunderstorms are also cool.
– The water is soft which means your clothes and dishes come out clean.
– The natural springs are absolutely magical and unique. You can swim in them in summer under the shade of the thick tropical foliage.
– The turnpike is a toll road that is very well maintained and leads to Orlando. There are clean service plazas all along it where you can get gas or food without having to enter a town.
– Florida tends to spend a lot of money on nice facilities like modern libraries and beautiful nature centers with tropical tanks.
– You can spend almost the entire year in shorts and slippers because it’s so warm.
– You get plenty of sunshine, no haze or fog, and a nice tan and highlights in your hair from the sun. The days are almost never gloomy, depressing, or overcast. Life in technicolor!
– There is in general not much pollution in the air in the cities.
– There are many airports so it’s generally easy to travel from here, and there are good highways for roadtrips to the south.
– There is absolutely tons to do, including beaches, parks, theme parks, and museums. You won’t run out of things to do!
Cons:
– It is extremely hot and humid. Just when you think you can’t take it anymore the humidity kicks up a notch in August and lasts until December. It’s so hot that I got itchy heat rash (Apr-Dec) while picking up my child from school.
– You have to live in air-conditioning around the clock from April to December. If air-conditioning dries out your mouth or eyes or wakes you up when it clicks on and off then you won’t like Florida. In fact you will be exhausted and all dried out! If you find a north-facing apartment with no south-facing exterior walls (another apartment behind you), you will fare better. Curved Spanish tiles or silver metal roofs are also better. Avoid flat slab roofs.
– There are mosquitoes galore making it impossible to go outside at dusk or hike in the forest or visit gardens except from January-March. If you get bit by mosquitoes and don’t like to use pesticide on your skin, you will be restricted.
– They aerial spray mosquito spray over the neighborhoods. If you don’t like to be exposed to toxins you won’t like this. There are cancer hospital and children’s cancer hospital billboards everywhere, which makes you wonder.
– They spray an incredible amount of pesticide and herbicide in the landscaping because weeds and bugs thrive in the damp hot climate.
– There are biting ants which bite you whenever you stand still at a park or try to have a picnic. These bites are intensely itchy, more so than mosquito bites and last for weeks.
– There are giant man-of-war that sting at the beaches in winter if the wind is onshore.
– Hundreds of sharks migrate past the southeast beaches in winter. If you stand on the pier you can sometimes see them. This makes swimming a little dicey. There are also barracudas, puffer fish, sea urchins, and sting rays, so you have to be alert while swimming.
– From May-October there is vitrio virus in water that has any brackish element, so don’t swim if a river ends at the beach or in a lagoon. My friend’s baby got this on his nose. It can be life threatening or lead to amputations.
– Pools get too hot in summer to enjoy. Also the chlorine doesn’t work well in the heat, leading to ear infections.
– At dusk or when it’s overcast no-see-ums bite you at the beach. You can’t tell you’re being bitten until after it’s too late.
– There are freeways but they aren’t through the town. To get anywhere locally you must sit through traffic light after traffic light, and for some reason they set the lights for very long intervals in Florida. This makes for much road rage. It also makes it frustrating to go on outings.
– There are so many retired people from the northeast and midwest that there are way more elderly people than the usual demographics. This sometimes, especially in winter, makes you feel like you’re living in a retirement home.
– During the “season” in winter it is very crowded everywhere.
– A combination of elderly drivers going extremely slow and road rage people going fast, makes for scary and dangerous driving. Also, the DMV driving test here is insufficient (it is in a parking lot) so you see all kinds of terribly unsafe driving and must be on the alert at all times, especially during the season and spring break.
– The schools have a strange anti-recess stance so your child might not get to go outside. Also, they push kids beyond the abilities of their age, which leads to burn-out and overall misery for the whole family. They also don’t allow parents to enter the school unless volunteering so you feel like you have no idea where you are sending your child. The schools are also very large, with around 800 students. Also, instead of parents parking and walking to pick up their kids, most form an incredibly long and polluting car line.
– The charter schools here are just money-making enterprises. They are too large and just the same as the regular schools with car lines and standardized testing galore. Some don’t even have windows in the classrooms. They are not alternative in any way, and don’t allow kids who think outside the box to thrive nor allow kids to play more.