Apartment Living

The population of our apartment building is pretty interesting – our neighbors are a mix of young single professionals and elderly singles who have lived in the building “forever”. I discovered the probable reason for this is that there are mostly one bedroom units in the building, and only a few two bedroom units, which we are living in. I figured that it would be easier to meet people and connect with them if they were in the same life stage as us (a young family), but I am enjoying this unexpected twist. Because we are the only family in the building, we are memorable (for better or worse) so as we are trying hard to know and remember the people we meet, they remember us just by default – we’re the ones with the kids.

One of the issues I was anticipating was the inevitable loudness of my children being a real inconvenience to my neighbors… it does not seem to be a problem. Most of the people are out of the building all day long at work, and then the kids go to bed early enough that there’s no disturbance. The only time I worry is Saturday and Sunday mornings where surely my friends in 2C, E, and F(and especially 1D) are wanting to sleep-in. I don’t feel so terrible about this though, because the people in these apartments tend to party into the night – which we can clearly hear – so it seems like a decent trade off to me J.

A few gracious gifts that the Lord sovereignly gave us in this building that I had no idea I would truly need, are an elevator and laundry in the basement. These things were not on our list of must-haves when we were apartment hunting, but I can’t imagine how I would make it without them! We’re only on the second floor, but still, that one flight of stairs is too much to carry my clumsy stroller down. And then with carrying groceries or various packages – the elevator has become a staple in our existence.

When I lived in Brooklyn the summer before I got married, our apartment did not have laundry in the building, so my roommates and I would lug our one bag of laundry to the closest laundry mat (about 4 blocks) and leave it there for the time it took for it to wash, then come and do the dryer transfer and wait. We would have to make a morning or afternoon of it in order to get it done, but it wasn’t too inconvenient.

I cannot imagine doing that now – as a family of 4. It would absolutely be too much work for us (carrying 6 loads weekly: darks, lights, whites, kids, towels, sheets/duvets ßalternating either the kids and ours each week) while pushing the stroller; or requiring Logan to use on of his days off to get it done – a hassle for him and a pretty lame option for me and the kids. I’m sure we would resort to sending the laundry out to be done, which would be very convenient (even with my current laundry situation) but they charge by the pound of laundry, so I’m sure we would at least double what we’re currently paying on our basement machines. To add to the blessing, our laundry is only $1.50 a load – apparently the cheapest around, everyone else we talk to are paying $2.50 a load.

When we came for the weekend and had a crash course in securing Manhattan real estate, we applied for 2 apartments that we much preferred to this one that we eventually were able to lease (at 6:00 Tuesday afternoon – we were leaving Wed. morning at 6am). The first apartment that rejected our application was a three bedroom railroad style walk up with a full kitchen that included a dishwasher, two blocks from the park and around the corner from an Italian restaurant and an Irish pub – pretty dreamy. The second was a third floor walk up with a giant kitchen (again, with a dishwasher) and room for a table, a claw foot bathtub, tons of closet space, a fireplace in the master, and tons of beautiful molding details and lighting from the 20’s – super cool. Neither of these options that we considered to be perfect had either an elevator or laundry. Thanks, Jesus, for saving us from ourselves and always knowing what we need!!!