Movin' on up, Part 1
“Raising a baby in a NYC apartment is like growing an oak tree in a thimble.”
Those are the clever words of a Manhattan Mini Storage ad that popped up in subway cars early last year. A few months prior, I would have gotten a good chuckle and then gone about my day. But as it happens, I first read this ad shortly after finding out that I was pregnant. So the fact that I would be faced with raising an “oak” in my 1 bedroom “thimble” was terrifying. Sadly for Manhattan Mini Storage, this ad did not persuade me to rent a storage unit. However, it did further encourage me to make a plan that could work for my growing family.
My husband and I both grew up in the Midwest, where spacious living spaces are commonplace. Your first home needn’t be modest. More is more. Never mind if you have extra rooms to spare or if you could save money by living with less space right now. You need to have room to grow, right? Where will we fit our future children, cars, boats, etc if we don’t have that extra 1000 square feet?
That is exactly the opposite of how we live our lives in NYC. “Less is more” is our motto for apartment living. Less money on rent means more nights out at the best restaurants, lots of vacations, and more money to save and invest. Why live in a 1 bedroom when a studio will do? Why have a two bedroom if that extra bedroom will just be empty? Everything that enters our apartment is carefully edited to prevent excess waste and we choose places to live based only on what we need. But now another HUMAN BEING is entering our lives. So it was time to really examine our priorities.
Could we get by living in a 1-bedroom apartment with a newborn baby? I’ve been to the Tenement Museum and seen how my husband’s Irish ancestors lived. If a family of 5 could live in a teeny, tiny 2 room apartment on the fifth floor with a single outhouse shared amongst the whole building, I should be able to survive with 2.5 people in a 1 bedroom apartment with luxury finishes and a washer and dryer in-unit. This wasn’t exactly “roughing it.” But even though we could make this apartment work, did we want to? Would we rather (gasp!) plan ahead and get settled into a larger apartment now rather than wait until it was absolutely necessary to have the extra square footage?
Presumably, the arrival of our little bundle of joy will mean a decreased frequency in fine dining and costly cocktail hours that extend into late night karaoke. Also, if we are coming home at reasonable hours, we’ll use the subway more often than cabs. And maybe chasing our little munchkin around could take the place of a personal training session here and there…
The list of how we could trim expenses piled high enough that the added financial bite of an extra bedroom seemed completely tolerable. So then our decision was made: we’re moving into a 2 bedroom apartment. To my Midwest friends, that will seem insignificant. My NYC friends understand what a big deal that is. And even though I am a broker, the worst was yet to come…actually finding the apartment. Eek!!
To be cont’d…