Home Tour - NYC

I've documented every house we've lived in so far, so when we got this place all cleaned up to show (only to have the person cancel at the absolute last minute - insert rage here), I figured I should go ahead and take some crappy cell phone pics of it and do a home tour!

Garage and window above garage belong to our landlord. Steve calls this a mushroom house. Every house on our street is as ugly as ours, some are even uglier, as hard as that may be to believe.

We have one dedicated parking space and about three feet of grass with an imaginary line drawn down the middle that divides the line between us and our offensive neighbor who has security cameras pointed at us at all times. Pretty sure he planted some dog doo in the grass where we have to step out of our car every day too. #evil

Steve parks behind me on the street, essentially blocking me in, but if he is home, then I'm most likely home for the day/night too so it's not a problem. I've also become somewhat of a pro in inching my way out between our landlord's car in the driveway and Steve's on the street if I have to get out before Steve leaves. It looks incredibly iffy while it's happening and I don't usually breathe until it's over.

When you walk up the side stoop and up the flight of stairs, you are in our living room.

Wooden door next to the stairs is door to the outside, white door is a coat closet.

This is where the majority of life happens. We've wittled the kids' toys down to four baskets, so that helps in keeping the living space somewhat organized. They also have their own little area and table to do their coloring and homework.

This brings us to the dining room.

The thing that made me happiest about this apartment (other than the central AC and natural light) was the fact that the dining room table fit. It was a tight squeeze getting it up the stairs but it fits like a glove. Looking forward to anyone but me getting it back down the stairs and out onto the moving truck.

Onto the kitchen

It's small, but very utilitarian and bright and I like that. I love that I can wipe these counters down with anything (clorox wipe, magic eraser, bleach if I feel like it) and know in my germaphobe heart that they are clean. I sure do miss looking at the marble countertops we had in PA, but since a clorox wipe could not be used on them, they kinda grossed me out, not gonna lie. Live and learn! The dishwasher is also really fast and that made moving in and setting up nice and easy since I didn't have to hand wash every single thing!!! I could stand for there to be more counter space (the stove easily accounts for 40% of the counter space and when I cook something, it's obviously unusable). Plating dinners gets tricky in here, that's for sure.

To my enormous rear in this photo, there is a giant window that makes my heart go pitter patter because I love natural light. But that whole wall is pretty much dead space so that's a shame. I think it's meant to be an "eat in kitchen" lmao but we just use it to store a stool and laundry baskets. Behind that closet door is a small closet/pantry and a stackable washer/dryer. Very inefficient and I'm fairly certain those machines are the reason we have such high energy bills. That, and we do like, four loads of laundry a day. Recycling is next to the trash can and booze storage is on top of the fridge. World's tiniest pantry is actually just a cabinet and voila, that's the entire kitchen.

Up the stairs and we have the kids' bathroom on the left

Due to the glass shower doors and toilet/faucet placement, it is damn near impossible to bathe a child in this tub without being a contortionist. So this bathroom is used for dirty diaper storage, teeth brushing, hand washing, and kid pooping. Again, I like all the bright white. Feels clean to me, even when it smells like poop and isn't.

Next to the bathroom is the linen closet and I always love having a linen closet because it's definitely bonus storage. I use my linen closet for the essential linens as well as excess booze storage. It's a hot mess but I just close the doors and suddenly I find that I don't care anymore. Feel free to pin this innovative cleaning tip!

The big kids' room is at the end of the hall- definitely a slight Auburn theme going on...

They actually have a sizable walk-in closet next to that bin of stuffed animals, but it's laid out in a very weird fashion so we don't use it much. On the other side of the flag wall is the master bedroom.

Not much to look at, but it gets the job done. Also, light and bright so that makes me very happy. We have all the kids clothes in the big dresser on the right. And can I just say that it is so nice to put all the clothes away in one room. Certain clothes are still hung up in their respective rooms, but the majority of their stuff just gets folded and put in a drawer.

The Korea stick! Laundry! Family photos that I never got around to hanging! Typical master bedroom for us. We also have a walk-in closet that doubles as random storage and excess towel storage. For some reason we have 96 white towels. For when all 96 of y'all come visit us in our guest bedroom-less apartment, I guess.

In the top photo you can see towels hanging on a door behind the dresser and that leads into the master bathroom. Which sounds kind of funny to say because our master bathroom loosely translates into "coat closet with toilet". And yet, every person in our family showers in here (with the exception of Will who still gets bathed in the kitchen sink). It is super tight but it is also less to clean, so I guess that's nice?

That's literally all there is to it. Not even enough room to take a pano shot.

Last room on the grand tour is Will's bedroom.

Steve's baby dresser- weighs a metric ton, the drawers do not come out, and somehow it has survived a million moves.

Will has a pretty small/average closet and there's not much going on in his room. We have to lower his mattress, but he doesn't sit up on his own yet- don't be alarmed! I staged him there with a pacifier (lolz he doesn't use that either) to make the picture cuter.

Helleur!

So that's it! Our 1,000 sq ft apartment in New York City. It has been a cozy place to live but we are looking forward to not living on top of someone and no longer paying $$$$ in rent!