NYC Lesson #3 and some pics of our pad

Here, it is completely acceptable to live in a closet. If you had lived in NYC your whole life and then read Harry Potter, the horror of Harry living in a cupboard under the stairs would have been utterly wasted on you because you would not have known anything else. This is another New York joke I had always heard but never gave much thought to until I started looking for apartments. I never truly believed that living spaces here would be that small because hey, I watched Friends for every single season, and I saw Rachel and Monica's apartment and TV would never lie to me!

That said, I feel like we found a relatively large apartment for our family of 6, and I am truly happy with it. (Sidenote: in our "Welcome to the ward" letter, there are tips for living in the city, and one of them says not to compare your apartment with others, because everyone has different needs and every apartment has advantages and disadvantages. Ben and I just found that amusing and we wondered if the person who wrote it either had a totally sweet apartment and was being defensive, or had the most unfortunate apartment ever and was trying to console themselves.)

We are in a pre-war building with a cool old-school elevator and there is a part-time doorman who says, "Hey Miss Hailey, you're looking good tonight!" when I leave so he is pretty much my new BFF. My guess is that our apartment is about 900 square feet, but I like the layout, the kids' room is really big, and the kitchen/living/dining area is really open and reminds me of a good old Utah open kitchen/living/dining area. There is lots of natural light and all of the appliances are brand new, so that is awesome. There is also a lot of cupboard and closet space, for which I am eternally grateful. I saw some apartments online when we were originally looking that featured "kitchens" which consisted of a fridge, a sink, a stove, and two cupboards stuck in a corner of a room. Nice try, but no thanks. Mama needs cupboards and counter space! Ben also had me worried that we would not find an apartment that would fit a table and I kept insisting that we must have one. He said just maybe we could have one that folds up and I told him I wasn't going to be folding and unfolding a table one jillion times a day. We fought about it a lot and one time I blurted out, "I would rather have a table then a TV!" Ben retorted, "You don't mean that!" It was pretty heated. Fortunately for our marriage, I got my table AND television.

So far, I have only taken pics of the kids' room and the main area, but I will try to get pics of our room and the bathroom soon. Which reminds me, life with one bathroom is interesting at best. We have actually had to develop a bathroom schedule, although I don't actually have it posted anywhere or anything, that would be weird. As for our bedroom, it is not that exciting because it is pretty much just our bed. But hey, it fits! I love that bed and it was one of my deal-breakers for living in the city. If you think it is strange and self-obsessed for me to post pictures of my apartment, just know that I made a promise to some very important and vocal people that I would.

Kids' room from the doorway

Kitchen

Kitchen looking into eating area

The table (yes!) with my newly painted chairs, which make me very happy, I must say. Thanks to Rachel who coaxed me into the project and came over to sand and paint.

The crew on the couch. (You can see one of the posts of my beloved bed in the background.)

The new IKEA couch, that was supposed to be a sofa bed, but they didn't have the one we wanted in yet. So we had to buy an air mattress instead. Come and visit and stay on our cozy air mattress!