The Big 25

Hey gang! Well, if you saw my last post you may have been thinking: "I knew New York apartments were small, but this looks to be a pretty decent size!" This is true, but it was because we hadn't shipped any of our stuff yet. We were still basically living out of a hotel, plus whatever furniture the woman who is subleasing the apartment left. In the grand scheme of things, we actually didn't have that much stuff to ship. Here is a picture of our stuff in Albuquerque before we left. We didn't even ship the mattresses or any of the loose stuff you see on the right. Not bad, eh?

Life in boxes

We have been paring down our stuff over the past few months in preparation for coming here, and I thought we were doing pretty well. And then early last week, I got a knock at the door. It was a young, slightly hungover, and not very pleased UPS delivery man. The Giants had just won the Super Bowl the night before, which was making our 25-box shipment even more difficult for him. He shot me a dirty glance... "Casey Estes?"  .."yep, that's us!" ..."I'm sure glad you guys have an elevator." He then proceeded, over 5 or 6 trips, to cart all of our boxes up to our fourth story apartment. (I'm hoping our next place isn't a walk-up!) And what looks like a small amount of stuff in a garage suddenly becomes overwhelming in a 400 square foot studio.

Glad I was home when our small shipment came in

One small caveat to unpacking all of this stuff: the great closets and storage space in the apartment happened to be full of stuff when we got there. Which is, of course, completely understandable, because the woman who we are subleasing from will only be gone for six months and didn't need to take her photo albums or son's baby clothes. But, it left us with a few rows of shelving and one small closet for our stuff.

In the middle of unpacking... boxes opened, nothing put away

One solution to the no storage space thing was to buy a garment rack (right side of the above image), which we actually purchased using our last remaining wedding gift card. (Thanks Drew!) I'm super thankful that my cold didn't hit until after this stuff was all put away, because I probably would have just stared at it for a few days begrudgingly otherwise.

Empty boxes

The picture above begs an interesting question - where to put the boxes? We have no attic of any type, so we couldn't really save them for our next move. Plus half of them were ripped to shreds when they got here anyway (note to future movers: U-Haul boxes work well for storage and self moves, but UPS does not treat them very nicely. A few things broke in the move, the smelliest of which was a Peruvian specialty sauce that I decided to ship. The contents of that box were stained yellow and smelled of, well, Peruvians I guess.) Anyway, what I decided to do was to painstakingly tear the boxes apart by hand and put them down our trash shoot. Yep, we have a trash shoot right outside our apartment door. It's great for day-to-day trash and food that you don't want stinking up your apartment, but not so great for U-Haul boxes. I found this out only after getting yelled at in broken English by our super. He wasn't pleased that cardboard shreds from 25 boxes landed in his trash room. I guess I probably should have seen that coming when at one point the box mass got lodged in the shoot and I had to shove it down with a broomstick. Lesson learned.

So after all of that, I finally got everything put away. Or, as put away as it was going to be. We ended up with bathroom stuff in the kitchen and office stuff in the linen closet, but it works! The garment rack turned out to be a life-saver, as we now have a his and hers closet. Plus I guess it's kind of trendy? Now we just need some exposed brick!

The "after"

The "after" - office / dining table 

Kitchen / bathroom storage

New York has many perks. One of them is how close you are to virtually every type of store. When we first got to the apartment, there was no microwave (how did she eat??), so I had to go buy one. Fortunately we live near a P.C. Richards, a chain electronics store in the city. And by near, I mean less than a block away. Somehow there's also a Best Buy right down the street. Anyway, I walked in, purchased my cooking machine, and walked home with it. All in less than 20 minutes.

New York also has its quirks, something that happens as a result of how old the city is. Old cities have old things in them, such as our oven / stove. Now, I wouldn't quite call this "vintage" yet, but it just old enough to have its own quirks. Here is a full picture of the beaut:

Somewhere in between vintage and outdated?

 And here is a close-up of its full range of motion:

That's right, we've got Off, Lite, and Hi

So I wouldn't say I'm a great chef. I don't know if I could even fairly call myself a decent one, but I sure do try. Another trait I have possessed for a long time is a common sense... "mis-fire" every once in a while. Thus, when presented with a stove that has three settings (off, lite, and hi) I just assume that's all there is to it. Which means that for the first week we were here, I cooked everything on hi. This type of cooking is great for boiling water, but that's about it. When pan-frying chicken, I literally poured water in the pan to keep the chicken from burning. And then my husband devised this scheme:

Yep, that's three grates stacked on top of one another

Safe, you ask? Absolutely not. This contraption almost spilled no fewer than four times. Add to that the fact that the pots are metal and the entire thing, including handle, gets hot very fast. Assuming we would have an oven mitt (which we do not) when we arrived, this was almost a catastrophe. The meal (one of my favorites) turned out okay, but it did still cook in half the time. And, the best part of the story? I emailed our sublettor and she told me that to get to the medium and low settings, you simply turn the knob clockwise. ...clockwise! Of course, why didn't I think of that??

I hope you are having a wonderful night, and stay tuned for my tour around our neighborhood, as well as stories from my new part-time job! Love you all.