5 reasons I love living small
My husband, our two dogs, and I share a 525 square foot studio apartment in Manhattan. People who don't live in NYC are often shocked by this fact, though it's common practice in high density urban environments.
Here are 5 reasons why I LOVE living in a small apartment:
1) Less time spent cleaning! Since our apartment is so small, I can get it spotlessly clean in about 2 hours. I used to hate vacuuming when I had a big clunky canister vac, but then we got the Dyson Animal cordless vacuum, and now I vacuum every other day-and it takes under 10 minutes to do the entire apartment.
2) Less stuff = less worry. We don't have a ton of room, so we have to think about what we bring into the apartment. We try to have a one-in-one-out rule, which means that if we buy something new, something old has to go. This means that we aren't just adding more and more stuff to our apartment, which helps to keep the apartment uncrowded. It also means we have less stuff than the average American, and less to worry about because of it (for example: instead of a giant, expensive TV that we'd worry about insuring &/or breaking, we use our laptops for entertainment).
3) I always know what my dogs are up to. We are lucky and our dogs are very well-behaved. But our male chihuahua, unfortunately, did not come to us housebroken. Since we are together in a one-room apartment, it was easy for me to keep an eye on him while we were potty training him.
4) When we're home, we're together. I often joke that even if we had another room, we'd be in the same room all the time. My husband and I like spending time together, so when we're at home, we're usually doing something together. And even if we're mad at each other for some reason, we have to talk it out and get over it quickly, because being angry in a tiny apartment is not good for anyone's stress level!
5) We save a TON of money.
-The maintenance on our apartment (which includes doormen/heat/air conditioning/natural gas/electricity) is ~$850/month. A one-bedroom apartment in our building would have a maintenance of ~$1200/month. I bought our apartment over 10 years ago, and paid off the mortgage a few years ago, so we no longer have to deal with that, but if we were to buy a new apartment in our building, a one-bedroom would be 1.5 times the current value of our studio.
-Since it's so easy to clean our place, we don't have to pay a housekeeper to clean for us.
-Since we don't have a lot of space, we have to really think about purchases before we make them. This means that we almost never make impulse purchases-which saves us a ton of cold, hard cash.
