When Ross and I moved into our little apartment on St. Marks Place back in April 2005, we thought it was a little slice of heaven on Earth. I mean, considering that we moved from a basement apartment in Astoria, Queens, we were excited that we were ceasing to be mole people and moving above ground into an apartment with windows! We didn't care that those windows led out to an alley or that the apartment looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the years that Abby Hoffmann lived in the building and plotted the uprising at the '68 Chicago Democratic convention (true story!). I did care a little that a week before we moved I saw the hotel on the corner of our block featured heavily in an HBO documentary entitled "Cranktown" but since there was about 5 new Citibanks being built in a 10 block radius, I decided that gentrification was around the corner and the ratio of punk kids to urban professionals would soon flip (which did in fact happen until the dollar pizza place opened up next door, then we got some young and surly new neighbors).
Overall though, this apartment and area of the city have treated us well and we have loved living in it. The apartment is rent-stabilized, has 3 separate rooms + bathroom, and the kitchen actually has more cabinets than many homes I've seen. For people not living in New York or a similar urban area I know this sounds a bit crazy, but really, 3 separate rooms is kind of a big deal in somewhere rent-stabilized and as the eloquent plumber for our building once told me, "this apartment is an oasis in a sea of crap."
However completely baby-ready, this apartment is not. Ross and I have found many nooks and crannys for our books, vast amounts of gourmet cooking supplies, and ample bar area but space for toys and baby furniture was going to be a big problem. So when I found out I was pregnant I nerded out and made an Excel chart, as I am apt to do, of all the things I needed to overhaul in this apartment by June 2010. I've tried to divide things out into months but when I looked at the chart and realized that I hadn't done a single thing marked "January", I forged ahead last week and tried to knock many things off of the list. Accomplished so far:
Kitchen - Clear out full shelf in largest cabinet for bottles, dishes, etc.
- Buy microwave after years of resistance for bottle sterilization and late night popcorn cravings.
- Pack up glasses from cleared shelf and put in odd storage area in ceiling.
- Replace trash can and recycling bin with matching slim fit, foot pedel-operated trash cans. Try not to freak out when foot pedel on new recycling bin stops working after one day.
Bathroom - Get eloquent plumber to fix tub faucet since the tub has been confined to "showers only" for a good three years.
Living Room - Clear off 3 shelves in bookcase for baby stuff.
- Either throw out or pack up books from cleared shelves from storage space.
- Fill two of the shelves with bins for toys.
- Move Ross's board games (including but not limited to two separate versions of
Risk and the Sex and the City game) from couch seat storage to make room for baby blankets and Froggy quilt.
Bedroom - Rearrange clothing storage situation and make room in my "closet" (really a closet organizer bolted to the wall with a Chinese screen in front of it) for Cash's hanging clothes.
- Buy bin for under crib linen storage.
- Replace side table lamp since it is becoming cumbersome to plug and unplug current lamp when we want to use it.
- Use old recycling bin for photo album storage. Realize that it would probably have made more sense to digitize entire photo collection instead of keeping around half full albums.
Still left to do:
Kitchen - Child-proof the cabinet under the sink that contains baby hazards like plastic bags and cleaning chemicals.
- Set up bottle drying rack area somewhere on over-burdened countertop
- Try to convince Ross to pack away weird skull art piece with candles that currently occupies the space of our kitchen window so that it can potentially be the carseat storage shelf. Remind Ross that many people have commented that it looks like some sort of voodoo ritual set-up.
- Actually clean kitchen floor instead of systematically pushing dirt around with swiffer.
Bathroom - - Get tub regrouted where the tub meets the tile so the baby can't try to eat old, dirty grouting that falls into the tub.
- Replace regular trash can with diaper pail. Hope that somehow our entire apartment doesn't start to smell like poop.
Living Room - Childproof electrical outlets and surge breakers. Tie together massive amounts of wires running the perimeter of the room and probably look like interesting things to chew on to an infant.
Bedroom - Move furniture into proper location; get rid of current tv stand, set up crib.
- Buy bins for decouppaged punk bookshelf/Cash's clothing area. Continue to answer question of "are you really keeping that bookshelf?" with a resounding "YES, WE LIKE IT"!
- Continue to doubt decision not to establish a changing area.
There are probably other little things I'm not thinking of but it seems like we are halfway there. Hopefully I will be able to accomplish most of this by March so that April can be completely reserved for childbirth clasess and the mental preparation that is needed for having a baby because that whole part hasn't really been tackled yet.
