679 square feet

This weekend has had me in a bit of a meltdown.  It all started innocently when I decided I wanted to investigate buying a portable washing machine for our apartment.  You see we don't have laundry facilities in our building and we live in a 4TH FLOOR WALK-UP with two dogs.  Even though the laundromat is around the corner, I HATE lugging two weeks worth of laundry (because that's about how long we let it pile up) down to the laundromat.  We then spend aprox $25 for two loads.  I figured if we got a portable washer for the apartment (similar to this one), then perhaps life would be just a little bit easier.  So after running around Manhattan and Brooklyn looking for a place that had one on display (and making a trip to Buy Buy Baby to see cribs in person), I came back to our beloved apartment to start measuring.

I want to insert here that we really do love our apartment.  It's affordable (compared to many New York apartments), has lots of storage space, and is in an awesome public school district!

However once I started measuring I realized that things weren't going to fit quite as perfectly as I once thought.  I'd always randomly assumed our apartment was like 900 sq feet.   So I got a little curious about exactly how big it really is and discovered that our beloved apartment is 679 square feet (not including the closets, hallway and bathroom).

YIKES!  No wonder it's feeling a bit tight when I start to think about rearranging essential furniture, getting rid of non-essential furniture and putting in a crib.  Not to even mention a washing machine.  Ugh.

So as we I continue to plan for our little one to arrive, you'll hear me discussing small space solutions in more detail.  Right now I'm researching the various mini-crib options.  (We could technically fit a full-size crib, but I'm worried that it will end up taking up too much room that could potentially be used as playspace.)

Anyways...all this blather sounds pretty sane right now, but several hours ago I was freaking out along the lines of, "OMG...what are we doing?", "We'll be terrible parents!", "We live on a 4th floor!", "What if our child turns out to be a nutjob because he didn't have enough personal space?", "What if he turns out to be a nutjob because we made him sleep in his own crib and we should have done it euro-style and co-sleep?"

I think you get the picture.

*sigh*

This whole parenting thing seems like it's going to be tougher than I thought.  :-]