I Want to Live Here Forever (For Now)

if my landlord is reading this, please hit me back

As my alarm sounds, I voice the words “good morning” even though no one else is here. It’s something I’ve been doing lately to wake myself up. I recently had a heated discussion about the Hatch alarm clock with a group of friends—half of us were against it, half of us were for it (I won’t tell you my stance), but ultimately, we decided that waking up in pitch-black darkness is hard. When one of my friends shared, through laughter, that sometimes just talking out loud makes her wake up, I started doing that. So this morning, after saying “good morning” to absolutely no one other than the books on my shelves and the pigeons on my windowsill, I emerge from my wrinkled Brooklinen sheets and force open my blackout curtains. It’s another day in my favorite place in the world: my apartment. (And also this essay is sponsored by Brooklinen.) (Hell yeah.)

I pad into my pink kitchen, once again ignoring the lease renewal form that’s been staring at me every time I walk past my 1950s Formica kitchen table in the center of my apartment. I’d love to renew my lease, I just wish it wasn’t becoming more and more expensive. I’m playing hard to get. I pull out my phone and send yet another email to my “landlord” (who I’m convinced is just a robot firing off emails from the severed floor) following up about the counteroffer I sent him last week. He’s giving me the cold shoulder.

Hi Kendell,

Following up.

Thanks,
Angelina

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I’ve lived in my apartment for almost 3 years and can’t imagine leaving right now. It’s in a perfect location, and if there’s one thing I took away from my Retail Studies classes in college, it’s Location! Location! Location! It’s a small one-bedroom railroad apartment that, to me, feels like a whimsical oasis in a brick tower where my fire escape is actually an expansive balcony and my oven-that’s-so-small-I-could-lift-it-myself is actually a blank canvas for all the birthday cakes and Christmas cookies and Malted Forever Brownies I’ve made over the years. This is my home.

I try my best not to get attached to material things, but when it comes to apartments, I admit I get attached. We still have my childhood home that I lived in from the day I was born until the day I left for college, so I’ve never really had to say a formal goodbye to my “home home.” My previous New York apartment had 17 mice, 6 cockroaches, 3 ceiling collapses, and one 43% rent increase after Covid, and I still tried to find a way to renew the lease. I just didn’t want to say goodbye to a place I loved so much.

It’s hard for me to put into words the magic of my current apartment. The furniture and items that decorate the space have their own stories and lore, an eclectic combination of new and old that feels inherently me. I’ve long found it important to decorate my space with objects that feel meaningful, and if you saw them eventually strewn to the curb as trash, you’d look at them and say, “Oh, that 1920s seafoam green wooden nightstand that she repurposed as a bar cart was sooo her.” I learned this methodology from my mother, who is an interior designer. She made sure that our childhood home felt current and exciting, while simultaneously infusing antiques and vintage art into the decor. It created a unique space that I didn’t understand as a child, often critiquing my mother’s use of antiques because I thought they looked too old. I remember one night while my mom was making dinner, my brother and I were playing tag in the house (always a great idea!), and I knocked over an antique magazine stand that stood next to my piano. As it crashed to the floor, spilling copies of Cook’s Illustrated and piano sheet music all over the living room, part of the wood from the magazine slots broke off. My mother was furious, and I couldn’t understand why—the magazine stand was so old and ugly to me. “You will understand one day,” she seethed. I didn’t think I would, but I do now. The antique had sentimental value to her, and it was also just straight up cool. My mom was always coming up with ways to repurpose discarded objects. Until I became an adult, I thought everyone had a clothes hamper that was actually a hollowed-out antique Victrola phonograph record player from the early 1900s. (Doesn’t everyone put their dirty clothes in their record player?)

When it came to decorating my apartment, I was inspired by the black-and-white tile floors in the kitchen, the history of the neighborhood around me, and the furniture I already had. Naturally, many of my belongings came from my previous apartment—like my cerulean blue velvet sofa, my books and records, my white Brooklinen towels (I always have and always will buy only white towels, like a fancy hotel), my ornate gold mirror, and my various knick-knacks. I wanted my kitchen to feel like a retro diner, so I painted a hot pink accent wall and bought a print of a vintage Barbie doll smoking a cigarette (this was all before the Barbie movie came out, mind you). I wanted my bedroom to feel like a quintessential historic Greenwich Village space, so I had a contractor build floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the nook next to my closet, making sure the bottom shelf measured 13-inches in height so that my hundreds of records would fit perfectly. I wanted my living room to have only one pop of color—the sofa—because it was to be a place where my friends could gather cozily and where I could relax and feel a sense of calm. Of course I looked at other sources of inspiration, but ultimately, I let the space guide me itself. I remember posting an Instagram story of my living room after a few months of living here, and one of my friends replied, “If there’s one thing you’re gonna do, it’s make a house a home.” I agreed.

Over the last 3 years, every day in this space has been in celebration. Regardless of whether it’s an ordinary Monday or I’m hosting 70 people for my birthday party, whether the heat is working or not, whether the fridge is filled with fresh produce or is totally empty because I’ve been Eating Out Too Much, whether I’ve had several visitors or none at all, every day in my apartment feels special and I take none of it for granted. It’s a space I’ve created for myself and for my friends to feel comfortable and happy and nourished. I’ve hosted countless dinner parties and party parties and “bourbon nights” and movie nights. We’ve laughed in my living room when someone’s telling the Funniest Story Ever for the 97th time and cried on my bed when someone’s going through a breakup and danced in my kitchen as we’re scratching candle wax off the tablecloth and gossiped in my bathroom during my parties when there’s nowhere else to get any privacy and smoked cigarettes on my fire escape while the NYPD is on the sidewalk below telling me that one of the neighbors filed a noise complaint but I don’t have to stop the party, I just need to lower the music. I’ve built an entire world in my 3rd-floor castle in the sky, which is why it makes it so hard to think about ever leaving.

All of this is why every year for the last several years, I’ve struggled when my lease renewal form shows up in my mailbox. Every year, it gets more expensive, and every year, I say, “Well, I’ll just renew for another year.”

As I write this, I still haven’t signed or mailed back the form because there’s a part of me that wonders whether it’s time to move, whether moving would actually be less expensive in the long run. I think about my morning walks on the West Side Highway and my evening walks around Washington Square Park, and I can feel part of my heart shatter at the thought of not seeing the same neighbors and the same dogs and the same babies in strollers. I say things like I wish someone would just give me the answer as I refresh the “My Applications” page on the NYC housing lottery website, expecting my application to an apartment on W 96th St to be approved (which I pray does not happen because I will take that as a sign to move to W 96th St even though that’s quite far from literally everywhere I frequent). I return to a screenshot of a dear friend’s text that I keep in my Favorites folder, from the last time I threatened moving to the Upper West Side.

I think we should stay downtown forever, it says. I believe him.

I want to live here forever for now. I won’t live here forever, but for now I will.

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Over a week passes since I’ve sent my follow-up email, and it’s crickets from my landlord. This is all weighing on me, so over the weekend, I take to writing about it. (MAKE ART NOT WAR!!!!!!)

As I finish my thoughts, I decide to give it one more night before making my final decision. The next day as I’m sitting at my desk, wrapping up for the day, I receive a text at 4:42 pm that there’s an email regarding my application for the apartment on W 96th St. My jaw drops. I haven’t heard from their offices since 2024. Here’s my sign, I say to myself, hesitantly tapping the Gmail icon on my phone screen.

Application not approved. Requesting further documentation.

Sign accepted.

One more year in the pink kitchen.

One more year of saying “good morning” to the pigeons on my windowsill.

One more year of living downtown forever. For now.

(And thank God!)

I’ve used Brooklinen classic percale sheets since 2020. They are the only sheets I will buy for the rest of my life and I’m so serious.

My scratched-up, beautiful mess of a coffee table. The Love Note candle smells amazing, btw. I also have the Restore candle and can’t decide which is better.

My fabulous pink kitchen!!!!! If there’s one thing I’m gonna do, it’s paint the walls of a leased apartment. In my previous apartment, I painted my bedroom dark green and the hallway deep navy. A landlord’s worst nightmare!

Marilyn, and my new linen shower curtain that makes me feel like I’m in a house on the beach in the Hamptons.

My ever-so-fragile antique table from the 1920s. I purchased it for $100 from a vintage store in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and it’s the first thing I ever bought with my paycheck from my company. I love how it looks in my living room as a bar cart.

Thank you to Brooklinen for sponsoring Lunch on Friday this week. I am literally obsessed with your products and have become a sheets snob, thanks to you.