House Warming Party?
I moved to Brooklyn from San Francisco about 8 months ago in search of love. Despite having my brother enlisted as a dating coach I wanted to try something new! While the gold rush brought pioneers out west looking to make it big, I was heading east hoping to find someone with a heart of gold! Living in a city where there are more women then men seemed promising, plus initially I had only signed a 3 month lease and I had opportunities in terms of where to move, I could always move back!
The very targeted intentional dating in the form of online dating and in person dating events were short lived. I do think things were more promising, but ultimately dating was tiring and I wanted to focus on making friends! Going from nothing to something via online dating was often hard, and even if in person dating events facilitated connection in the absence of those events the connection could disappear!
I was enjoying NYC, and people were starting to make plans that exceeded the Oct 15 date when my lease was up, and potentially my stay in NYC would be up, so in early September I decided I would stay. I was incredibly lucky that I only toured two places, and the one place I applied to I was accepted. The luck here is tied to being fortunate to have a high paying job, and to the realtor prioritizing applicants with strong financial situations.
The place I found was in the neighborhood I was living in Park Slope, and it was a studio / 1 bedroom. The lighting seemed pretty good, I knew the neighborhood was awesome, and the price was great! Although a stated goal of mine was making friends it was nice to be able to live alone!
A big hurdle for moving was finding how to use the space which is quite small. In the "bedroom" all that effectively fits there is a queen size bed, and in the other room you have a combined kitchen, living room dining room situation. Since I work from home it's also an office!
To try and address the fears of buying the wrong furniture or using the space wrong I enlisted a design service called Space Joy and the renders that I've included are ones that a designer from space joy crafted for me in addition to links that I could use to buy what I needed to furnish and decorate the place.
I'll have to include a picture of my current place to illustrate the differences. Although the renders looked really nice they weren't very practical. To me it was important that I had room to cook and therefore opted for a kitchen island. This island takes up a lot of space that would otherwise be allocated to the living room.
I also spent a lot of time deliberating about what furniture to buy, and when to buy furniture. Of course I handled getting a bed and a desk right away. Even when it came to the desk though I thought it would be way more practical to having a standing desk, and way better to have an ergonomic chair. Two definite practical improvements even if aesthetically they are worse?
A lack of furniture meant that for a while I was eating on a small little foot stool since there were no tables. For the first few days I was also working from my kitchen counter / the floor because the desk hadn't come in. Similarly my bed frame wasn't delivered right away so initially the mattress was just on the floor.
In November for my birthday I had friends insist to visit and they all joined me in sitting on the floor, because that's all I had at the time (note that I had a 10 day trip to Spain after moving into the place which made settling in even harder).
Today there's a fair bit of progress. Even as of this last weekend I hung up a rack to store a broom and a mop in the bathroom, and I drilled in / set up a bedside lamp that I am quite proud of. There's still a lot to do though, and I am slow to do it! I don't own a couch yet, and am still not sure of if I want to commit to the couch.
I'm very fortunate to have a number of friends in NYC, and it's a shame that I haven't had them over for a house warming. Best case scenario would be a partiful link within this article proclaiming that it's actually happening. Alas that's not the case! Though there's nothing that says I can't edit this after where when I do have the house warming party!
One thing that brought about a house warming party is that I have a friend who lives here who I've seen like 3 times. Two times early on when I moved, and once for her birthday about a month ago. Two months ago she invited me to join her for a trip, and I mentioned we could make up for all the time we never see each other to which she replied you haven't even had a house warming party. On one hand, I want to defend myself, and say that having a house warming party or not wouldn't explain 8 months of not meeting up. On the other hand she's completely right I haven't had a house warming party oh the horror!
In some ways I truly mean the horror. I've had friends give me plants for my place, or lend me their drill / stud finder which I've since held hostage since I am so slow to do the drilling. These are people that are supporting me, and hosting people and bringing people together is a wonderful thing to do. In terms of the aim of making friends there's a guy who wrote a whole book about how hosting serves making friends. I should read that book, and I should host a house warming! Hopefully soon!
But I also wanted to surface the doubts. Like yes I have a kitchen island, but it has a leaf (panel that you can extend of fold down) and the leaf is droopy and it makes me sad. I have 3 stools and an office chair. I worry where will people sit? I have 6 glasses. Only 4 plates. Of course you don't need those things for a party, and you don't even need seats, and yet there's something intimate and vulnerable and status related about hosting people and the place being subpar or not ready.
There's also an element of wanting to be self sufficient and not wanting to ask for help or show that I could use help. If I open my home to friends, and the home is bleh it's okay they can help, and they may very well help! Throwing a house warming could also be easier if I enlist a co-host or someone to motivate me! There's also an element of building momentum. When I lived in San Francisco yes it's true that there was more pride associated with the place in some way, but it was also the case that I hosted more, and I think a part of that was being in the habit of it!
Anyway I won't put more hosting insecurities into the world for now, and simply say house warming party coming soon, hopefully, and further motivation is to have the house warming before it hits summer and the house warming becomes too literal of a sweaty soup!