Reply to I HATE the suburbs and have a chance to leave. This is long..more experienced parents help?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "I HATE the suburbs and have a chance to leave. This is long..more experienced parents help?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP have you ever heard the saying, “no matter where you go, there you are.”

My old therapist also used to say this: “there is no geographic solution.” By this, she meant that thinking that a move will give you happiness you can’t find in your present means you aren’t doing the work to be happy with what you have now.

As someone who lived with 2 kids in a 2BR/2BA 1300 square foot apartment in a city when my partner and I both tried to telework, I think you are nuts. We moved as soon as we got the chance after our second was born, because we knew what was best for our kids was giving up our 15 years in the city apartment to invest in our own home, good schools, a yard, a good neighborhood, and a community for them to grow up in.

A few thoughts you probably have not considered:

Have you thought about doing family laundry in a shared laundry room in the basement of your apartment versus in your own SFH when you own your own washer and dryer? You probably forget what college laundry was like or what it was like to fight for a washer or a dryer for hours but trust me, it’s horrible.

How do you feel about lugging groceries? Do you like walking 4-5 blocks, multiple times, carrying bags while your arms burn to the point of giving out to and from your car? With little kids? In the snow and rain? Hopefully there is covered parking but if not, you’re signing up for a real downgrade.

How do you feel about neighbors who are homeowners of townhouses, row houses, and SFHs judging you and thinking you are poor for being a renter? This was a constant issue for us, the people who owned 2m SFHs did not treat us, their renting apartment neighbors (all professionals paying a lot in rent) as their “real” neighbors since we were renters and not homeowners.

How do you feel about neighbors making noise complaints about your kids? How do you feel about landlords sending you emails documenting complaints about kids crying, or you being up late at night? Happened to us multiple times, even when we carpeted the whole unit - most often when we were up with sick kids barfing at 2 am. (Doing puke laundry at 2 am in a shared laundry room in a
Basement without a utility sink is a special treat).

How do you feel about fighting your husband for space when you both have important meetings or calls and don’t want the other person to be heard in the background?

How do you feel about not being able to host guests, since you won’t have space? Our only option was people sleeping in our living room, not exactly like a spare room.

How do you feel about being stuck inside at night? With a yard my partner and I have a fire pit and do fires in our fire pit or fireplace at night. We sit on the porch outside and drink wine. Or on our patio. It’s amazing. In our city apartment the rooftop deck closed at 9 pm and we would get kicked out by the building manager, so were always stuck inside once the kids went down and we could not enjoy any part of the city unless we had a sitter.

How do the kids feel about losing a yard? Having no space to run around inside and play? Having no space for a play room or kid area that is not part of the family living space?

How do you feel about having limited to no storage for all the crap in your 5 BR house? I promise there won’t be room for it all, even if you get a storage locker.

Do you enjoy having bikes stolen? In 15 years in a city I lost 3, all locked, one from
My garden apartment porch on a second floor, twice from a locked bike room in our building.

Do you want to lose your sense of community? In a neighborhood of homeowners there’s a far greater sense of community than in a building of renters where people come and go constantly.

Personally I think you would be nuts to make all these trade offs, but that’s because I think you are only seeing the good parts of city living and ignoring all the bad.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics