RomaineNYC's Profile

Keep the tub. It will increase your resale options. Yes, there are folks (both men and women) who only want a shower, but they, too, may be thinking about resale value. You really do lower your buyer pool when you remove a tub.

If anything, I'd see if you could add a new tub!

A partner/spouse/etc. doesn't need to watch TV to ignore their partner/spouse/significant other. The issue isn't TV watching, it's avoidance.

TV is just a way to avoid, as is excessive socializing (to avoid being alone with a partner) or excessive work. How many people admit that they work too many hours to avoid home issues?

It's not about TV watching, it's about doing it to the exclusion of people and other activities. I know people who spend hours in bars at night drinking. You think that's healthy? (but they'll say, "Hey, we're socializing. It's good.) A lot of those people are clearly alcoholics who are using drink to avoid dealing with their lives.

Same with anything that you do in excess and that takes away time from relationships. It's one thing to share activities you truly love, this helps you bond and build up experiences. It's another to engage separately in activities, of any kind, where you are basically alone in a room together.

I do watch TV. I also work long hours. Read lots of books, magazines and newspapers. Go to the theater and opera. Spend time with friends.

I honestly can't say I sit down and just watch TV. I'm usually doing something else, like going thru mail, sorting stuff, cleaning up, etc. But there are a couple of shows I do watch regularly. Thankfully, being able to watch online allows me to schedule TV around my life, not my life around TV.

It's interesting how much has been said about how unhealthy watching TV is. Yet not so much about how much time adults spend playing video games, being online, or doing any activity (running, walking, sports playing) so much that it interferes with their relationships.

In NYC:
1. Public transport (subway, bus, railroad)
2. 24/7 drugstore/pharmacy (CVS, etc.)
3. Fruit/Vegetable stands
4. laundromat and/or dry cleaners
5. Newsstands

Lived in downtown Boston a few years back. Only ONE supermarket (a cab ride away); no fruit/veggie stands, no newsstands. Ugh.

Note: Supermarket doesn't have to be walking distance. In fact, most in walking distance have high prices and lousy stock, assortment.

However, a short bus ride away are tons of specialty food stores and markets with great assortment, good prices. (When needed, we get Fresh Direct delivery.)

Also must-have: Restaurants that deliver. Again, when living in Boston, nobody delivered. Not even a few blocks away. Unreal.

Now back in 24/7 NYC. Thankfully. (Met a neighbor last nite at 2 a.m. who was working late and had just gone out for some pizza and food all found within two blocks of our apt. building. Love the city!)

When I moved to Boston for half a year a few years ago (I kept my apt in NYC), I had to have a rental in line before I actually moved (and I had no time to go to Boston to see the places in person.)

I used a variety of methods: Called everyone I knew who had a friend or co-worker in the area. Spoke to them about various neighborhoods, etc. and issues affecting location (T-line, other transport, availability of things like supermarkets, etc. No small thing when you are carless in a city like Boston after living in 24/7 NYC. Big difference.) Asked a few to scout/take pix of apartments for me.

I spent a lot of time checking Craigslist (to get an idea of what was available and prices, by neighborhood) for individual sublets (I could not sign a lease as this wasn't usually available for the period I needed and I could not commit to a full year) by owners/renters. I also tried a few online real estate agencies.

The woman I was working for was also subletting and I contacted the guy/agency who rented to her. In the end, I decided to go with him thinking: Hey, he wouldn't do me wrong given how much business he did with her. (Boy, was that ever a mistake!)

Got there and the guy totally did not show up with keys to the apartment I was supposed to rent. Instead, got left keys to a horrific different apartment (My first apt in NYC when I was in college could have been on the cover of a magazine compared to the hellhole--literally--of the place he gave me keys to. There was a boiler in the kitchen/living room. A makeshift shower. No real bathroom. NOTHING like the great looking pix they advertised.)

But here's where luck and some Plan B planning came into play. When I was having little luck finding stuff I liked/could afford on the Craigs list listings, I composed my own ad for what I was looking for.

I got two terrific responses from a family and a woman who wanted to sublet their places. We had some great email and phone chats (the photos of her place were great as was the location) and when I decided to go with the agency, the single woman said: If it doesn't work out, just call me. The family said the same thing.

At 8 pm on Sunday, the day I moved and the day before I had to go to work on a new job, while ensconced in a horrific bait/switch apartment (for which I had put out over $2,000!), I called the single woman (a business professional). In less than a half hour, a friend of hers arrived at her apartment with the keys. I quickly hired a few kids who were on the street moving in some college students (luck) to traipse cross-town for move #3 of the day.

She and I ended up becoming friends, she cut the rent price and it was a terrific experience on both sides. That same first nite, after the awful day, the family invited me over to dinner.

Now, she had no money in hand. Had never met me in person. And she had a fabulous apartment (serious artwork and some seriously upscale furniture) that was fabulously maintained. This was a total trust issue and after being conned as it were by the agency, it was amazing to have such good luck.

You can save a lot of time by carefully reviewing how people post their ads, how they respond to emails, if they are available for calls, etc. (I got my money back from the agency by the way by first cancelling the check and then physically getting it back on Monday.) Reasonable people will want to check you out and vice versa. How people treat you and what they do or don't can give you a lot of clues about who to pursue.

I would say never take anyone else's word, even a friend's, unless it is someone you know very well and they would not leave you in the lurch.

I wouldn't count on being as lucky as I was but as a businessperson, I wrote a very professional want ad for what I was looking for and it "attracted" the kind of people I wanted to rent from.

But you do have to be very careful. In retrospect, I would have had someone I know go to meet the person with the apartment and have them see the apartment before any money exchanged hands.

There are a lot of scams out there, but also a lot of great people looking to rent. So don't be afraid to sell yourself to folks who would rent to you based on your own professional and personal history (I've lived in the same apartment over 2 decades. That alone helped reassure many people.)

FYI: Once I was living in Boston, I started looking around for longer term rentals. It is not all that less time-consuming when you're on-site and you'll still run into craziness (One woman quizzed me about the sports teams I followed. She would absolutely have NO ONE rent from her if they were not Red Sox or Patriot fans. I kid you not. She told me flat out that fans got preference in interviews. At least she was honest.)

April 11
It must have been very inconvenient to have someone's stuff just left in your place. And it certainly wasn't thoughtful or considerate for whomever to have left it (unless you agreed?) That said, it is NOT your stuff to toss, sell, etc. Even given their behavior.

How hard did you try to find them? I would have had the stuff shipped out COD or stuck it in storage (and make them pay) if, after trying several ways/people to contact them, it was still around. How well did you know these people that they would just let stuff stay?

What you did was flat out wrong. In fact, it was theft. Sorry to be harsh, but your frustration doesn't give you the right to sell it! (Unless you had a contract that said: Whatever you leave becomes mine and I can do with it what I want.)

As to the parents who believe that it is their right to toss their kids stuff: Please, think again. People who toss their kids stuff are basically saying: We own the kids, we own the stuff. No, you don't.

I was raised by a woman who did this. We had immaculate rooms. I mean immaculate and very very clutter free. But this woman (our mother) was so bored with her life that she had nothing better to do than go through our stuff and just toss stuff. She also, at one point, sold off our stuff. Please understand: We were not rich kids with tons of stuff. We had very very little. And much of what we had was stuff of great sentimental value and irreplaceable. I cannot tell you how painful it was for my brother and I.

To say that this was traumatizing (she would also rearrange all the stuff in our drawers and closets and the furniture in our room and this includes when we were teenagers), is to put it mildly. Both my brother and I still bear the scars about this and are fanatical about people touching "our" stuff. You really do not get over this kind of behavior. And it was one more thing that alienated us from this woman.

Ironically, when the time came that our mother had to go in to an ALF, we went out of our way to allow her to review and choose what she would take (three room apartment had to be winnowed down to stuff to fit in one room). We knew totally, how traumatizing it is to make that kind of move and also to have to give up your apartment and your stuff.

It would have been easier and faster to just toss stuff, but even given how she treated us, we would not do it. It would have been as disrespectful for us to do to her as it was when she did it with us.

People's feelings are worth far more than a clean space. If they aren't, YOU have the problem.

By the way, I wish I'd had the guts to do what one commentor here did: Tossing your mother's stuff. Clever but if we had done that, we'd have been beaten to an inch of our lives.

It's funny in a way that everyone focuses on people who live with stuff and clutter (not talking hoarders here) as the ones with problems. Well, folks, people who go around carelessly tossing other people's things? They have some serious issues too.

And if you live with or are married to one, I'd be reconsidering if you should continue. Seriously. This lack of respect is huge.

And I'm even more appalled when spouses do this to each other.