00:00Hi guys, I'm Allie Hickson, social media editor at Refinery29.
00:03Welcome to my sweet digs.
00:05Take off your shoes because this is a no-shoe apartment.
00:07Come on in.
00:09I live in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment
00:12on the Upper West Side,
00:13though technically this area is Lincoln Square.
00:16I have two roommates, and our apartment is $4,800 a month.
00:28Personally, I think the rent is too damn high,
00:31but I really love this neighborhood.
00:33I love living a block from Central Park.
00:35I love being by Lincoln Center.
00:36One of my top five favorite movies is You've Got Mail,
00:39and it's kind of like an ode to the Upper West Side.
00:42I feel like I am Meg Ryan every day.
00:45This is my kitchen.
00:47I think it's a pretty large kitchen for New York City,
00:49to be honest.
00:50We have this amazing countertop here.
00:53It's probably where I eat most of my meals.
00:55I'm gonna get a kitchen confession.
00:56Um, I don't cook that much.
00:59I am a satisfactory cook.
01:01Like, I won't starve.
01:02It's really my roommate, Jess, who's the cook.
01:05She's the true grown-up of this apartment.
01:07My least favorite part of the apartment
01:09is definitely my bathroom, for a few reasons.
01:12I don't like sharing a bathroom.
01:14My least favorite thing of all is that
01:16we just have shower stalls.
01:18We don't have tubs in our bathroom.
01:20I love taking baths, so I miss having a tub.
01:23Also, it makes a horrible noise.
01:26I hate that sound.
01:28This is our living room.
01:30The couch is my favorite part of the apartment.
01:32The couch is also the most expensive thing in the apartment.
01:35It's like $800.
01:37At the time, I wanted to cry and thought,
01:38how could a piece of furniture be so expensive?
01:41It was worth it.
01:41I got it actually at Ikea, and people love this couch.
01:44Because it's so cozy, it's special.
01:48Oh my god, there's like a photo now of me, like, massaging my couch.
01:52I got this a bajillion years ago.
01:54Why am I holding a flask?
01:55It used to be on the other side of the room as a TV stand,
01:58but we got a much larger TV.
02:00We turned it into a bar.
02:02And obviously, we enjoy alcohol in this apartment.
02:05Help yourself.
02:06This is my roommate Ada's room.
02:08It's the smallest room in our apartment,
02:11but it has its own private bathroom,
02:13so you're kind of winning.
02:14We took the closet doors off,
02:16so that way we could, like, fit a larger bed in here.
02:19There are a few things in her room
02:20that are still things that, like, I brought in here.
02:23This wardrobe actually used to be my wardrobe,
02:25and she took it from me.
02:26That's so me, and she took it from me.
02:28I mean, she bought it from me.
02:29It was a gift.
02:30In the bathroom, the thing I'm, like, most proud of in this room
02:33is I built one of those floating shelf thingies,
02:36and it's still hanging in there.
02:38And her stuff is on it, and it hasn't fallen over.
02:40So, like, call me if you need me to build something in your apartment.
02:44When I first moved in the apartment,
02:45my rent was only $1,400 a month, which is kind of nice,
02:48especially since I have my own bathroom.
02:50Now I live in one of the bigger bedrooms.
02:52I pay more rent.
02:54It's about $15.90 now.
02:55Welcome to my bedroom.
02:57It's a much larger space.
02:58I have my own huge closet now and a weird nook
03:01that I don't even know what to do with.
03:03I pile things in the little nook in my room,
03:06but I don't really pile things.
03:09Like, I throw it there for, like, an hour,
03:11and then I have to hang everything up
03:12where I can't go to bed.
03:13The only things that I really have a lot of
03:15are shoes and books.
03:17Anywhere there's room, there's books and there's shoes.
03:20And if I had to guess how many shoes I have in total?
03:23Uh, two, four, six, eight.
03:26Thirty to forty pairs of shoes.
03:28It's a lot of shoes.
03:29My favorite pair of shoes right now
03:30are these velvet ankle boots.
03:33And then my other favorite I just got
03:35are these little, like, silver school girly shoes.
03:38They're really cute.
03:39And they're actually super comfortable.
03:41I could not choose a favorite book.
03:42Please don't make me.
03:44Please.
03:44Ta-Nehisi Coates.
03:45It's incredible between the world and me.
03:47Toni Morrison and the Bluest Eye,
03:48which is one of my all-time favorites,
03:50but really great because she signed it.
03:53Pretty cool.
03:54This is honestly my eighth grade copy of Romeo and Juliet.
03:57You can flip inside and find really important notes,
04:00like, Romeo loves Rosalyn.
04:03Insightful.
04:04My most sentimental piece of furniture
04:06is definitely my typewriter.
04:07My best friend from college bought me this typewriter
04:11when I went to journalism school.
04:12It was really expensive and cost her, like,
04:14all of her savings at the time,
04:16like, actual friendship goals.
04:17I use it to write thank you notes,
04:19and I write letters to my grandmother on it sometimes.
04:22This is my roommate Jess's room.
04:24She is really great at decor,
04:27keeping things neat and organized,
04:29and she has, like, a very set, cute style.
04:32It's perfect.
04:33Jess's room is not only super beautiful,
04:35it's also the largest room in the apartment,
04:37and it has a huge walk-in closet
04:39that could probably fit, like, another family inside of it.
04:42She pays the most in rent out of all of us.
04:45A friend and I were looking for apartments.
04:47We both really loved the Upper West Side,
04:48and then she spotted this place on Craigslist,
04:51and we both were like, it can't be real.
04:54And then we came here, and it was the real deal.
04:56We fell in love, and now I'm here, like, five years later,
05:00which in New York is a long time.
05:02I would say, like, my shared space style is minimal.
05:05I'm really big on keeping things organized.
05:08I don't know if you noticed already in our apartment,
05:10but there's, like, not a single thing out of place,
05:11and that's not because you guys were coming to visit
05:13and we wanted to look cute.
05:14We legitimately don't leave crap out in our apartment.
05:18I would definitely move out,
05:20but it would take a lot to get me a move.
05:22I would probably want my own space.
05:23In my next room apartment, I want more closet space
05:26because I have so many shoes,
05:27more bookshelves for all my books,
05:28and goals to have a washer-dryer in my unit.
05:32Maybe I'll be filming.
05:33I'm so graceful.
