00:00Hi, my name is Nicole. Welcome to my sweet digs.
00:03Please take your shoes off before you come in because this is a no-shoes apartment.
00:07Welcome!
00:12So I live on the border of Fort Greene and downtown Brooklyn.
00:16The rent for this one-bedroom apartment is $33.75,
00:20and my boyfriend and I split that.
00:22Relative to our incomes, I pay $1,400, and he pays $19.75.
00:30So this is my kitchen. One of our priorities for finding an apartment
00:34was we wanted a fully functioning kitchen, a dishwasher, a big fridge,
00:40and a nice stove and oven.
00:42My favorite thing to cook is to make chili in the crock pot,
00:46and I just do it in the morning before I go to work,
00:48and then when I come home, the whole apartment smells really amazing.
00:52I keep my whole apartment pretty clean,
00:54and all the surfaces have nothing on them at most times.
00:57That's really hard to do on a daily basis.
00:59So I've got a couple of junk drawers where I just throw everything in.
01:03There's a lot of random stuff in my junk drawer.
01:07Scissors, tape, floss for a turkey, not for my teeth.
01:11This is like really embarrassing, and I can't believe I'm showing the internet this.
01:15My boyfriend hates this junk drawer, but if he hated it that much,
01:19he could organize it for me.
01:21Our home style is lots of like natural woods, white, beiges, and then green from like the plants.
01:30It's like maybe a little Scandinavian looking.
01:33I'm from Switzerland, so it's not the same thing, but I definitely want it to kind of like have that
01:38cozy, natural feel.
01:41My mother definitely influenced the minimalist side of the apartment because her house,
01:47I don't know how she does it.
01:48Her surfaces are just always empty and like totally clean and clear,
01:53and it just like looks really nice that way.
01:58So this is our living room.
02:00For us, this was the most important part of the apartment.
02:03Our priority was to deck out the living room first.
02:08The two most expensive things in our apartment, I think, are actually the couch and the entertainment unit.
02:15The couch is from Ikea, and it was $1,200, but really worth it because I probably spend the most
02:21time on my couch.
02:23And then we also really wanted the entertainment unit to look really nice so that like no cables show.
02:28And that's from West Elm.
02:30We invested in this little more expensive coffee table from West Elm.
02:35It also has storage underneath, so we keep all our like board games and other knick-knacks in there.
02:41My boyfriend and I love to just watch TV and eat dinner and have some wine on the couch.
02:46This is why we wanted this to look really nice.
02:49My building has a couple of cool amenities.
02:51We have a gym, outdoor patio area, a kids' playroom, which I don't plan on using.
02:56The balcony space and then the big windows really make it feel a lot bigger.
03:02We haven't invested in like outdoor furniture as much.
03:05It would be really great to get kind of like more of a lounge, sofa thing outside,
03:10because then I think I would really veg out there all the time.
03:13The most exciting thing that I want to show you guys is my in-unit laundry and dryer.
03:25I love it!
03:26In New York City, it's pretty rare to have in-unit laundry and dryer.
03:30It is so convenient and just the best thing ever.
03:35One thing that I was really excited about in this apartment is that nobody has ever lived in this unit.
03:41So we're the first people to use this bathtub.
03:45I'm like a major germaphobe, so I could never use anybody else's bathtub.
03:49So now I can take baths in New York City and I'm really happy about that.
03:53My absolute favorite home find in this apartment is this bathroom storage unit.
03:58I had to find something that was like super narrow, which this is.
04:02Thank you, IKEA.
04:03And it has a full-length mirror, so that's really nifty.
04:05It has so much storage, guys!
04:08Yay!
04:11We try to keep the apartment as clean as possible, but my boyfriend chooses to pile his stuff in this
04:19corner,
04:20which can be a little frustrating, but the good thing is it's behind this dresser,
04:24so usually you can't really see when you come into the apartment.
04:27I have a Dreamcatcher.
04:28I've had it since I was seven.
04:30We got it from a Native American Reserve ever since I've not had bad dreams.
04:35Also, I have a wooden Jolly Buddha.
04:39It's supposed to be lucky, and it's also come with me wherever I've moved to.
04:43One thing that I'm a little weird about is air quality.
04:46I have a diffuser, a humidifier, and a Himalayan salt lamp, which detoxes the air, supposedly.
04:53My boyfriend always says he's never met anyone that talks about air quality as much as I do.
04:58So my boyfriend and I, Matt, have lived here for one year and seven months.
05:02It was really fun to move in together.
05:03He's almost cleaner than I am, to be honest, so, like, that works perfectly.
05:08I would honestly say, like, the style is probably more from, like, my imagination,
05:12but he was really great, actually, at identifying the style that I have
05:17and then, like, finding things that he thought would work for me.
05:20This is a totally no-shoes apartment because we live in New York City.
05:24There's basically all kinds of really weird, gross stuff, and we do not want to track that in.
05:30I have my shaggy rug from Crate and Barrel.
05:33It's, like, really light-colored, and so I don't want anybody to step on it with shoes.
05:37Also, wine. I've warned many friends not to spill wine on it. No one has.
05:42For my next apartment, I basically want the exact same apartment in the exact same location,
05:48but half the price. That would be great.
05:51Other than that, I really love this space, and I am very comfortable here.
06:05You're welcome.
06:07Thank you very much.
