"Hosting Apartment Gatherings Made Easy with Simple Solutions"
Feb 7, 2024 - 3:50pmSummary: Savannah and I hosted 17 people from our apartment building and it turned out to be a great event with plans for future activities. Realizing the hassle of dismantling our bed in the living room whenever guests arrive, we now simply move the mattress off the floor for future gatherings. For apartment events, we've adopted a "bring your own chair" approach, which worked well, and for larger gatherings, we're considering using folding chairs and a table. Ultimately, we've found that the simplest solution for hosting is just moving the mattress, which is cost-effective and allows us to enjoy our time with guests.Transcript: Update on Savannah and I's apartment layout considerations. So the original thinking was, how do we host people? We have a bed in the living room and it's annoying to disassemble it and put away the box spring and shove the mattress in the room every time people are coming over. It just sounds unsustainable. But we did have people over, we had 17 people come over from our apartment building and it was a blast, first of all. Great turnout, people were stoked to organize a WhatsApp and people started suggesting different events to do. It was great. But we realized, when we rearranged the place after the party, we just left the mattress, carried the mattress back into the living room, we just put it on the floor and basically just called it done for now. Where to host people, all we need to do is move the mattress off the ground, put it in one of our rooms or even our closet later when it gets a little more freed up and we could have people over pretty easily. And if it's an apartment event, especially for this one, we just said, bring your own chair. So everybody sat on something that they brought. We had a few extra pillows and stuff. If it's people from out the apartment building or biking over, then I think it's going to be rare that we have that many people over and I think we can just have folding chairs and a folding table. Funny enough, the practical definitely won out over the theoretical where we realized the simplest solution is really just to pick up the mattress and put it down. There's still thoughts of a long-term plan here, but it's the cheapest, easiest way to getting a bunch of people in our apartment and having a good time, so that's what we're at with.
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Savannah and I are rethinking our two-bedroom apartment layout that currently uses each room as our private studios and has our bed in the common living room. We're considering new arrangements to accommodate more hosting and spontaneous visits from friends, as our current setup proves challenging with the bed in a shared space. We're exploring several options: I could rent a local co-working space for work, we could lease a commercial office next door for my studio, or we could transform our bed into a more conventional living room. Each option presents its own advantages and drawbacks, including considerations of cost, convenience, and the ability to maintain separate work and leisure areas. Considering options for accommodating guests and community events, a Murphy bed couch conversion was deemed expensive and impractical. A DIY solution to space constraints is on the table, but also poses challenges due to the difficulty of moving and assembling large items in the apartment. An alternative idea involves renting an adjacent one-bedroom unit to create a communal space for friends and events, despite its higher cost and effort required to maintain coziness. The desire to host more casual, spontaneous gatherings is driving these considerations, with the aim to create an open-door atmosphere for social interactions.
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