Two roommates have shared a peek inside their “shoebox” New York City apartment, revealing that the space is so tiny, they are forced to live out of their suitcases because there isn’t enough room for closets.
Audrey Stasko and Maggie Gholston, both 22, moved to the Big Apple after graduating from Auburn University, trading sizable Alabama abodes for an extra-small pad in Manhattan.
The women say they love their lives in New York City, much of which they regularly document on TikTok, but they admit that their new dwelling has taken quite a bit of getting used to.
While many Manhattan homes are limited on space, Gholston and Stasko’s apartment takes the concept of tight living quarters to a whole new level.
It has hallways so narrow, the women can barely fit down them, and the only available storage for clothing is a single coat closet.
In a viral video, which has so far amassed over 2.2 million views, they opened the doors to their humble pad, where they live out of suitcases.
“Just come this way,” Gholston tells viewers as she shimmies down the hallway to their apartment door. The space is so tight, they “can’t open the door all the way.”
“Here we have the grand foyer,” the college alum joked of the pokey space, which cannot fit both her and her roommate at the same time.
Immediately upon entering the home, guests are greeted with the “biggest room” in the apartment: the bathroom.
This “is our only closet,” Gholston adds as she showcased one built-in storage space at the front of the apartment.
She then moves on to show off her room, which she calls the “insane asylum box.” The camera pans the space to show several suitcases on the floor, all of them filled with clothing, as well as a tiny desk that comes with a “Barbie stool.”
Moving into the kitchen, Stasko points out their broken stove and their fridge, which is one of the few full-sized amenities in this home.
She then reveals how they maximized their space by storing some of their belongings under their couch.
The tour then moves to Stasko’s room, which is slightly larger than Gholston’s and boasts a small clothing rack and under-the-bed storage.
“We are working with about 1 foot of space,” she says as she shows off her makeup setup by her window, which also features a tiny stool in place of a more traditional chair.
“Thank you so much for coming to our apartment tour,” Stasko says at the end of the clip.
Viewers flooded the comments section with questions about the roommates’ tiny space. However, they all went unanswered.
According to Sweeten, a bedroom in New York City must measure 8 feet on either side, have an 8-foot ceiling, and be at least 80 square feet for it to meet legal standards.
And while some states do make it mandatory for homes to have a closet, New York is not one of them, meaning that Stasko and Gholston’s charming apartment satisfies legal requirements.
This isn’t the first time that New Yorkers have taken to the video-sharing platform to showcase their tiny abodes.
Previously, a woman who pays $3,200 a month for her New York City studio apartment left the internet in an uproar after revealing that the home’s kitchen is so tiny, it doesn’t have room for an oven.
Avery Addison took to TikTok to showcase one of the most unusual aspects of her West Village studio apartment after seeing another content creator post a video of her ultra-small bathroom.
In Addison’s video, which amassed more than 1.7 million views, she conceded that the size of the space and lack of basic amenities might seem “crazy,” but she insisted that it doesn’t bother her because she has so many incredible restaurants within walking distance of her home.
Speaking exclusively to Realtor.com®, Addison, who works in event production, said she knew that she would have to make compromises and sacrifices to live alone in Manhattan. She lived in the tiny space for a “year.”
Another New Yorker also revealed the brutal realities of budget-friendly city living by showing off one of the bizarrest amenities in her apartment: the “toilet sink.”
Emily Bonani regularly shares glimpses of her day-to-day life in the Big Apple on TikTok, where she has more than 200,000 followers.
Though her past videos have proven popular, a clip in which she took viewers through what she describes as the “smallest bathroom in New York City” all but broke the internet, amassing more than 13 million views.
In the video, she revealed that her sink was part of her lavatory. The sink was built into the tank cover in what appears to be a rather drastic space-saving measure.
Bonani revealed that the water in the faucet is operated by the toilet flush.
“What’s great about this is that you don’t have to turn on the sink and turn on the toilet in two separate actions. It actually is the same action,” she quipped as she flushed the toilet to make the sink water flow.
“And if you are thinking, ‘What if I want to flush the toilet but I don’t want to turn on the sink?’ Well, that’s not an option. That’s not an option that you have,” she explained.
