The New York Post is riding the residual waves of shock generated by Mayor Bloomberg's recent challenge to city developers to create "micro-apartments" ranging from 275 to 300 square feet in size in what's currently a parking lot in New York City's Kips Bay neighborhood. These apartments would, with Bloomberg's approval, not have to adhere to the current law that requires new buildings to offer living spaces of at least 400 square feet.

But, as we wrote yesterday, there are always apartments smaller than that, and, looky here, the paper's Jennifer Gould Keil and Beth Defalco have found one! It's inhabited not by a single human but by a couple who can't stand to their full heights in their own bedroom. And they are engaged, despite having resided in such minuscule quarters for an entire year.  Holy hell, everything we thought we knew is different now. 

As Keil and Defalco write:

For the past year, writer Erin Boyle, 28, and biologist James Casey, 30, have lived in a 240-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn Heights — and they still plan on getting married next month.

Here are the descriptors the tiny place gets:

“dungeon-esque” 

"cozy"

"$1,500 a month" (nice!)

"studio" (obviously)

"close quarters"

The piece goes on to give some thoughts on how the happy twosome have managed to coexist despite the clutter of so many real estate euphemisms. Keeping it neat, having a loft bed (over the stove), hiding random items under the love seat (in a wine crate), having a love seat and not an actual couch, always getting rid of one piece of furniture when they find something new, letting Casey have his surfboard but giving it an actual corner of the apartment instead of keeping it in the shower where they're always bumping their knees on it and getting aggravated and then shouting. 

All the learning here is that humans can live in tiny spaces (and Dr. Robert Schachter, quoted in the piece, agrees), but you have to be willing to a) want to and b) compromise—which is essentially the same theme of a piece in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that discussed how when couples fight about clutter, they might really be fighting about their relationships, and pick up your goddamn socks will you why do I always have to ask a second time?

Gosh, we learn so much about ourselves daily, don't we? If you don't like it, you can always live next door to each other ... or just stay single and keep all that luxurious space to yourself.

Image via Shutterstock by HaveSeen.

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Jen Doll