I know she is 58, but she looks in great health, slim, looks 40ish actually, why is she so obssessed with 'muscle thighs'..if anything, these things like walking 5 stairs etc..will keep her fit. What is the deal with the yellow row house on 5th..did not look like many stairs to me..what was the price?????

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I probably jumped the gun a bit nothing wrong with smaller scaling down is something we should consider from time to time. It's just when reading the article it seemed as though she was jumping into the fire too quickly and too willing to give up certain needs. As far as the cat and cat box it makes sense for it's location. I hope Mrs. D is happy and comfortable in her surroundings here in J.C.

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You're basically attacking apartment living in general. Not only does small have many virtues to balance it's tradeoffs, but a lot of people as they get older don't want the hassle of maintaining a house. If you don't have skills it can be very intimidating and expensive.

And MANY cat occupied apartments have the litter box in the bathroom. Where would you put it, the kitchen? The bedroom? The living room?

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I was just commenting on the sacrifices she has to make just to live in that glorified apartment with a 126 other dwellings, as well as being in tight quarters. I'm happy that she found a place and great that it's here in J.C. and increasing the European population by one more. I'm sure some would say the same about me. I was looking at cost effectiveness. I hope these condo developers aren't ripping people off, along with mixing renting with ownership in the same building.

Good for the Silvermans.

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You might not like the costs, her eating habits, or anything, but who cares. You are not Ms. Daukantas, and if she is happy just be happy for her.

And what is wrong with having the litter box in the bathroom? A lot of homes have them there.

And hooray for Ms. Daukantas moving to JC and increasing the Lithuanian population by one. If you happen to be reading this - sveikiname į JC ir linkime sėkmės! Neikreipkis dėmesio ką dauguma ?itie ?monės sako.

I don't like her new budget first off $360 a month is a bit steep, and $6k a year for property taxes on a small apartment is out of line. She should have bought a house it would have been a lot cheaper in the long run. Her eating habits have a lot to be desired and sharing a bathrooom with the cat is a might too close for comfort, whats next the cat dish.

The New York Times -- THE HUNT

A Little Less Suburban, Please

The New York Times
By JOYCE COHEN
Published: May 6, 2011



ALDONA DAUKANTAS grew up in the 1960s as one of five siblings in an apartment beneath the elevated J line near the Woodhaven Boulevard Station in Queens. She was a subway student at City College, where she studied art.

Aldona Daukantas does not miss her old larger, less convenient home.



An apartment at the Bath House in Jersey City was intriguing.

After her marriage, she moved ?kicking and screaming? to a ranch house in Bergen County. She never took to the suburbs. Her attitude was: ?Well, you don?t need too many trees. You?ve seen one, you?ve seen ?em all. I missed city living big-time.?

When she divorced two decades later, the cost of living in New York was prohibitive, she said. Besides, she was working in New Jersey.

?I fell into the trap that bigger is better,? Ms. Daukantas said. The place she bought, 15 years ago, was a 1,700-square-foot loft-style triplex condominium in Paterson, N.J. It cost her $150,000. Like goldfish, ?we expand to the size of our containers,? she said, so she filled her rooms with furniture and her closets with clothing. Her two cats had the second bathroom to themselves. When the mortgage was paid off, ?I had all this disposable income,? she said, ?so I put in a new kitchen and a new bathroom.?

Most of the space sat unused. She spent a lot of time up in the loft, with the two cats and the TV.

Ms. Daukantas, 58, who works in human resources technology for a medical device maker, always assumed she would return to the city when she retired. She knew that, as she got older, driving after dark could become a concern. So could three flights of stairs. Already she was aware of the climb. She would go to the effort of lugging litter up the stairs, she told the cats, ?and all you?re going to do is pee on it.?

Last year, she and her youngest sister, Laura Corbett, who lives on Long Island, attended a hockey game at the Prudential Center in Newark. As usual, Ms. Daukantas complained about her living situation. The sisters do ?a lot of creative complaining,? Ms. Daukantas said. ?You can solve problems that way.?

Ms. Corbett suggested she move. It needn?t be to Manhattan, she said, ?because you are going to spend a boatload of money for a closet, and nobody should live like that.?

Still, Ms. Daukantas wasn?t sure she could afford to move even to the Jersey side of the Hudson. ?I totally believed this was way out of my league,? she said. ?I didn?t know where to begin. I like all kinds of different stuff.?

?I am focused when it is ?keep an eye on the prize,? ,? she explained. But now she was not necessarily sure of what the ?prize? was. She knew only that she needed a cat-friendly place with parking.

Another sister, Lina Angelo, works in Jersey City and showed her around. Ms. Daukantas loved the area?s urban nature, and sought the guidance of Ronnie Billington, an owner/broker of DBB Realty Group in Jersey City, whom she knew through friends.

Their first excursion was devoted to looking around, ?like Macy?s presale shopping,? Ms. Daukantas said. She learned that the one-bedrooms were perfectly reasonable, both in price and in size.

After she sold her Paterson place last fall for $315,000, she returned to the hunt in Jersey City. She expected to spend in the mid- to high $400,000s and to keep her monthly outlay below $2,300.

The Bath House, converted from an abandoned 1903 public bath house, was appealing. ?I like the idea of converted anything,? Ms. Daukantas said. ?I really respect and appreciate vintage, especially because my place was cookie-cutter.? But the partition walling off the loft was topped with a wide ledge. She imagined her cats would ?jump on top of this ledge and roll over, splat.?

The Beacon, developed from the Art Deco structures of the old Jersey City Medical Center, was laden with amenities ? too many, Ms. Daukantas felt. They included a screening room, a billiards room, a sauna and fitness facilities. She didn?t relish paying for features she would never use. ?If I really wanted to get some kind of exercise,? she said, ?I would walk in the park.?

She fell for a three-story single-family row house on Fifth Street. It had French doors, a fireplace and a pot rack in the kitchen. A permit for street parking was available for $15 a year.

But, descending the steep stairs, she felt a thigh muscle object. ?I said, wait a minute ? fast forward ? 10 years from now, am I going to want to go up and down these stairs??
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A yellow row house on Fifth Street involved too much stair-climbing.

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A condo at Hamilton Square struck a chord with its great layout.

The move was supposed to make her life easier, not harder, Ms. Corbett told her. ?She was caught up in the charm at first,? Ms. Corbett said. ?Fortunately, she saw the light.?

Initially Ms. Daukantas was iffy about Hamilton Square, a condominium that incorporates the former St. Francis Hospital building. She liked the fact that residents paid extra for the amenities they wanted, like the gym. But the apartments seemed too modern for her taste, and too small.

She changed her mind when she saw a well laid-out 950-square-foot one-bedroom with an open kitchen. The windowsill was safe for cats.

?It became a matter of, ?What is my heart saying to me, and my thigh muscle?? ? she said.

Both told her that this was the place. She bought the apartment last winter for $460,000. It has monthly fees of around $360 and annual taxes of almost $6,000. Ms. Billington negotiated a year of free parking. (It normally costs $165 a month.)

Needing to shrink to the size of her new and smaller container, Ms. Daukantas watched ?Hoarding: Buried Alive? for inspiration. ?Every night I made a vow to do something toward that end, whether it be to shred a paper or throw out an item,? she said.

Now she shares a bathroom with the cats. She used the proceeds from her Paterson sale to help pay for her new home, and has a small mortgage. Her monthly outlay is a bit less than $2,000.

As her disposable income has fallen, her food expenses have risen. Instead of driving to the grocery store, she takes the elevator to pick up a pizza, a salad, a sorbet. And she always has an excuse to visit the co-op on the ground floor, because it sells Jammy Sammy snacks, a favorite of the toddlers in her life, her twin niece and nephew, and she can?t find them elsewhere.

In her lively city environment, ?there isn?t a minute where I felt, oh, this is smaller,? she said.

She used to be confined within her four walls. Now she feels her home is as big as all outdoors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/rea ... nt.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1