After living in a homestay for my first month in Buenos Aires, I was ready for a comfortable, safe place to call my own. So naturally, I turned to Craigslist.
In my apartment hunt, I had just two requisites: Spanish-speaking roommates and my own balcony. In the end, I chose the first place I checked out. It was a French-style building with marble floors, stained glass windows and a cast iron elevator. It was so pretty! So old! Also, my monthly rent was equivalent to US $315. So cheap!
Home sweet here
When I moved in, my room had the look of a temporary stay with its flashy prints, dusty corners and sparse furnishings. But I needed a place that felt like home. With everything else up in the air — work, friends, daily routine — I craved a safe space to land. So I nested.
Here’s the before:
And here’s the after:
That is to say, after spending something around $400 on pillows, blankets, artwork, plants and one very potent diffuser.
I loved this room. It became my own little haven, and when I started working from home last fall, it also became my office, den and dining room.
At the risk of overly romanticizing the place, I should probably mention the location of the building: a mostly deserted street in a dodgier neighborhood of the city, fronted by garbage bins that left debris along the sidewalks after the morning trash pickup. The street also seemed to be a favorite for a group of gypsies — particularly the affable La Loca, named by my roommates and me for her somewhat-crazed cackling into the early hours of the morning.
And then, of course, there was the long hallway to the kitchen…
… and the bathroom with its crumbling paint and questionable stains.
To this day, my most horrifying discovery was learning that our cleaning lady used the kitchen sponge to clean the bathroom. I’ll just let that sit for a while.
Setting aside La Loca, the horror-movie hallway and the dishes/toilet sponge, this place — this drafty, century-old building — became my home for my first six months in Buenos Aires. My roommates became my family. And that room, with its high ceilings, wood floors and tiny balcony, became my safe space in a wholly new city.
