Here’s What You Need to Make the Jump to Loft Living Seamless

Welcome to Someone Buy This!, a monthly shopping column featuring the fun, the frivolous, and the practical from a very discerning shopper.

My boyfriend and I recently made our shared New York City dream come true and moved into a big loft. Not only was this space a huge step in our relationship (neither of us have lived with a significant other before! Please clap!) it was a hefty design challenge, too. He’s an architect and I’m a chronic shopper, giving us the perfect combination of brain worms to create several versions of a floor plan before we even signed the lease. The apartment is amazing but moving into a space like this one came with some unexpected challenges.

The air is bad and must be purified 

Our proximity to a major highway coupled with the daily construction on the exterior of our building made us decide to get an air purifier, something neither of us had ever owned or knew anything about. We got an EnviroKlenz air purifier which has a HEPA filter and a UV light. I cannot overstate how life-changing this thing has been. The air purifier has significantly cut down on dust and pet dander, two things I didn’t think I’d be able to notice. It was also a lifesaver when every tree in New York City decided it was time to release all the pollen at the same time. The vibe was bad outside but at least we were booger and sniffle-free in the apartment. Another unexpected plus of the air purifier is that it gets rid of lingering cooking smells very quickly. Since the loft is basically one big room, I was worried about all of our coats and clothes constantly smelling like food (I hate this!) but the EnviroKlenz clears out all the kitchen smells before we’re even done eating. 

Setting up the air purifier was pretty easy, I think it took us longer to break down the box than it did to get it powered up. It’s on wheels, though we haven’t really moved it around, and has a slightly industrial vibe which really works in the space. You can see the UV light through the vents but it’s out of our sightline at night, so it doesn’t keep us up. I’d read that air purifiers could be loud but this one is not. We run it on the medium setting all day, every day, which you can definitely hear but it’s just low level background noise.

How do we divide the space without creating rooms?

I think most of the time I shared our move-in news with a friend or loved one, they’d semi-ominously say "Make sure you have your own space." This was especially common advice amongst those who had been coupled up for a while. How were we going to do that with no rooms? Would we each have to take turns hiding out in the bathroom, the only actual room with a door we could close?

This was an interesting design challenge. The apartment is long, with windows only on one side. So any division we made had to preserve as much light flow as possible to the back of the unit. We ended up creating three main divisions. We each had a 4-cube Ikea Kallax unit that had been schlepped from apartment to apartment for the last several years. We lined those up next to each other to divide our office space from the dining area. These units are now very tall, so they divided the space without blocking light. Plus the added storage and plant resting surface is a major plus.

Our bedroom is the closest thing we have to a real enclosed room. The bed faces the windows and behind our headboard is a tall, free-standing shelf that my boyfriend designed and built (I’m bragging for him) which separates our bedroom from the living room. We stocked it with enough books, art and plants to properly divide the space and still allow for light to hit the back of the apartment.

The other "wall" of our bedroom is a row of three Ikea Pax closets that house 90 percent of our clothing. They’re doorless right now but the plan is to get mirrored doors to really bounce that light in. Because each door is $100 and we need six of them, we’ve decided this is a next-month problem. After we get the doors we’ll tackle the backs of the closets which we can see in the office area. The classic cardboard brown does not make for a good Zoom background, so we’re looking into peel and stick wallpaper. Our current contenders include the "seashell" pattern from the recently launched Poketo x Mitchell Black wallpaper collection. I’ve also been drooling over Cold Picnic’s wallpaper.

There’s…so much floor to clean 

I’m almost embarrassed to write this part because it feels a little silly but I was initially overwhelmed with how much floor there is to clean. Hear me out: I used to divide up my cleaning by room. Cleaning one room felt easier and within my reach, but the prospect of vacuuming and mopping 1250 square feet gave me chills. We moved in with a cordless Dyson and a Bona Mop, which are great but we needed backup. A robot vacuum seemed like a good option for daily, passive cleaning so we got the Roomba J7+.

I’ve had less expensive robo-vacs in the past and always thought "How much smarter could the Roomba be?" The answer is much, much smarter. Here’s the thing: you will have to invest some time in getting this thing to map out your space. But once it does, you can set it to clean everything or even specific areas of your home on whatever schedule you want. When it’s done vacuuming it will return to its home and empty itself. Fair warning: The emptying sounds like a fighter jet taking off, so it’s not something I’d run on a nighttime schedule. While the Roomba navigates rugs and obstacles much better than any robot vacuum I’ve used, it will get tripped up on errant cords. This was annoying at first but we’ve since tidied up our cable situation.

I’ve saved the best for last. The crown jewel of our cleaning arsenal is the Tineco wet/dry vacuum. The first time we used this machine we were blown away by how painless it was (mopping hurts!) and how clean the floors were. Switching in new, clean water is easy and discarding the dirty mop water is so satisfying. We could literally feel the difference walking on the floors. I was hesitant about a wet/dry vacuum. I tend to think that multi-use machines can’t really do anything right, but this one proved me wrong and it cleans itself. Yes, the price tag is hefty but I’m telling you: It’s worth it.

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