Why go out when you can stay in?
On a Friday morning, I wake up at 8:55 a.m., five minutes before my workday begins, throw on flipflops and set out in search of a cup of Starbucks.
I shuffle the 102 steps from my kitchen to my apartment complex’s coffee bar, returning with a full cup in time to sit down at my counter, open up my laptop and log on for the day at 9:01 a.m.
I tap a quick note: “Nine hours in. Have coffee. All is OK.”
It reads like a diary entry on a trek up Everest (if there’s coffee on Everest, which — oh man — I hope there is). But in reality, my circumstances are far from dire. I just can’t leave my apartment building for 72 hours.
It’s a social experiment I’ve been mulling for a while. I’d been wondering: Armed with my iPhone and the amenities available in new apartment buildings like the one where I live, could I spend an entire weekend on the grounds without feeling like the walls of my 680-square-foot apartment were closing in on me?
Tiny apartments and a world of apps
My apartment, in a complex full of amenities, is on the cutting edge of a trend: In Houston these days, living in a new apartment building is less about living in your unit than in the space that surrounds it.
That trend, says Todd Triggs, vice president of real estate at Camden Property Trust, started about three years ago. As Houston land grew more expensive, it became ever more important to squeeze more units into a project. To make those attractive, he says, “you had to offer an amenity package that would wow renters and make them want to pay that rent to live there.”
The typical unit size, Triggs says, fell from around 1,000 square feet to roughly 825. People said goodbye to the home office and hello to the computer lounge near the leasing center.
And that’s why I don’t own either a coffee pot or a television: I can access both in my complex’s common areas — and the
complex pays for both the coffee and the cable.
Apps and the service economy, of course, are changing as fast as apartment complexes. I’ve been ordering food delivery on my phone and iPad for years. You probably have, too. But somewhere along the line, our ability to summon a steaming hot pepperoni pizza in 30 minutes or less evolved into so much more. Now I can order someone to blow dry my hair, do my laundry, or bring me a bottle of wine.
“I would say that we’re pretty normal now. Definitely, we turned the corner from being a kind of novelty service into being more of a utility,” says April Conyers, a spokeswoman for the app Postmates, which offers users the chance to have a wide range of food and consumer products delivered to their door. Their No. 1 use is food.
“People eat three times a day, so that makes sense,” says Conyers. “But we also see a lot of pharmacy items: cold medicine, or diapers. Maybe you’re at home with the kids and you can’t get out. And we do a lot of grocery orders as well. You’re making something and you ran out of butter. In those cases, it’s nice to have a service that can get you something within an hour.”
So 72 hours without leaving my complex should be a piece of cake, right?
Dog days
On Friday, it only takes about an hour until my wheaten terrier, Teddy, realizes something’s up. He’s used to a leisurely 45-minute walk first thing in the morning, and he’d like to know why his redand-blue leash hasn’t left the hook yet. I try to satisfy him by tossing his favorite green ball to the far side of my apartment, but he won’t be tricked that easily.
I flick through my phone, until I find an app called ApartmentButler, and order him a dog walker. He’ll get a halfhour outing for $18.
Once the dog’s needs are met, I work on mine, ordering lunch from the Tasting Room via Amazon Restaurants.
Later, I do what any good hermit would: fire up my iPad, cross my legging-covered legs and binge a couple episodes on Netflix. By the end of the weekend, I’m caught up on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”
Friday was nice.
Living off the land
By Saturday morning, I decide that even if I can’t take my dog for our usual long walk, I still want to do more than sit in a tiny one-bedroom apartment all day. Lucky for me, modern apartment living means that I have a gym, a pool, all the free coffee I can drink and an enclosed park for my dog to run around.
I grab Teddy’s leash and walk him the 102 steps to the coffee bar, pouring my life juice into a disposable cup, swaddled in a coffee-cozy with my apartment building’s logo emblazoned on it. Then we head out back to the dog park, where he can run around with no time limit (or, at least, until my coffee needs to be refilled again).
When Teddy is done, I drop him in the apartment and grab a book to read by the courtyard pool.
I’d like to tell you that I used all the amenities my apartment has to offer during my weekend, Dear Reader. But I cannot tell a lie: The gym was sorely absent from the routine.
By Saturday night, I’m running out of ideas for how to keep myself entertained. Both Teddy and I could really use a walk. Instead, I take him back to the dog park, where he makes a big show of how bored he is in that space, walking lazily in a circle before plopping down at the doggy water fountain and refusing to drink.
We go back inside, where I fall into a Pinterest vortex. After an hour of sifting through beauty pins, I realize I absolutely have to try an avocado face mask and order avocados and honey from H-E-B with the Instacart app.
My groceries arrive within 30 minutes, and I go to bed with baby-butt skin.
On Sunday morning, I wake to perfect patio weather and heave a deep sigh: I hate having to miss the wonderful Texas tradition of watching football while eating wings and drinking beer at a bar. But I make do: I turn to my phone, ordering wings from Postmates.
Human contact would be nice, too. Teddy never answers when I talk to him, and it seems like he’s starting to tire of the song I made up about him.
So I text my boyfriend and ask him to come over. I’m standing at my countertop, staring at my text to him when I laugh:
It’s the same place that I was standing a little more than a year ago, when I ordered him (Hinge, which bills itself as “the relationship app”).
Maybe the world really does come to me.