One thing more and more of us now have in common with Millennials is this: We are both apartment renters who we are unwilling to invest time and money making the property Martha-Stewart beautiful.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, yes, many Millennials are working from home. But they aren't rushing off to any of the home-improvement big boxes to fix up the place. Personal-Finance savvy, they get it that the apartment is the landlord's property, not theirs. If they beautify it, especially through long-term interior design such as painting, that will financially benefit the landlord, not themselves.
The advice from many financial planners for us Baby Boomers is to wait for the real estate to boom, then sell the family home. I did that in 2004. Since then I have been renting. And since then I haven't picked up a paint brush or gone to the art museum for wall decorations. You bet, I am in a Millennial mindset: Why enhance the landlord's property? And, no, I don't need pretty. Enough heat in winter, enough cold air in summer, and I am doing just fine. Bare walls? So? Less and less do we aging invite others in. The last time I hosted a dinner party had been 2005.
That perspective is way different from how we went about renting before we bought our first house. For us, having an apartment, especially w/o roommates, was a significant rite of passage. We were really out of our parents' homes and out of the dorm. Ah, personal freedom, at last. If the landlord wasn't one of those busybodies we could have lovers overnight and down-and-out friends from college bunking with us forever. It was days of heaven.
That feeling of utter liberation was universal among us. We treasured it. So, we pitched it to beautify our buddies' apartments. After the painting was done, out came the beer, wine and cheap eats. I recall our being so happy.
Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way. From everywhere came the nudge to buy a house or at least a condo. Unless we had wealthy parents, that meant a mortgage. And that meant our carefree days were over. We had to worry about keeping the job and getting ahead as property taxes rose and the water heater went kaput.
Returning to apartment living does signal the embrace of a certain kind of freedom again. No longer is there the fear of an unexpected big bill for a basement which is starting to fill with water or a roof that is leaking. So, the money essentially is ours. And, none of mine since 2004 has gone to making the nest like something out of the glossy shelter magazines. It's simply a roof over my head.
Because I can afford that w/o needing roommates I am grateful. This Thanksgiving, as I hunker down in my apartment during social distancing times I will look at the walls which could use a coat of paint and feel good that age brings the gift of not needing much. That's what Roger Rosenblatt emphasized in his memoir "Making Toast." As I keep pivoting to new values with aging I reflect on the extreme contentment which comes from needing so little.
Indeed, someone might peek into the window from the street and mistake the digs for that inhabited by a medieval monk.
There are my writing equipment, books, candles for prayer and meditation and a mat to get my rest (I have a bad back). That's it. That's the liberation from the ethos that we are our shelter.
Instead, I have become my own person (finally). Come to think of us, our generation really did take a bit of time to gain a real sense of self.
During the counterculture we were as conformist as during the Eisenhower Administration. Then came the careerism. Next we entered the worry-about-retirement box.
A minimalist apartment becomes the symbol of having found ourselves after a lifetime of being lost. Millennials could escape that kind of rigid journey.
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