Again, with no elevator.
I can’t imagine no elevator and walking up with groceries.
That’s the norm in most urban centers in Europe. Houses are older than elevators, there’s no space for a refit, and rebuilding them from scratch is often not feasible due to the time and cost involved.
I didn’t particularly mind it though. Been living anywhere from 2nd to 5th floor without one, and it’s perfectly fine.
We also don’t buy truckloads of groceries as it works in the US apparently, but pick up stuff we need for the evening or next day on the way back from work, and that’s that. I hardly ever broke a sweat from shopping.
During covid we bought 2 weeks of groceries at a time.
So it would only have been aninconvenience once every 2 weeks? Or you could have adjusted your grocery shopping to your situation…or gotten a wheeled cart…or any number of things.
I’ve lived in multiple 3rd floor walk-ups and I loved it (with a dog that had to go out regularly). If you have a physical limitation that prevents doing stairs it would be a nightmare and moving in and out isn’t great. Otherwise it’s really not bad, a tiny bit of exercise isn’t going to hurt an otherwise healthy adult.
I stayed in a high-rise flat once where the lift was regularly used as a urinal. Climbing the stairs was much preferable to riding up in a stinking box.
Honestly, doing laundry in the basement when I lived on the 3rd floor was the most annoying part of having no elevator.
Third floor ain’t that bad as long as you don’t exceed your carrying capacity. Going up 3 floors by stairs isn’t much compared to the ~10 minutes of walking back from the store. Really not that bad with a bag each hand.
It starts getting much with places with > 4 floors but that’s pretty rare without an elevator. You waste more time waiting for the elevator than actually going up anyway when you’re on floor < 3.
When you live in a city generally the pattern changes. You don’t take the car and go do your biweekly costco trip and come back with 20 bags of groceries. You get like 1-4 at a time, and go more often.
A lot of the time just going out anywhere, you can fit a quick grocery stop on your way home so you come back with maybe 5 items. It’s perfectly reasonable to leave work, grab a quick steak at the butcher, some veggies at the store, and you get home with fresh food to cook. Or even go back out because you forgot an item.
City life is just a whole lifestyle. It gets you in shape, and you just don’t think that much about having an elevator to go to the second floor.
I lived on the 3rd floor in my first apartment, no elevator. We had no car either so we dealt with it by getting groceries more often. The grocery store was only a few blocks away, so it wasn’t terrible. We could have made it easier with a bike or a folding cart, but we were young and stupid so we just carried it.
I also took the subway to work which added at least another 2-4 sets of stairs I walked up every weekday. Getting to my front door honestly felt like only half of my commute home. It absolutely sucked, but my calves were incredible.
I used to work in public health in NYC. I got to see all the people comign into the hospital. The elderly folks who had lived their whole lives on the higher floors of walkup apartments were almost always in great shape compared to their contemporaries who weren’t getting exercise every day.
Lived 4th floor for 2y (4th floor as in 4th floors up from the ground floor), good for exercise
It’s the standard in NYC outside of bougie luxury buildings with a lobby. 4 floor walkups are painful, especially while carrying heavy shit.
It’s also commonplace to walk up and down a half dozen sets of subway stairs here before you even get to wherever you’re going. Most subway stations are not accessible.
3rd floor
You buy less stupid shit because you have to carry it. Also never skip leg day.
It was fine. In NYC roommates and I have been in different apartments that were both 5 and 6 floor walkups. This was when we were in our 20’s - early 40’s. Thing is that after a few weeks you don’t really notice the stairs anymore. Bonus is your legs will be pretty strong!
Sure we also had to lug groceries/laundry up the same flight of stairs, a bit annoying but nothing unusual. Didn’t have a car either so all that stuff would get carried x amount of blocks from the apartment or even a subway trip.
In my late 40’s / going into 50’s I’m not so sure I’d still do those type of walkups anymore.
PS - Yeah pay for movers when doing moves in/out of walkup buildings, you really don’t want to do that yourself. It’s fine when you only need to go up the stairs once/twice a day but repeatedly for a move is much harder.
6th floor, no elevator. I think of it as part of my daily exercise. It doesn’t bother me day to day, but moving in sucked. I think I would be annoyed waiting for an elevator.
Fine for living without children.
But moving in and out was a lot of work.
Yeah, I was definitely fitter as well. It did suck that it wasn’t safe to keep your bike downstairs, so I had to drag that thing up and down every day.
Yeah, a shitty no frills bike is best to leave downstairs, otherwise in the cellar is the other option.
I went the other route and got a more expensive, lighter bike. Pretty sure they would’ve stolen even the shittiest of bikes, my first one was.
Exactly how much groceries do people have? I currently live two stairs up from the ground floor as I have lived for more than 15 years. It has honestly never even crossed my mind that carrying up groceries could ever be a problem.
It’s ok, I think more about the apartment itself than the stairwell up to it but it’s an ok enough stairwell.
It used to annoy me when I still had a car, because I had to carry up a lot more groceries at once and I was an unfit sack of shit. Now I walk to the store every three days or so, meaning the weight is a lot less at once and it’s just a minor extension of my evening walk…
It has never bothered me. I paid movers to get my shit up here, and they did. It is rare that an extra flight of stairs or two matters on your way to/from the car.
