131–140 of 187 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has its own set of trade-offs. Prepare for at least an hour commute each way by BART if you work in SOMA, for instance.
Huh? I literally live at the end of the line and my commute is 30 minutes...
This isn't so bad. The Netherlands is the most dense population of any country outside Taiwan and families dwelling in small spaces continues to this day. There is a 12-member family spanning 3 generations all living in the same small house next door to me. Our tiny 60 square meter home is considered normal for our area. By American standards, SF seems like tight living, perhaps. But by world standards, space is not…
> Our tiny 60 square meter home is over 50% larger than the one in the article? It's the difference between a studio and a nice one bedroom, or maybe even cramped 2 bedroom.
There are Orthodox Jewish families in Israel which have very few rooms for very large families. (Among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel the fertility rate is 10 children per family). Often these families have very little income which includes state support for their large families, and esp in large cities such as Jerusalem can little afford larger accommodations. In SF, NYC (where I live) and other US localities, the iss…
There are not typically 10 children at once in the home BTW. The older children will be away at school, around 14 for boys, 17 for girls.
What you do is have 3 bedrooms: parents, boys, and girls. Depending on the boy/girl ratio you can have up to 2 triple-bunk-beds in a room.
Doing that you can easily sleep 12 children in the house (if you had to).
There is no living room, instead there is a dining room with a huge table (large enough to seat everyone at once) that doubles as a multi-purpose room for homework, and other activities.
Children are encouraged to play outside (there's hardly room inside).
For possessions there is not usually a need to store much since you'll pass things on to other people, your children, relatives, friends, neighbors, etc. and they with you, so most items are in active use. (For example, once the kids are older and you don't need a triple-bunk-bed you pass it on to someone else.)
This also means you don't need to spend as much as you might expect on stuff. If you don't have a lot of money you can go your entire life without once buying new clothes, or other gear for the kids.
This is off topic, but in March 2016, I'll become a dad for the first time and I was wondering if some more experienced parents could answer a question for me. That article has a black board with a tally of diapers changed today. The count was up to thirty. Is that somewhat accurate/possible??? If so, holy shit, I'm investing in cloth....
My main comment, though, is that modern diaper technology is the bomb and you should definitely not go for cloth.
1. strips that change color so you can see with a glance from across the room if they need a change (if baby just wearing a diaper)
2. the wicking effect and absorbent substance in the diaper really do keep the baby's skin dry, even when they pee their diaper (not 100% but way better than cloth)
3. baffles around the thigh made of various materials prevent leakage in ways washable diapers cannot
4. well-designed diapers are super easy to put on, and more importantly, to take off and convert into a sealed bundle of mess -- they have integrated tape fasters not only to keep the diaper on the baby, but also to fold it up into a little kind of poo burrito, fastened with tape
But all those features are just minor differentiators, what you are fundamentally paying for when you buy disposable diapers is "not having to store and deal with a mountain of small towels with human feces on them". It's way, way worth it.
Here in Tokyo I pay about ¥13 per diaper, delivered by Amazon. It works out to about USD $40-60 per month per kid in diapers.
The only argument for cloth diapers is perhaps the pollution one, although I have heard (and want to believe) that the energy consumed and detergent pollution makes the difference insignificant.
Still, you are committing bag after bag of plastic into the landfill with disposables. But... if I had to improve my "eco" rating, disposable diapers would probably be the very last thing I looked at. You will have so many things to deal with when your baby is born -- anything that makes that easier is worth it and disposable diapers help several times every day.
What's a good way of storing clothes if you don't have a closet?
In our case, we put one up over the middle of our bed, and hung all our clothes on it (even hanging-optional stuff like T-shirts). You had to kind of tunnel through it when getting into bed, but this let us make use of the otherwise useless airspace over our bed. It also formed a kind of soft wall or curtain that made the area where your head was darker than the rest of the main room. That was handy when one person wanted to sleep and the other was still working.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parent here. That is a common thought amongst new parents - the cost of disposable nappies. However, when you factor in the cost and time of keeping the cloth nappies clean then there may not be much difference at all. I recall reading somewhere (don't have a reference sorry) that cloth nappies are more environmentally damaging than disposables, perhaps due to the additional energy used for washing, or the impact due…
That's very interesting - thanks so much for sharing your experience with me!! I'll rethink the idea of cloth!! :)
This is off topic, but in March 2016, I'll become a dad for the first time and I was wondering if some more experienced parents could answer a question for me. That article has a black board with a tally of diapers changed today. The count was up to thirty. Is that somewhat accurate/possible??? If so, holy shit, I'm investing in cloth....
The more I read such articles, the more I think you'd have to be nuts to choose to live in San Francisco. And yet, clearly, plenty of people do choose to live in San Francisco.
It definitely costs my startup employer (and myself), especially factoring in preschool. It also steals a job and "juice" from the local economy - we'd have already hired a nanny if rents were merely 2x a normal city, and we'd happily spend more buying from local craftspeople. The money goes into my landlord's retirement account basically doing nothing.
This is off topic, but in March 2016, I'll become a dad for the first time and I was wondering if some more experienced parents could answer a question for me. That article has a black board with a tally of diapers changed today. The count was up to thirty. Is that somewhat accurate/possible??? If so, holy shit, I'm investing in cloth....
By the time they hit six months it is less frequent, then after a year you may only have 3-6 diapers a day.
Remember with cloth that you have to scrape the poop into the toilet, you can't just toss it in a bag and have a service come pick it up (in which case you aren't saving money anyway).
I'm as environmentally conscious as anyone but disposable diapers are one of the few luxuries I choose to enjoy and I don't regret it for even a second.