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I love living in an apartment. I love city living in general, because I like being close/walkable to things, and I love the minimalism that goes along with small space living. We don't keep a lot of stuff we don't need, accumulate stuff, etc. We don't have to spend a lot of time cleaning and organizing. We don't have to spend our weekends mowing lawns, "working on the house," etc.

We do. 2 bedrooms and soon-to-be 2 kiddos! I really like where we live and could live here another 5 years but my husband would like more space. I would *love* a 3 bedroom in our same neighborhood, but I haven't seen one with parking and an elevator for under about 1.2 mil in a long time....so that's not going to happen any time soon.

Our pros are large rooms (for a condo), but the cons are very little closet space. We only have 2 closets in our entire apartment...well, and a pantry in the kitchen. But no hall closet! It's the bane of my existence.

I do - we have a 2 bedroom/1 bath 900 sq ft apartment. I actually don't mind living in a small space either - I have a hard enough time keeping a small space clean, I don't need something bigger! As a family of three, this is definitely enough space for us.
The two things I hate though: community laundry room that is $1 wash/$1 dry, and if you want a parking space in the garage, it's about $90/month.

I like renting because we never are responsible for fixing anything, and that is great for us.

We don't live in "the city" though, but I would like to.

@Mrs. Bee: that's crazy!!

We still only allot about $10-$20 a month for laundry. That means I only do a load of my laundry 1, maybe 2x a month!

@Mrs. Pen: Almost forgot about that. I LOVE that we're not responsible when things go wrong.

We did laundry at a laundromat for about ten years. We have a washer/dryer in this apartment and its been a life changer. Agree with @mrsbee though...that is CHEAP for shared laundry! Parking in my building's garage is $250/month, which we don't pay because we don't have a car.

We live in a 2/1 condo which is about 1250 sq ft .

Pros: Buying here is expensive so renting is ideal for us right now.
We have just enough space.
No yard maintenance.
We can move whenever we feel like it.
We live in a walk/bike friendly community.
We don't hoard things because we purge every 6 months.

Cons:
No yard space! I hate the idea of having a backyard but wish I had one just to lie in the sun some days.
No extra storage space. If we had a garage, we'd be fine.
Sharing walls. It's not too much of a problem but our upstairs neighbor has serious club foot and gets up everyday at 4am. Their unit has tile floors which isn't ideal.

@Anagram: It's $75/day to rent our clubhouse but the deposit is $200. It's sort of ridiculous and the space isn't really big. It was great for my baby shower but since owners here pay crazy HOA, I would think it'd be free to rent a community space.

I do. approx. 1000 sq ft.
My pediatrician said that the benefit of apt. living with a family is that, in her experience, city kids have a very strong bond because they are always together and there are very few little place to sulk off to after fights. They have to figure out how to get along.
I also like that I can pretty much see what my boys are up to from any place in the apt. lol

Cons, of course, I'd LOVE a bigger kitchen, guest room for visitors and a second bathroom would be a dream. Our place is always messy because you just don't have places for everything and you learn that you can't be that sentimental about ever little thing that your LO draws, makes or wears. You just don't have space.

@namaste: yeeeeah....ours is $300 to rent with a $500 deposit and insurance required if you serve alcohol. But for a big party (like baby's first birthday), it's still cheaper than our local places. And for more casual things--like just getting 10 mom friends together, I don't rent it, we just use it, haha. ETA: I should add that this year, both our monthly maintenance fee AND the rental rates were raised so I was pretty about that. We've had an influx of people moving from Manhattan and two of them made it onto the HOA board this year and to *them* the previous prices were "so cheap"--but I'm like...um, you moved here to get away from Manhattan prices, so quit raising the prices on everything saying it's so cheap! Grrr.

we just purchased a 700 sq ft 1 br and we have a 2 year old DD. I know we're crazy but i know we can make it work. We're going to split the living room and make that into a bedroom and the current bedroom into a living room. Once she gets bigger (we're not planning on staying for a long time) we're going to give her the current bedroom and split the living room as our bedroom and living room.

We are in a smallish 2 bed townhouse in the city. I like it because we don't have too much to clean, don't have too much yard work or shoveling to do, and I don't feel like there are any wasted rooms. We can walk to all sorts of things and we have a nice back patio but no grass to mow. Cons are that we don't have a parking spot so we always have to find spots on the street which is tricky, we don't really have any storage for things like strollers or bikes, and our kitchen is really small.

We own our house now, but it's only 1000 sq ft, 2 bedrooms. I do love it soooo much more than apartment living. I don't mind much that it's small.

Pros:
Less space to keep clean
Always within earshot of DH
Short walk to the bathroom
Affordable to heat and cool

Cons:
Only 1 bathroom
No guest bedroom once LO arrives
Every wall is covered in bookshelves
Storage space is limited, so closets are packed full

We own an 1100 sq. ft. House, and I like it. I wish we had more closet space and a pantry. It's easier to keep clean and we are close to lots of stuff. My husband wants a huge house though.

I like that it's easy to keep clean, the area is walkable and we are close enough to lots of things to do. I dislike not having a yard or at least a small patio to get some fresh air without having to go out to the street, and lugging the stroller up the stoop! It's the bane of my existence, when I have groceries in the stroller and the little one fell asleep and I need to get all of us upstairs! Oh, I also really dislike street parking.

I like it for what others have said. I don’t particularly need a lot of space for the sake of having space. I like that we use all of the space we have. We will be moving to slightly bigger space soon, but it will still be very small by house standards. We also happen to be lucky to have a storage room in the basement of our building also that does help with keeping things as clutter free as possible. In general I love that we are constantly giving things away/choosing not to acquire stuff. I also like the fact that smaller spaces force us outside in the warmer months/ summer time. Once it gets warm I like to spend as much time outside as possible, and we make sure to take LO outside, too.

We own our place, so we do have to deal with repairs, etc. While it’s not as much as a house, DH still finds it more than enough sometimes. A house would be so much more work. He works long hours and travels for work, so having to attend to home upkeep is something that neither one of us really wants.

I do get concerned about space especially if we have another child, but I will cross that bridge when we come to it.

We live in a 2bdrm/2bath, and while it's a decent amount of sq footage (1250sq ft) the layout is not great (a long wasted hallway, enormous master bathroom). We would LOVE a 3bdrm with #2 on the way, but I also kind of just want to stay where we are and try to make it work, and avoid the hassle of moving. I love that there is less space to clean, but I hate that there is very little separation between living/dining/kitchen, and that DH's work stuff has to be in the living room. I also kind of hate having toys always in view...but I would never give up living in the city!

@Anagram: Celebration, FL. It's a special (amazing) but special place. Renting in Central Florida is becoming expensive as well and the housing market in certain places is only becoming more expensive as well. I really don't want to live where homes are more "affordable" so we'll keep renting while we live here.

@bunnylove08: yep, 2 bedrooms of a decent size. DS is only 5 months, so he's in our room right now. We had planned on moving him into the 2nd bedroom eventually but it turns out that second-hand smoke from the neighbour seeps in there somehow!! Disgusting. We're planning in moving to be closer to family this year anyway (hopefully to a small house or ground floor apartment).

I see your predicament with one bedroom. There are some great ideas on ApartmentTherapy.com for dividing small spaces. It sounds like you've got a good plan though.

My first house was 1,000 sq ft. They called it a 2/1, but the second bedroom was really a loft without a door. It was cozy for our small family of 3 and super cute, but we really did all live on top of each other and there wasn't enough room for a bouncy chair or exersaucer. The living room was filled just with the yoga ball, swing and car seat while we were home. We had to leave the stroller outside on the porch which we always felt sketchy about.

The saving grace was our 7,000 sq ft yard. That made it so we spent a lot of time outdoors when the weather was good (July-September).

I love living in an apartment because it means I can live in a walkable community with a short commute and don't have to spend lots of time maintaining a big house. Also, I already think we own too much stuff. More space would just make that worse.

My husband does not share my sentiments and would love to have a big house. He would also love to maintain a big house because he likes those kinds of projects.

I hope we can stay in this community and eventually get a weekend house. But it depends on whether of not the schools improve here.