anonymous Manhattan renter

The rent for my 225-square foot, one-bedroom apartment in a Murray Hill non-doorman building is $1,525 a month. When I travel, I offset my costs by renting out my apartment by the night (three-night minimum) through AirBnB.com. Yes, I let total strangers stay in my place—42 guests in two years. I've collected $14,000 (after AirBnB takes its cut). And I recommend it highly.

I never knew there was a way to have a washer and dryer in an apartment without a washer/dryer hook-up.

Magda is probably the best housekeeper in New York City, and for 10 years she was mine. Until I fired her.

She came every week and could clean my entire apartment—1,300 square foot two bedroom, two-bath—in just under six hours, including doing all the laundry.

Each time she would flip the couch over and get down on her hands and knees to clean the floor behind it. Once a month she took all books down from the bookshelves and dusted them. She had her own system for cleaning the refrigerator, the stove, even the medicine cabinets. I never had to ask.

When my roommate and I first moved in last year, we noticed our floor reeked of pot 4 or 5 nights a week.

Then we realized that all these random people were getting on and off the elevator on our floor.

You could tell they didn’t live there because they didn’t know where they were going and they didn’t fit the profile of the building. They looked like they were in college, and most people in this building are young professionals around 25 to 35 years old.