With Apartments It’s the Layout Not The Square Footage

Kansas City's apartments rank as some of the smallest compared to other large cities. And based on how small my current Warrensburg apartment is, I'm not surprised. However it's not all about the square footage of the place you rent. It's about the layout and your stuff.

Fox 4 Kansas City posted a blurb on their website that says apartments in the City of Fountains are smaller than those in Chicago, San Francisco or even Manhattan. In Kansas City you can expect to get 448 square feet if you rent a studio. 666 square feet for a one bedroom. And 994 square feet for a two bedroom.

It's not surprising to me. The newer constructed duplex my wife and I are renting in Warrensburg is a cozy 980 square feet. It looked small when I saw it without furniture, and it's even smaller with furniture and all our stuff in it. And looking at few newer 2 bedroom apartments in the Warrensburg / Knob Noster area, the square footage is similar.

Although my experience tells me it's not so much the square footage of an apartment that dictates how small or large it feels. It's the layout of the apartment, and the stuff you have in it, that truly dictates that.

For example, I was shocked to see our 2 bedroom apartment in Lubbock is even smaller than our Warrensburg home. Yet we had a huge living room. Walk in closets in both bedrooms and a full dinging room. We were able to hide a lot of stuff out of sight in that apartment.

Then there's our apartment in the Quad Cities, the largest two bedroom apartment we've lived in. It was easier to hide stuff there than in Warrensburg. But it had a dining area more than a dining room and a layout that wasn't the best use of the square footage. My wife Kathy was fond of saying they must have counted the deck in the square footage. Cause it seemed smaller than our Lubbock place.

In both of those other apartments it was easier for us to hide our stuff because of walk in closets and dining areas that weren't right there in the living room. In our current home, there's an area for a small dining table but it's essentially part of the living room. And that's where we have some boxes piled up. And that makes the living space seem a lot smaller.

Bottom line, it's not the square footage that really matters. It's how the apartment is laid out and where you can stash your stuff so it's not staring you in the face like those boxes in our living room.

We'd consider a larger apartment, but have you seen the rent in Warrensburg? Especially when you have a dog. That's not happening anytime soon.