The Day I Moved Out

How do you decide what to bring with you after 27 years in the perfect apartment?

- By Wendy Goodman

MY FORMER BEDROOM:

BEFORE: "The artist and interior designer Richard Lee hand-painted flowers on my bedroom wall and designed and painted the upholstered headboard."

AFTER: "I took that headboard and the striped curtains with me."

I never would have left. I'd always thought that I'd be carried out feet first down that polished wood stairwell with its Arts and Crafts wallpaper. For 27 years, I had lived in this two-bedroom on the second floor of an 1854 brownstone on West 9th Street in Greenwich Village. I wrote three books there and churned out more magazine stories than I can count. I loved to give small parties where I would announce that tray tables had to come down when dinner was served (airplane joke); I never had a proper dining table. Instead, I found huge vintage linen napkins that would spill over to the floor when a plate or small tray was placed on a guest’s lap. I had a fire going all winter— until, about five years ago, I was told I wasn’t allowed to use the fireplace anymore— and in summer I placed a big batch of shells in the hearth. I looked out over a garden with a magnificent ginkgo tree.

And then one day last spring, I got an email informing me that the building was being put on the market. Which meant that unless I could get my hands on millions of dollars to buy the whole thing myself, I was going to have to go.

MY FORMER LIVING ROOM:

Before: "This is where I had my dinner parties, with a Bernard Lamotte painting by the window and a painting by my mother in front of the fireplace, which I was told to stop using about five years ago."

After: "The custom bookshelves that I left behind."