What it’s like living in NYC vs Jersey City | My experience & days in my life

[Music] Hello. Should I do the dramatic like sits down and is about to say some tea? Except there's not a lot of tea that I'm going to be giving today. But hi. If you have never seen my face before, I'm Greta. I am a Latina who's been living in New York City for the last 4 years. [Music] I moved to New York City in 2021 and I worked fully remote which was a dream and I actually still work fully remote which is still a dream. I think moving to New York City was the best decision I ever made in my entire life because I grew exponentially as a human being. I came from Atlanta, Georgia, and I love Atlanta, okay? Don't get me wrong, but I just feel like Atlanta doesn't push you to the extremes. Not that you need to be pushed that much to grow, but I feel like I did. Maybe I didn't seem shy, but internally, I was always shy. I was always like scared of speaking up for what I wanted. I was always scared of money. I was always scared of trying new things. And literally, moving to New York City was the literal push. It was more instead of a push, it was like a full-on attack. Okay, I needed that to grow and I needed that to learn a lot of things, to learn how to cook things that are not just eggs. I moved in with a roommate and then after a year of living with a roommate. I moved out by myself, lived alone for 3 years, which also was such a good experience. It was very lonely at times. There were times where I'm like, why did I do this to myself? I'm talking to myself in the mirror. I need to see people. I feel like moving to New York City taught me how to speak up for myself, how to be okay with my own company, how to really know who your true friends are, how to know when someone's gaslighting you, about how much money I feel like I need to make to live the life that I want to live, which I feel like is a very important thing to know about yourself. So, if you're thinking about moving to New York City at all, and maybe that's why you clicked on this video, girl, do it. [Music] If you don't know, I have a boyfriend. His name is Tony. He's awesome. He's amazing. He's awesome. He was a medical student and he was in his last year of medical school. Yeah. Technically, this last year. He graduated this May. After you finish medical school, 4 years, you have to apply to a residency. And Tony being the very ambitious guy that he is, he was like, I want to be a urologist. He freaking matched, which means he got accepted to join a specific residency. And he ended up in New Jersey. Basically, we were like, "Oh my gosh, we can literally finally move in together." Cuz we had been long distance cuz he was in med school in DC. And so, we moved to Jersey City. I never in my life thought that would be me. Jersey City is an interesting place because technically, well, not technically, literally, you live in New Jersey. You're not in New York, but technically you are so close to Manhattan that you can get to Manhattan sometimes faster than people who live in Brooklyn can get to Manhattan because there is a straight train in that train that I have become very familiar with. It's called the path. It takes me like 20 minutes to get to Manhattan, which is incredible. I was kind of like torn in half, right? Cuz I was so happy that I was finally getting to move in with my boyfriend, who we had been long distance for way too long. And the other half of me was so sad that I was leaving Brooklyn because Brooklyn became a part of who I am and who I was. I moved in or we moved in to our apartment in Jersey City in May. And right now as I'm filming this, it's actually August. So far, it's been like 2 months. I honestly hate No, I'm kidding. I actually really like Jersey City. It is so clean. Coming from Brooklyn, if Brooklyn was a person, I'd be like, "Girl, I love you, but you are so dirty." I don't know what kind of sorcery they do at night because I never see anyone cleaning the streets ever here. But for some reason, every time I walk out, it is so clean. I have the most amazing view of the Hudson River, which is literally what sold me on this apartment. But I almost feel closer to Manhattan than I did in Brooklyn because I can literally see it. And other than it being clean, I will say it's very walkable. I mean, coming from Brooklyn, that was my number one priority. I told Tony, I was like, "Listen, I have become a walker." Okay, that is now integrated in my DNA, and I cannot get rid of it. And honestly, the apartment size compared to what you get in Brooklyn and Manhattan, it's crazy. I mean, granted, now I'm literally splitting rent, which definitely helps a lot in terms of what I could afford. But just to give you kind of frame of reference, our apartment is like almost 900 square ft and we pay less than $4,000. I know it's actually insane. And also, I've been having so much fun exploring Jersey as a whole. Like even nearby places to Jersey City, like going into Hoboken. I've gone to Grove Street, which is really cute. Hamilton Park is gorgeous. This is so much better. I fixed the lighting in the camera settings, so I should have done that a long time ago. And by the way, this is one thing I do want to say about moving to Jersey City. Um, if you're wondering, I am, and you probably don't care about this, but I am keeping New York City in my bio in most places because it's just so much easier for brands, for events, for people because some people, a lot of people, I didn't really know where Jersey City was in relation to New York. So, it's just so much easier for me to say New York City. And actually, I have a lot of footage of when we moved into the apartment, me unboxing and organizing the apartment, like the first few days. So, if you want to watch that, I'm going to put those clips in. Now, today is dedicated to literally removing as many boxes as we can because I am so tired of living in boxes. I can't do it no more. Hello. How's it going? Good. Yes, the closet is looking pretty good. but also the amount of space that I have just in the entryway closet is literally life-changing. So, we have our coats here. We put all of our winter coats in the back and then things that we're going to use more so in the spring and summer. Well, it's summer now, so summer time. And then we have two shoe racks. These are from Amazon. They're actually really good because they're stackable. And so, this is mine. This is his. These are things like shoes that we wear most of the time. So, grab and go type of shoes. There's another closet, which is so exciting. And then we have the bathroom. So, we're thinking for this closet, it's going to be like medicine, extra things for the bathroom that don't fit in the bathroom. We're thinking laundry stuff up there. And then there's more hanging space. So, we're still deciding what kind of clothes we want to hang here. We're still figuring that out. [Music] Next up are the purses. I have had so many different systems in the past trying to organize my purses. And I feel like the one that is the most useful for me for my everyday is organizing them by color. At least me, that's how I tend to pick out my purses for the day. I'm like, "Okay, do I want a black purse? Do I want a colorful purse? Do I want a white purse?" etc. So, that's what I think I'm going to do here. And I'm going to use this top shelf. I guess you could call it the top shelf of this IKEA wardrobe that I've actually brought from my last apartment. I used to have two because my not my last apartment, but my last last apartment literally had no closets. Okay, so these were great from IKEA because they have like the hanging section, but then they have these two shelves that you can use for shoes or for purses like I am or hats or whatever you want. Also, I wanted to show you this bag because I just got it from Florence when I went to Italy literally like 4 days ago. The amount of pure leather, such high quality bags and wallets and literally everything that you can think of in leather, like pure leather at such a good price is insane. So, I got this purse literally on the side of the street. Now, I'm just giving you a back tour. Basically, this is like my favorite black bag that I've I got it like 2 years ago at a Paloma Wool pop-up here in New York City. I think I'll do the red purses next to the black purses. This is from Santos by Monica. This is a Latino owned brand and they use vegan leather, specifically cactus. Very, very cute. This one, if you've seen my Tik Tok or Instagram or literally anything that I ever post, you've probably seen this bag. This is the Babaton bag from Aritzia. This bag from another stories. I love her. It's more of a tote bag. So, this is really good if I'm like carrying more things, but not necessarily like a computer. And I got my little keychains on here. I got this one from DC. It's a little Hello Kitty keychain. I love her. And then this one Tony got for me. This is Miffy. This is like my throw all bag. I literally use this for everything. But I actually use this a lot for the gym, interestingly. I think because of the material, it wipes off very easily. So, if it's raining or I don't know, I got real sweaty or whatever it is, like you can literally just wipe this off. Actually, maybe I should do bigger bags at the end. It's a different use case. So, yeah, I think I'm going to put this one at the end. Yeah, I want to show you around some of my favorite pieces in the apartment so far. This is the bed. She's from Kraton Barrel. I just think she's gorgeous. So, she has like this cool platform. And then here, it has like this uh woven I don't know what you call this. It's like a cane. That's what it is. And it's also actually platform. So, it's higher off the ground. So, we can use the underneath of it as storage. And then these sheets I actually got like 2 years ago. They're from Brook Linen and they're in this like sage green material. And this is their Percal sheets. And so, they're so cooling. And if especially if you're a hot sleeper and you get sweaty at night, these are really, really great. And then this is our entryway. We actually just got this table. Let me remove my pressed on nails. I really wanted an entryway table that Tony and I could use to like throw our keys in, like a landing spot, you know what I mean? And my favorite part is that it literally has drawers. So here I literally just keep all of my sunglasses. And then I have like random things like my lip glosses that I usually take with me. This to open packages and boxes. I don't know what that is. Yeah, just more lip glosses. I bought these really sick. I love these. These are like little chrome trays. I thought they were so cute. So, I bought two. One for me to put my keys and things and then one for Tony. And yes, I am dressed up to stay at home because I'm talking to you. So, I want to look cute. This dress is from Revolve. I love it. And then here I have all of my matchbooks of different places in New York City. And this that I'm about to show you is my favorite thing in the whole apartment, my piano. So, I started playing piano when I was 6 years old. And then when I was in high school, I begged my mom for a new piano. And then she came home with this piano. And then I moved to New York City and I did not have an access to a piano for the longest time. And then finally when I moved out here to Jersey City with Tony, we were visiting my parents and then we were like, you know what? This might be the time to take the piano up to Jersey City because we were already taking my bed. So, we drove it up here and literally I haven't when I tell you I've been playing every single day, literally 10-year-old me would not believe that I am voluntarily playing piano every single day. I put this little chrome lamp on it that I think is really cute. you can tap on it and it doesn't really do anything like it doesn't bring that much light but I just think it's really cute and then of course my little moita that I love so much from Mexico but yes those are some of the updates in the apartment and I will see you tomorrow. [Music] Welcome to my bathroom. It's Saturday and it's the most gorgeous day outside. Like I woke up and I was like I literally could not have asked for more perfect weather because it's sunny but it's also like mid70s. Mhm. I started using vitamin C again. I love this one from Vandy Cream. It's just the Vanny Cream vitamin C serum with ceramides and I love it because it's like this serum like consistency and it's just so nice. It could be placebo. It could just be because I spent money, but I honestly feel like it's making my skin look brighter. Actually ran out of my moisturizer, so I've been using Tony's. He uses the Aino daily moisturizer and honestly, it's pretty good and I really like it. I have really dry skin, so anything that's super moisturizing, my skin absolutely eats that up. So, the plan for today, I have so much cleaning that I need to do and organizing. Tony's working this morning. Yes, he works Saturdays and Sundays sometimes, which is so sad. I really want to get my eyebrows started. I have not gotten my eyebrows started in like two month. No, I think it's been 3 months since I got my eyebrows started and a girl needs it. And then I'm meeting my friend around like 6:30 and we're going to Happy Medium. It's, if you don't know what Happy Medium is, it's this cute little studio in New York City. There's two locations. There's one in the lower side and then another one in like Williamsburg in Brooklyn. They have different activities that you can do crafty activities. So you can paint like ceramics, you can watercol, you can is it charcoal? You can draw. So the saddest thing just happened to me. I was about to make my capacito and I have no espresso pots left. That is my sign that I should treat myself to a capacito outside because I'm pretty good about making my own coffee throughout the week because honestly once you get really good at making your own I mean to be fair I'm using espresso pod so all I have to do is press a button but you know like the milk ratio the ice ratio the syrup that you use like all of that you just perfect it and then after that you're just like I prefer my own coffee so I'm going to go get a little iced coffee and then I'm going to bring bring my little booty back to my apartment because I need to clean and organize. Also, this Jizu lip oil, I'm like almost done with it. I'm like more than halfway done with it and I use it every single day. I love the sheen it gives. It's just so pretty. Honestly, I don't know if it's me getting older, but I feel like I used to wear sunglasses just for an aesthetic, like it's part of the outfit, which it still is, but now I feel like I wear sunglasses to literally protect my eyes because I feel my eyes getting more sensitive and I'm like, "Oh my god." Like, I'm actually getting older. I'm so dramatic. I'm still I'm not old, but you know what I mean. These are actually really good. They're really cute. They actually do a really good job of blocking out the sun, which is literally their job. Let's go. Can I just do an iced um latte with regular milk and then can I get um maple in it? We are now in the kitchen. Oh, by the way, I'm wearing my new Bose Quiet Comfort earbuds and I'm obsessed. I love them. They're also so cute. I got them in this like limited ed edition pink color and I love them. Anyways, um let's do the fridge. Um I'm going to wipe this down first and then we're going to put the magnets on. I'm so excited. [Music] [Music] It's a little bit later now and I got dressed. I don't have time to put makeup on, but you know what? I honestly didn't even feel like wearing makeup today. So, this is my outfit to go paint a little something something with my friend. I love this top from Zara. It's like a basic white tea but with a twist because of the neckline. Love it. Just have gold jewelry on. My favorite bag from Aritzia. It's so big and it fits so many things and I love it. And then my can you see my silk pants that I'm obsessed with. Literally, silk pants are my favorite thing to wear in the summer, especially like towards the end of summer because it's so it's kind of an in between temperature. So, but I'm actually going to go get my eyebrows done first, which I'm very excited about. Let's go. [Music] Hi, how are you? [Music] So, I'm in the area where I'm meeting my friend and I am hungry again, even though I literally ate right before I left the apartment. So, there's this coffee shop. It's called Dreamer's Coffee. I think I'm going to get a little snack, little sweet treat. [Music] Hey, hey, [Music] hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hello. Happy Sunday. It is another beautiful day. It's a little cloudy, but the sun is shining. That's all we can ask for. I'm going to go to the gym. I feel like doing some cardio. I'll do some weights, some weightlifting, some strength training. That is what is going on with me. I hope all is well with you if you're still watching this video. And let's go move our body. [Music] Hello. It is me much later now. I got so much done. Oh my gosh, today felt like a true Sunday reset. I cleaned the bathroom. I cleaned the living room. I broke down another box. Now, there's only three official boxes that I can see. And some of these things are like our art, our prints, and things that we're trying to figure out where to put in the apartment. So, I feel like we're making really good progress. Yeah. Thank you for watching my transition from New York City to Jersey City. I'm so surprised that I'm enjoying it this much, which sounds kind of sad, but honestly, coming from New York City, if you've ever lived in New York City, then, you know, and if you enjoyed your experience, then just leaving it feels very bittersweet. But I still feel like I'm able to go very often. I was there a lot this weekend and it was a lot of fun. I hope this was somewhat helpful. Or if you're just chilling, you don't care about New York City, Jersey City, then I hope you just enjoyed hanging out with me. But if you're interested in all the things fashion, you know, other parts of my life, daily things about my life, you can follow me on Tik Tok and on Instagram. But I will see you very, very soon. Bye. [Music]