Again, with no elevator.
I can’t imagine no elevator and walking up with groceries.
I lived on the 3rd floor in my first apartment, no elevator. We had no car either so we dealt with it by getting groceries more often. The grocery store was only a few blocks away, so it wasn’t terrible. We could have made it easier with a bike or a folding cart, but we were young and stupid so we just carried it.
I also took the subway to work which added at least another 2-4 sets of stairs I walked up every weekday. Getting to my front door honestly felt like only half of my commute home. It absolutely sucked, but my calves were incredible.
Honestly, doing laundry in the basement when I lived on the 3rd floor was the most annoying part of having no elevator.
Third floor ain’t that bad as long as you don’t exceed your carrying capacity. Going up 3 floors by stairs isn’t much compared to the ~10 minutes of walking back from the store. Really not that bad with a bag each hand.
It starts getting much with places with > 4 floors but that’s pretty rare without an elevator. You waste more time waiting for the elevator than actually going up anyway when you’re on floor < 3.
When you live in a city generally the pattern changes. You don’t take the car and go do your biweekly costco trip and come back with 20 bags of groceries. You get like 1-4 at a time, and go more often.
A lot of the time just going out anywhere, you can fit a quick grocery stop on your way home so you come back with maybe 5 items. It’s perfectly reasonable to leave work, grab a quick steak at the butcher, some veggies at the store, and you get home with fresh food to cook. Or even go back out because you forgot an item.
City life is just a whole lifestyle. It gets you in shape, and you just don’t think that much about having an elevator to go to the second floor.
It was a struggle to move but other than that it didn’t really effect me. I walk about a mile for groceries so the added stairs weren’t a huge problem.
Another issue was the layout of the building. It wasn’t just a tall column with an elevator. It had multiple staircases so it was a struggle for visitors and delivery people to find apartments.
Oof, yeah I’ve seen buildings like that. In NYC in the Lower East Side inside some of the older buildings you walk up one flight of stairs then walk the hallway across the length of the building to the other flight of stairs. That sort of setup feels so much worse vs just toughing it out up a column of stairs.
Second floor now, third floor earlier, so what? I’m up the stairs before the elevator would even have arrived. Are you, like, 80?
Being 80 wouldn’t explain it. My 80+ aunt with severe arthritis (as in having had multiple surgeries on her feet and hands) managed two stairs up and down several times a day with no complaints. She considered it good excercise and saw it as one thing that keept her on her feet.
