Two women living together in a small Manhattan studio apartment have figured out a way to never run into each other.
Daisy Okas and her roommate have been cohabitating in their Murray Hill studio since January, paying a total rent of $3,500 per month.
But their paths never cross because they have worked out a system: each stays in the pad on different nights of the month, Okas, 51, told The Post.
Okas faced a conundrum a year ago when she accepted a marketing job at a Midtown East financial services company that required three in-office work days.
Living with her boyfriend in Danbury, Conn., was too far a commute for the marketing pro. She didn’t want to schlep a suitcase back and forth from a hotel and she certainly didn’t want to pay bank-busting Manhattan rents, which average $5,147 a month, to live in an apartment only a couple of nights a week.
So when she found an acquaintance who only wanted to stay in Manhattan up to 10 nights a month — which are “away days” for Okas — they rented the fourth-floor walkup apartment together for $1,750 a month apiece plus shared utilities.
Okas stays in the apartment Monday and Tuesday nights weekly and her roomie, 50, who asked to withhold her name, takes it every other Wednesday through Sunday nights.
“We have a calendar on the wall, but she is very predictable so there haven’t been any surprises,” Okas said. “She has the times arranged for her ex-husband to be with the kids so it’s set in stone.”
When she is not in Manhattan, Okas’ roommate returns to the Westchester home where her three children reside.
The apartment came fully furnished, minus a dining table. Okas brought a small table and one chair for solo eating, pots and pans for them to share, a few plants and an electric tea kettle. The roommate contributed a coffee maker and a video game console, neither of which Okas uses. They both have their own sheets and towels, which they store in the apartment when they depart, and do their own laundry.
The East Side unit has ample storage space, so they have their own closets and drawers.
The roomies share some supplies like eggs, butter and yogurt because they spoil, as well as toilet paper and paper towels, but mostly maintain their own reserves.
“It’s funny,” Okas said. “In the refrigerator, I’m like, ‘Oh, she’s on a vegan diet.’ All of a sudden there’s like Tofurky sausage rolls.”
The joint is less a home and more a hotel — minus the room service.
“It’s not my home,” Okas said. “It’s like a hotel room. I just like to have a place to keep the basics — work clothes, toiletries.”
Before each woman leaves after her stay, she strips the bed, cleans the apartment and refills any dwindling necessities, like toilet paper.
“We both live here but we never concurrently overlap,” Okas said. “And so it’s just like a ghost that lives here sometimes.”
