This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Maren Droubay, a 32-year-old who moved from Salt Lake City to New York City with her family. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
My husband and I are from the Salt Lake City area of Utah, and we have five young kids.
We appreciated being close to family, nature, and a city with a variety of dining options and entertainment. But we always wanted our kids to have more exposure to different parts of the world and different lifestyles than what we felt they were getting in Utah.
Utah is home, but we found ourselves traveling all the time. We were always on the road. We used to homeschool our kids so that we could travel.
We thought moving to New York was an impossible dream. We visited a lot and loved the feeling in the city.
It took us 10 years before the opportunity finally presented itself when my husband got a job in New York. We moved from Salt Lake City to New York City on October 10, 2025.
Moving to New York
Moving our family from Utah to New York was probably in the top 10 hardest things I’ve ever done.
We lived in an older house, so we had to do a lot of updating to get it ready for the market, sell it, and get it under contract.
We moved from a six-bedroom home to a three-bedroom apartment, so we really had to downsize — everything from furniture and lawn tools to our two cars had to go. I decreased all of our clothing to a quarter of what we had.
You have to uproot everything when you make a move like this, from finding new doctors to getting our kids enrolled in school. I am so relieved that it feels so worth it. Every day, I cannot believe we live in New York.
The apartment
To find our apartment, I connected with people through Facebook groups or Reddit who were looking to sublease or have their lease taken over.
I posted, “We’re moving. We need three bedrooms. This is the ideal block radius we want to live in. Does anyone know of anything?” One person reached out to me and said, “I am moving that very month to a different neighborhood. My apartment has three bedrooms. It has laundry and an elevator.”
It was like kismet. It’s the perfect apartment for us. We had Facetimed and looked at it, but we hadn’t walked through it ourselves until we moved. We were just living on a prayer, and it worked out.
We have a large bedroom at the back of the apartment that my three boys are in, and they’re on a triple bunk bed. Our two girls are in the second bedroom, with a mini crib for the baby and a twin bed for my little girl that can be turned into a queen when guests come. Our bedroom is at the front, and we have two bathrooms.
We have an incredible view of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty. We put my kids in the room with that view. When they ran into their new bedroom and looked out the window for the first time, it was one of those core memories that you never want to forget.
The kids
To prep the kids for the move, we had a family meeting and asked them if they were interested.
They’ve always been good travelers and here for a new experience, so they were immediately excited. We had a family meeting every week, where we answered questions or showed them pictures of New York.
We also made a family bucket list for things to do when we moved. We’ve been checking those items off on Saturdays.
The sadness hit when we said goodbye to our house in Utah. It’s the only house the kids really knew, and Utah has the only friends they have ever known. Their grandparents and cousins live there.
We just let the kids feel the feelings. They know it’s OK to feel happy and sad or excited and scared at the same time.
City living
I was nervous about how the city would react to my family. Would people respond well to a family with five kids? Would our apartment neighbors like us? Would the people on the subway be annoyed by us?
I have been pleasantly surprised by how kind 99% of people have been. I will get to the subway, and before I even fold up my stroller, strangers pick up the other end and carry it for me. Everyone stands up and offers seats to my kids, or older women have even grabbed one of my kids’ hands and helped them on or off the subway for me.
The community aspect of NYC is so different from our experience in the suburbs, where you live in a lot more isolation. You’re in the car and then back at home. In New York, you’re required to interact with so many people and make connections.
Still, it’s been hard being away from our support system. In Utah, we had friends and family we could call at any point for help. Building a new village will take time.
It’s pricey, but it’s worth it
Our budget is so much more expensive now. Our mortgage doubled. Our groceries have probably gone up by 30%. We were paying $2 for cereal in Utah, and now it’s $10 at our local supermarket. Costco and Target are pretty close in price to what they were in Utah, but now we’re paying for delivery fees.
Our weekly spending has also doubled because we’ve been obsessed with eating out since we arrived, but I know that probably won’t stick.
Some things are more affordable than we expected. Public transit is affordable, and we no longer have to pay for car payments, gas, or car insurance. New York residents get in for free to most of the museums, and kids get in free for pretty much everything in the city.
My husband is 10 times happier because he’s actually working in the city where his job is located. He’s way happier, and I’m way happier.
Doing it for my kids
It’s always been my dream to make my kids’ childhoods magical. There was this phrase I heard early on in motherhood: “It’s their day, too. It’s their life, too. It’s their childhood, too.”
I have the power as their parent to give them amazing experiences and memories. I always think about when they’re adults, what do I want them to think back on and remember from when they were growing up?
You don’t just have to do what your parents did or what your siblings do or what everyone in your city or neighborhood does. If you choose to, that’s OK, too. But you can take life by the reins and change it.
I hope someday my kids will thank me for these experiences and see the effort that their dad and I have put into trying to give them a phenomenal life.
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