Finding her place in Center City
With her heart set on Philadelphia, Natasa Kostic wanted a home she could fill with her collection of furniture and knickknacks.
When it came time to find her own apartment, Natasa Kostic looked up.
Ready to leave roommate life behind, the internal medicine resident at Jefferson started strolling Center City and dreaming of the spaces she might find behind cracked blinds and curtains of the homes she passed.
Amid all that walking, coupled with perusing Zillow for a new pad, Kostic, 30, found her ideal one-bedroom apartment with a bonus loft in Washington Square West and moved in February 2024. Her monthly rent increased from about $900 with two roommates to $1,785 to live solo, but for Kostic, it has been worth it.
“It’s always nice having someone to come home to, but at the same time, when you’re in a shared space, I feel like you want to respect everyone’s habits and the way they use the space,” she said. “So I feel like this is the first opportunity where I got to just, like, do things the way I like them.”
That includes honing her personal home style, which she described as streamlined maximalist, and tackling small DIY projects, such as designing and installing a shelving system under the loft’s stairs to hold her shoes and other items.
Social media was a source of inspiration when designing her own space, she said, but she eschewed the staid minimalism that can often dominate home interior social feeds. Pinterest helped her figure out “how to make something look beautiful,” she said, but also helped her realize how much she liked color and whimsy, and figure out “how can I add in things that make me happy when I look at them.”
Kostic enjoys trinkets — which her mom, not a streamlined maximalist, calls “dust collectors,” she joked — and makes sure they all have their own place. Take the tiny frog statue that lives among the plants on her bedroom windowsill. It’s hard to see if you’re not looking for it. In fact, Kostic has many, many frog-adorned items, from figurines to magnets, that blend in with the quiet cacophony of her home. She thinks frogs are cute.
“Everyone sometimes has funny, little, weird obsessions, and I think it’s fun to try to incorporate that into your space,” she said.
Her favorite item in the apartment is a ceramic bowl with a ring of frogs around the lip that she picked up at a suburban thrift store.
Kostic didn’t arrive at her personal style by shopping at name-brand interiors stores. She perused Facebook marketplace, Philly AIDS Thrift, and the Goodwill in South Philly to cultivate her eclectic assortment of goods.
Her solid wood dining table, which she thrifted for about $60, can be extended with three leaves and accommodate close to 20 of her nearest and dearest friends for Thanksgiving and Galentine’s Day celebrations. Her favorite things to thrift are picture frames, which she fills with art she picks up when traveling, pieces she paints herself, or thrifts.
“There are lots of online prints that people could find, and it’s some, like, generic blob,” she said. “It’s fun to find something more unique that someone has used and loved in the past.”
The high ceilings of Kostic’s living area, which includes the lofted space where she keeps a twin bed for guests and a keyboard she fiddles with from time to time, make the room feel spacious even in its smallness.
But each item, from her dining table to sideboard to sofa and thrifted vanity seat — stationed in front of a DIY light-up mirror that Kostic wrapped in fabric-covered pool noodles — fits just so. Her bedroom has a wood-burning fireplace that she cozied up in front of a few times this past winter. Everything is intentionally placed.
“I love that I kind of have a space for everything,” she said. “I have a good amount of stuff, and I feel like I’m just able to find a spot for everything.”
Kostic has no plans to leave the apartment, or Philadelphia. After four years in California, the New Jersey native is happy to be back in a place that experiences the full breadth of the seasons. She also loves being in a “walkable, down-to-earth city with lots of culture” and “great opportunities for learning in healthcare” — the reasons Philadelphia was her first-choice city for residency, on top of being closer to her family.
Like all of the “dust collectors” in her apartment, Kostic’s found her place.
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