Compact Living vs. My Living Space

Most of us are renting or living in smaller spaces in 2020…

As we’ve already talked about throughout the minimalism series and property posts the spaces we are living in are progressively becoming smaller and smaller. Likely this is due to the fact that there is more demand for home and lets face it no more land to really build on.

With house prices being mega expensive and the UK meant to build 250,000 new homes each year and not coming close to that it’s also not a surprise that a lot of us are still living with our parents in our 20’s. I’ll be completely honest with you all, that’s me right now.

Since graduating and starting to work in Central London, Ash and I moved in with my family - which I think a lot of people would believe is hell, however we’ve found it pretty decent… I knew very early on that I wanted to invest in property at some point and buy my own home so saving cash where possible was key. A South London Studio flat would have set us back between £750-£975+ per month according to London Gov… and that doesn’t include travel/bills/food/taxes etc!

We have now been here for nearly 3 years and I’m not going to lie, I thought we would be in a little flat in London by now… but by living in our own small space within my parents house it has helped us realise what we truly need, what we hate, what we enjoy and our priorities when looking to buy. As you can guess it’s also allowed us to save a lot of money compared to if we were London renting and trying to save too! (Don’t get me wrong we do pay rent/keep/bills here but obviously not £900 p/m worth.)

Seriously this has been one of the better decisions we’ve made. It’s allowed us to:

• Save Money

• Spend time with family

• Go on long holidays without worry

• Test out our first time living together

• Decide where we would like to buy

So as we’ve talked about compact living heres the deal:

• Ash and I have our bedroom to ourselves (essentially like renting a room in a shared flat).

• We also have an on-suite shower room - Which makes a massive difference when sharing spaces!

• We share a living room, kitchen and dining room with 3 other people.

• We share a lovely garden (which has actually been the saving grace during lockdown!)

30% our space / 70% shared

We are very lucky to have the loft conversion to ourselves with all our ‘stuff’ in one area. We try to keep the space minimal since it is only XXsqm for bedroom and XXsqm shower room but this is literally everything we own or existing furniture so it’s pretty tricky…so we have:

• 1 x Double bed

• 2 x Bedside tables

• 2 x Stacking side tables

• 2 x Chest of drawers

• 1 x Wardrobe

• 1 x Sofa bed

• 1 x TV

• 1 x Mirror

• 1 x Storage unit

• 2 x Shower room storage

• 6 x Plants (because I love trying not to kill off plants)

Now the big thing about our space vs. compact living IS the option to go into the shared areas. This means we’re not constantly on top of each other whilst one of us is trying to work and the other is gaming..hint.

Especially during isolation we have realised how much an outdoor space means to us, which we definitely took for granted before. I personally am very happy in my own company however Ash loves to be out and about so it has been a real change for him.

From comparing the compact living concept that the UK is heading towards and how I live now I wouldn’t say there is too much of a difference. Really what Ash and I need to remember moving forward is when buying a home we need somewhere with great light, zoned spaces (even if it is open plan) and the option of an outdoor space, whether that is a balcony or a park nearby.

Let me know if you’re currently renting a room or flat that is much smaller than anything you’ve ever lived in before and how you’ve adjusted over time!

I’ve also got a post looking at some hacks you can implement within a tiny space and the main pros/cons of compact living in general…