Well, since you’d like some more responses, I lived in a weird sort-of-studio last year. I’m oddly attached to it, since it was my first place where I lived alone. (And it came with a crazy cat, who I loved beyond all reason.)
Do you live in a studio apartment or other restricted space (trailer, camper, boat)?
An attic bedroom/studio. It was a large square room with a double bed, two little couches, a coffee table, a table and two chairs, a microwave cabinet, bar fridge, microwave, and toaster oven, desk, bookshelf, and dresser. One closet, that contained both dishes and cutlery and my clothing. The bathroom was just down the stairs, and I supposedly had shared kitchen access but that didn’t really work out.
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How many square feet is your dwelling?
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It was 270 square feet according to the landlords. I’ll take their word for it.
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Have you always lived in smaller spaces, or did you have to transition?**
The only places I’d lived before were in shared houses or residence halls. It was spacious compared to the dorm rooms but small compared to a house.
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What compromises have you had to make to make it work?**
I brought only two suitcases with me when I moved (maximum luggage allowed on the plane at the time). I made sure there was a place for everything I brought in, from bulk food to shoes. I still ran out of closet space alarmingly quickly.
Do you have any multifunctional furniture?
No, unless my desk doubling as a kitchen table counts.
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Where does your space fall on the clutter scale from model apartment to hoarder?**
Somewhere in between. I made it work, but if one thing got messy, the whole place dissolved into chaos quite quickly.
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Is your bed always made/put away or just when you expect company?**
More often than when I live in a house. I only had company once in a year - it took about two days to clean to get it to a state that I didn’t mind people seeing it.
Do you work there too?
I was a grad student at the time. I did some homework there, but I tried to leave the house to do most of my work.
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Do you have stuff stored somewhere else?**
Yes, I left 90% of my crap with my parents. I was luckily allowed to use the freezer of the landlords’ basement fridge.
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How well do you like the layout?**
It was pretty bad; the big square room necessarily leaves a lot of room in the middle empty. If I had been decorating, I would have replaced the queen-size bed with a twin and taken out one of the sofas. I needed more kitchen space and more storage. (And a kitchen SINK, but that’s another story.
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What do you wish was different?**
A little sink and counter would have made the place livable.
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Any good restricted living space stories?**
No, but the place did come with a cat, which is the main reason I stayed for an entire year. (The house owners’ cat didn’t like their dog, and he liked me because I was always sitting around reading. I liked him because if you have to be sitting around reading, a cat on your lap makes it much nicer. And I didn’t have to feed him or clean his litterbox.)
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Please post any pics of your space.**
I would, but that would involve taking them off email and uploading them to photobucket or something. It’s not really a good example of small-space living, anyway.
And if you don’t mind sharing, where is it located and how much does it cost?
In one of the cities with the lowest vacancy rate and the most inflated housing market in Canada. It was $500 a month.
