Five things no one tells you about sharing a studio apartment
When I selected this 300-square-foot studio last year, it was an affordable stop-gap measure. Then Alex moved in.
I’m new to this California lifestyle, so housing costs are still staggering to me. I pay twice the amount in rent for a tiny studio apartment than I did on my mortgage for a two-bedroom house in Florida. But you know what? This is California, and that’s part of the package. When it came time to move out of my company relocation rental and into something more permanent, I picked a nondescript studio apartment just a few miles from my work campus in Glendale. I knew it would need some love in order to make it pretty, but the price was great. I was a single divorcée with very few furnishings to my name and zero patience for commuting. The studio was a perfect fit.
I’d lived here for almost a year when COVID turned the world upside down. Up to that point, I spent very little time at home. My apartment was a just a place to sleep or craft or sew, otherwise I was out hunting for new cocktail lounges or seeing movies (Remember movie theaters?!). Flash forward to March, when Alex and I decided we should hunker down in one place to help flatten the curve. After that, this little studio became our entire world.
Alex and I are now nearly a year into life together. I should qualify: we’re not just living together, but spending every waking moment in the same room.
This isn’t going to be the blog post that helps you decide if you and your romantic partner are ready to share an IKEA showroom-sized space together. This is just me sharing a few things that have made studio apartment life together even sweeter.
After we started working from home together, I installed this easy little curtain rod and drape so Alex has a divider between virtual calls and the rest of the studio interior.
Set expectations early
You know how everyone says that communication is the most important part of a relationship? They’re right, pal. But not just in the “touchy-feely” kind of way. In the “talk it out and set some ground rules” kind of way. The best example I can think of for this is our workday routine. Alex and I both work from home in the same room. When he moved in, we talked about our expectations for the workday and how to best set up the space for our jobs. We understand that we’re not going to interact a lot while we’re at work, even though we’re five feet away from each other. We communicate when we have video calls or meetings so the other person isn’t inadvertently seen or heard in the background. If you’re a nonconfrontational person like I am, it’s easier to talk about expectations at the outset than it is to provide feedback or constructive criticism later.
This little air filter not only keeps us resting easier while 3D printing with PLA, but it provides some wonderful ambient noise.
Ambient noise is your friend
When you’re sharing a small space, privacy isn’t always readily available. Having a white noise machine, air purifier or fan running helps provide a little cushion for your brain. It helps soften the attention on things like your partner’s keyboard clacks or bathroom sounds or cooking commotion. We have a pretty good system in place with our wall-mounted air conditioner, 3D printer air filter and noisy bathroom fan, which produce a nice level of ambient noise. Over the summer, they shut our power off for an hour for maintenance and let me assure you the silence was deafening. We’ve become addicted to the studio’s comforting hums.
Do you keep all your cooking utensils in your bedroom? If you live in a studio apartment you do.
You’re cooking in your bedroom
Before Alex moved in, the only thing in my freezer was a bottle of Tito’s Handmade Vodka. True story. I love to cook, but prepping meals for one just wasn’t as exciting as dining out at local LA eateries. Now that we’re Safer at Home, I spend about 12 hours a week cooking everything from scratch-made pasta carbonara to coconut curry. One thing we discovered quickly is that cooking real meals in a studio means you get all the smells of a kitchen, but in your entire living area. Now I’m extra cautious to run the overhead vent when I’m making dinner, sometimes even going as far as opening the patio sliding door and windows to help air out the space for really bold smells like steak or bacon.
Love is giving the other person the bigger closet.
Merging your stuff is tricky
Storage-wise, this 300-square-foot apartment worked just fine when I lived alone. I had hand-picked furniture that was small enough for the space and I had already “minimalist lifestyled” my possessions into only things I really loved or needed. It got a little more complicated when I added another person into the equation. Part of moving in together was combining our possessions, and part of designing is finding solutions. Alex continues to be insanely supportive of my design choices, so we ended up keeping most of my lovingly color-coordinated furniture here and putting his furniture into storage. Alex found helpful having access kind of longer-term storage. He said sometimes it’s hard to part with belongings, but somehow the process of putting something in storage for 6 months magically lessens the blow. He’s currently using this as a temporary solution, so he can learn whether these items are things he’ll actually miss. But there were still plenty of his art supplies and movies and knickknacks that I wanted to be sure found a place so this felt like his home, too. The solution ended up being installing a wall of bookcases below the TV for extra storage. The lesson for me was that you have to be willing to make room within existing spaces or make room by building out new spaces. The new bookcase layout pushed me to redesign one side of the apartment and inspired our iconic green mural wall. It’s like a reminder that the apartment changed to make room for the two of us.
I think it’s funny when streaming services ask us “Who’s watching.” We never leave this room, or each other. It’s Covid and we’re together, inside, with only streaming services to amuse us. But thank you for checking, Netflix.
There is only one TV, mofo
This may seem obvious, but in a single room studio there’s probably only one TV. This hasn’t ever been a concern for us because Alex and I are pretty amiable about entertainment choices, but I bring it up as a consideration for your future studio-move-in-couples out there. In a studio apartment, you may have to get creative in how you and your partner engage with media. There have been a few instances when Alex wants to stream a show online, so he’ll pop on headphones. There have been times that I’ve put on a movie that Alex wasn’t jazzed about, so he went outside to read or played a game on his computer. While this doesn’t bother us in the least, it is something that I’d never given much thought until we were sharing the apartment.
Communication, noises, cooking smells, organizing stuff and entertainment. Five things no one tells you about sharing a studio apartment with your charming boyfriend. You know, the five things all great couples struggle with.
What’s that?
Oh, most couples struggle with how to raise their kids and their finances? Who knew!
Maybe that’s because they never addressed these five things first.
But we did. And now you can, too.
You’re welcome.