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Ashley

Living Arrangements

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Met up with my only nearby friend on Saturday and we were both saying we were glad to be living alone so it got me thinking; what are your living arrangements? Do you live alone, with a partner, friends, family? And do you like it, both in terms of who you live with and also just generally is your house/flat good, do you want to move etc?

As anyone that's been following my year I started off in London having lived in a flat for just over 7 years, the last ~9 months alone after my housemate moved to America. Then during February I crashed at various people's houses and started travelling in March but that didn't work because well... so I then isolated in an Airbnb in Birmingham for two weeks, went back to my hometown to live with my mom and her (soon-to-be-ex) husband for a month, then went to a different place in Birmingham for a month and eventually gave up on the idea of going travelling any time soon so I'm now renting a place with a six month contract. So all in all I've been in 8 places in this country this year! 

The flat itself is nice enough with a decent amount of space. Does back onto a road that I wish was a bit quieter but I'm very much in the mindset of "it's not permanent", although trying to add a few little touches so it at least feels a bit more like my place rather than something I'm passing through.

Wish there was some green space though, either in the flat or nearby. There's not really any decent green space nearby. Say what you want about London it does beat others for proximity to green spaces, even if they are small.

As I said I like living alone and I've gotten used to it now. I do occasionally miss company but all in all its nice to have a place to myself.

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Live in a flat with 2 others (lady and gent). We don't do much together (they both work - one as a PhD, the other as an engineer - and travel a lot) but it's chill. The past few months have been busier here, for obvious reasons.

What do I want for my future living arrangement? Well, eventually I'd love to get/rent my own flat. Don't necessarily want a house.

But that's at least 5 more years away. And that is if I manage to finish my Bachelor's degree and the following Master's degree and get a job until then.

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My background of living arrangements is something like the following:

Spoiler
  • Grew up at home with Mom, Dad and Sister (Stourbridge)
  • Boarding school up to GCSEs (Stourbridge)
  • Home for A-Levels (Stourbridge)
  • Halls for first year of uni (Bournemouth)
  • House share with 6 others for 2nd year of uni (Bournemouth)
  • Back home for my year in industry (Stourbridge)
  • Shared with one friend for final year of uni (Bournemouth)
  • Moved to Lonon with my best mate and spent 3 years with him (London)
  • Girlfriend at the time and her mate moved in with us (London)
  • House share with a rotating selection of 4 others for a year (San Francisco)
  • FINALLY my own place for a few years (San Francisco)
  • Moved to Tokyo and lived alone again for a while (Tokyo)
  • Moved in with girlfriend for a few years (Tokyo)
  • Moved to Singapore and lived alone for six months (Singapore)
  • Now wife moved in with me (Singapore
  • Baby born to make three (Singapore)

I’m very happy with my current living situation. We rent a three bedroom apartment in Singapore for myself, wife and son. We have a big living space with nice balcony, one large bedroom we’re currently all sleeping in, one medium bedroom I have set up as an office, and one small bedroom we use as storage and baby changing. The kitchen is a little small but it’s not too much of a problem just yet.

We’re next door to a Ghurka army base so can watch those guys training, and also on the air force flight path so gat a cool selection of planes flying over.

The facilities we have here are also pretty awesome, a few pictures:

Spoiler

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13B5CC30-9712-4407-B251-DC3259143348.jpeg.3239928f1e570d7289163de03545089d.jpeg

4C21B484-06A0-43E1-84A4-CE8FE3D7CF79.jpeg.106c0aa15d960cda994e9d6a220b3975.jpeg

4765F39E-94FE-4BD8-95A1-524C436D20FA.jpeg.1f2b84037d851768d3163298e8262b8b.jpeg

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There’s another pool and a jacuzzi area too but I couldn’t find pictures of those.

All in it’s a pretty nice place to live, expect we’ll be here for another few years then find a slightely larger apartment that fits the family a bit better. I’m very happy with the people I live with but I do miss living alone sometimes.

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That is some fancy facilities! 

Its an interesting question Ashley, I wouldn't say London is very green in my head, but I suppose its certainly better to some of the bigger cities in other countries.

I currently live in a 3 bed 2 bath house with my partner. We've been here 4 years now in a lovely little town in Cambridgeshire. Its semi-detatched, which wasn't an issue until the family moved in about 6 months ago. They are a lovely family with a little lad, but he likes to run about all day and they now have wooden floors (landlords I swear to FUCK buy carpet for renting in flats and terraced housing).

We hope to buy something similar this time next year, but detached. We love having our own rooms (We have our bedroom, guest room which I use as a study and a third bedroom which is tiny and is my partner's study). 

I've never been able to live on my own, through money or otherwise, except when I lived in NYC for a bit. I love living with my partner, so its nice we can afford something a bit bigger and have our own spaces. 

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This is a pic of my house taken a few years ago for google maps. I like this image because it shows one of the kids scaling the window. We're not even sure it was because they saw the google car, or if they were just doing it anyways.

73MojE0.png

 

Current living arrangements are great, but soon the left side of the picture will be filled with a single storey extension -  new porch, extra lounge area, a utility room and a downstairs toilet, which apparently my wife has been dying for for years. I love living where we do - we're really close to the town centre and local amenities (250 steps to Co-Op, 300 steps to Sainsbury's), but it's quiet enough, and we're ten minutes drive away from the Peak District.

I grew up in Billingham, an economically deprived industrial town in the North-East of England, so Macclesfield has a really different feel.

The worst place I lived in was a flat that i rented as a student in Newcastle. It was £30 per week (it was 2002, but even then that was mega cheap), but we were in a relatively dodgy area and there were so many slugs in the kitchen at night. Once, in the middle of the night I blearily walked through the kitchen barefoot to go to the loo, and I stood on a slug, and it squished under my foot. Horrendous.

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I currently live in a 2 bedroom house that i own with my wife (she owns it too, but i also live with her). It's in a pretty sweet location within walking distance to the shops in town, but isolated from the road, so it's nice and quiet.

We live on a row of similar terraced houses with connected front gardens. We often see people stop and take pictures of the front of the houses - it's like living in one of those tourist towns sometimes, but it can get a bit weird. They also keep sniffing at the rose bush that hangs over the fence.

At some point we intend to convert the attic and give ourselves a third bedroom, but that one is stuck in planning limbo at the moment.

Before we bought this house, i lived in a flat in town for 8 years (also with my wife), which i also loved. It was really tiny, only one bedroom, but it was so close to the shops and everything else. I miss it sometimes, until i remember how loud the upstairs neighbours were, and how cramped everything was.

Everything before that was various student houses in various states of grim-ness.

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6 hours ago, nightwolf said:

Its an interesting question Ashley, I wouldn't say London is very green in my head, but I suppose its certainly better to some of the bigger cities in other countries.

I think its more there's lots of pockets of green spaces. I think I've never lived/work somewhere that wasn't more than a 15 minute walk to a decent sized public green space. There's obviously bits that aren't, but I think they tend to be more potted around to make them more accessible.

This is where I used to live and you can see there's smaller green spaces and then a bit further out larger ones (although granted between Brixton and Clapham there's not much, but they are flanked by the two large parks).

Where I am now (Birmingham) there's only really one bit of green space in the centre around a church near one of the train stations. London does have the benefit of having large parks within the centre (only bonus of the royal family I guess) and then little green squares. The nearest decent sized green space to me now is 25 minutes away by foot.

Capture.PNG

 

Just checked and according to this: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/05/green-space-uk-largest-cities-mapped Birmingham has more green space as a percentage (by 1.4%), but if you look at the maps you'll see it's all distributed around the edges and the centre is pretty light on green areas, whereas London is a bit more mixed.

I know living in the centre is affecting it but beggars can't be choosers :p 

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I'm living with my parents again, in the house I grew up in. Have been back here for nearly 5 years now which is pretty depressing to comprehend, I lived with my girlfriend for a few years before that (in a rented flat for the first year or so then a place we bought together for the remaining time I was with her)

Living with my parents isn't so bad now that I've got used to it. It took me a while to adjust and it was difficult to accept that I couldn't continue my transition while living under their roof but otherwise I get on well enough with them. They annoy me, obviously, and I hope to get my own place sooner rather than later but I'm realistic about my chances. 

My eldest brother bought his own place just before lockdown came into effect and I am definitely envious of him being able to live on his own - living alone would be the ideal situation for me so that is what I'm working towards, just a shame the cost of renting is so bloody high.

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Currently in a house we've had for about 4 years, with the wife of 5 months. Would love to do a bit of remixing to it. Mainly screw down some floorboards as they're creaky as fuck. Currently giving ourselves about an extra 1x5m space in our garden by removing the conifer trees on the boarder with next door and putting up a proper fence. One of the trees will need a tree surgeon to put it down as it's just too high, but the rest I'm going to slowly dismantle myself to save money. Asked the students next door for their landlord's number to give them the heads up, as I think he has a tree in there too (it's a massive mess so may not) but what we're sure he has is some rather aggressive Russian ivy which has almost fucked over the conservatory once until I chopped it back, and in my favour has smoothered 2-3 of the conifers so they haven't gone beyond 3 metres. Warned him that I would cut off the majority of what's on my side and conferring them to the flames. The rest I would be returning to its garden of origin, so may be something he might want to have a look at.

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I live in a private rental home with my fiancé, 2 cats and 1 bearded dragon. 

Currently saving up to buy our own place (could take a few years). 

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Living with my fiancee and three cats, currently in a private rental flat. It's ok, but has issues. We only have a front garden, but it's not fenced (apparently there's a council thing that prevents it) and is on a busy road, so it's not really usable for anything - especially when it's a pathway for downstairs, too. Because it's on a corner, I've nearly been run over by cyclists using our garden as a shortcut a few times. So we have to maintain it for zero benefit.

We desperately want to have our own place - we're currently trying to save for a deposit, although all mortgage companies dropping 5% deposits is a massive blow to us (even 10% is fairly unlikely at the moment).

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Living in a private rental flat with my partner, we have space out of the back for chairs, tables and a BBQ (there's some green space, but it's mostly concrete).  Saving up for a house, we have about £20k saved (parents have set aside £10k, me and my partner have about £12k between us.  But before that, need new jobs first.  Covid-19 isn't helping things too much, but interviews have meant Skype meetings over travelling.

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1 hour ago, Cube said:

Living with my fiancee and three cats, currently in a private rental flat. It's ok, but has issues. We only have a front garden, but it's not fenced (apparently there's a council thing that prevents it) and is on a busy road, so it's not really usable for anything - especially when it's a pathway for downstairs, too. Because it's on a corner, I've nearly been run over by cyclists using our garden as a shortcut a few times. So we have to maintain it for zero benefit.

We desperately want to have our own place - we're currently trying to save for a deposit, although all mortgage companies dropping 5% deposits is a massive blow to us (even 10% is fairly unlikely at the moment).

It'll pick up again soon, I've been keeping an eye on Nationwide for the same reason. I'd always say about getting a 10% or 5% anyway. 

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On 22/07/2020 at 10:30 AM, Mr_Odwin said:

I stood on a slug, and it squished under my foot. Horrendous.

I can honestly say reading this was the LOWEST point of my day today...... I would burn that place to the ground AWFUL

--

I've lived in a lot of places...

born - Inverness, scotland.
1 y/o - moved to germany, had a few different homes there in different bases (RAF)
approx 3 - moved back to Inverness - we had at least 2 different homes there (again still RAF)
10 - moved to Ballymena, Northern Ireland - (Parents bought a house a couple of miles out of town. Dad retired from service. they still live there.)
--ADULT--
28 - rented a flat right in our local town, lived by myself
30 - bought a house 5 miles out of town, live by myself

I had a FT job from 18, never went to uni.  Took a while for me to get my adult shit together.  I had a very good relationship with my parents so it wasn't difficult for me to stay.  They were pretty surprised when i told them i was moving out lol

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