If you read my recent post ‘Living Smaller’ you’ll know that I was feeling frustrated with life and my space and all that other mid life crisis stuff. We’ve calmed down a little bit since then, and decided not to make any major life changes for a little bit longer. We’re going to continue working on the house so it’s perfect when we do come to sell it, and just enjoy some time in the van during the summer. We’re definitely going to be doing something, whether it be majorly downsizing or buying another bigger van to convert, but for now we decided to change the house up a bit and try and be excited about it again.

We started off by having a massive declutter. We did a Sunday stall at Tynemouth market and sold off a lot of excess stuff, and I sold a few items of furniture. The house feels more minimalist now, and the extra money goes straight into the DIY fund.

We decided to do something a little unusual too. Steven paints, and I’m always mounting and framing prints, scanning film, and all sorts of things. All the equipment for these hobbies is quite visually messy, which isn’t relaxing to look at in your main living space. Which it all was, it was all crammed into our living room along with a huge sofa, our fire, our TV. It was all a bit much. We do have a spare bedroom but it’s small, and it’s already housing our clothes and ‘getting ready’ area.

So we decided to break the rules a bit. We thought we’d use the downstairs half of our home as our ‘living’ space. It’s bathroom, kitchen, living room, and now the bed, which has worked out incredibly well. It all feels a lot more soothing. We can have the fire on, read, watch a film, and sleep in the same room. We’ve never been ones for watching TV in bed so ‘switching off’ at night in the same room as it hasn’t been an issue. And honestly, there’s nothing better than falling asleep to the sound of a fireplace at night.

Our old bedroom is now our studio. It’s so much more practical. When I’m not at work I can spend the day upstairs ‘working’ and not having to worry about tidying everything up and having it look presentable when I want to chill out for the evening. Steven can have his paintings everywhere without me moaning that the bright orange portrait he’s just done is stressing me out. It' separates our home space from our work space.

Why is there an unspoken rule that you have to sleep in a particular room? Why does it have to be upstairs? If you’re an artist or a maker or you have a lot of hobbies and don’t want to rent an extra space, I highly encourage you to be creative with your home and turn your living room into a studio apartment.