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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

> My current bedroom is ...

Yawn.

This isn't living in 80 square feet. This is bedrooming in 80 square feet. There's a gigantic difference.

There's no mention of cooking, bathroom, or other shared space. Congratulations, you actually live in a much larger space than you admit.

My first apartment in Paris was ~118 square feet (11m2), but that was INCLUDING a kitchenette, an enclosed bathroom (toilet, shower, and second sink), and an inward slanting wall (it was inside the building roof) which eliminated maybe a good fifth of the volume, and also no closet.

And I lived there with my partner, so there were two people sharing that space, with two peoples' worth of clothing and coats and computers and other materials and dishes and pots and pans and luggage, and two peoples' worth of constantly being in someone else's way.

And only that last detail, the constant interminable contact with another person, was difficult.

But an 8x10 bedroom for one? So?

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Adding more...

"Don't be a slob", "Don't accumulate shit", and "Don't be stupid with your space" are just so obnoxiously obvious as to be entirely unhelpful suggestions for anyone with half a brain cell.

And "Don't bother putting things away" is a clear sign to me that this person doesn't know what small is, because when you live in an actually small space, putting things away neatly improves your mental state significantly. You will notice your improved condition when you have that extra few feet of floor, desk, and shelf space.

Real functional advice would be things like "You'd be surprised at how much space you can save by replacing certain bulky items with compact travel/camping equivalents." Get rid of big fluffy bath towels that take forever to dry, and get small linen ones instead ( We have a few of these, and now I'd never buy anything else regardless of available space https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WBC17N4/ ). The same goes for comforters and winter coats that you're going to want to stow in the summer, bags, dishes, and so forth.

Is your arrogant and condescending tone really necessary here?

I don't really see the issue. This is well withon the bounds of acceptable and coaching the key points in more passive language would just make it longer with very little upside.

I mean, in other communities it would be a good thing. But I'd prefer to keep that kind of tone-policing away from HN and focus on content.

Neutral tone tends to take up less space consider the same content but:

"Don't be a slob", "Don't accumulate shit", and "Don't be stupid with your space" are obvious and therefore unhelpful. You will notice your improved condition when you have that extra few feet of floor space so do Put things away.

Useful advice is more inline with: "Replace bulky items with compact travel/camping equivalents." "small linen towels instead of big fluffy bath ones that take forever to dry" (I'd never buy anything else https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WBC17N4/) Also, things you want to store over summer like comforters and winter coats along with, bags, dishes, and so forth.

Different strokes, I guess. Want edit access to my account?

It's also boring. Part of being a good writer is being not boring.

I've lived in a 400sqft loft for two years with my SO. Anyone who finds this style of living romantic is either foolish or doesn't mind throwing their money at problems that can be fixed simply by adding more space.

When you shrink down your living environment WITHOUT an optimally designed environment, there's nothing romantic about it.

It just sucks.

Yeah. You either pay for more square feet or you pay for therapy. It's not a choice I'd willingly make again.

I had a perfect apartment for me. It was 596 sq ft, but split over 2.5 floors - equally-sized basement (one room/laundry & utility closet) and main floor (kitchen/bathroom/living room), plus a 1/4-sized lofted bedroom above it.

My partner of a few years moved in with me, and we quickly realized we had to find a new place if we were going to live together. If one person coughed in the basement, the other person could hear it in the bedroom. No amount of putting up sound-reducing barriers helped.

It looks romantic from the outside, maybe cute and cozy, but day-to-day it takes a very special kind of patience to deal with.

I do have friends who live in about 300 sq ft in New York City, somewhere in the East 60s. Their apartment has that exact "romantic" feel to it, but they only survive because they live in NYC and can spend the majority of their time doing things (together or separately) anywhere but their apartment.

At a size like 400sqft it all comes down to design. That's enough space for a main room with kitchen, a plenty-roomy bath, a small bedroom, and two offices.

Paris apartment bathrooms. Why did you have to bring up Paris apartment bathrooms? Of all the myriad sharp edges of actually trying to live in Paris, the apartment bathrooms are the one memory that I try to suppress.

Was yours like the one that we had? With the toilet INSIDE OF the shower? Saving space is a virtue, to be sure, but I was not proud to live like that. It was so...damp.

With the toilet INSIDE OF the shower?

We're in the market for a new RV, and we won't even consider one with that arrangement. Even in an RV we're not that desperate for space.

It wasn't inside the shower. How would that even work? Where do you stand when showering?

Do you mean that there's no separation between the toilet and shower? If so, then yes. But we had a corner curtain affixed to the wall to keep from splashing the toilet.

I once stayed at a backpackers in Hong Kong with a bathroom so cramped that the only way to use the shower was to put the toilet lid down and stand on top of the commode.

I stayed at an apartment in Venice Italy and the toilet was in the middle of the shower. So you could literally poo and shower at the same time if you really wanted too haha.

They also had floor urinals at some public spaces which, while odd, has the upside of being functional for women.

> I stayed at an apartment in Venice Italy and the toilet was in the middle of the shower. So you could literally poo and shower at the same time if you really wanted too haha.

That's amazing. I bet it either makes you feel really clean after or not very clean after, depending on which you're trying to do!

In Europe full featured apartments under 20m2 (~215 square feet) are pretty standard. I personally know quite a few people that are living in such apartments with kids. 11m2 sounds like standard European bedroom in apartment.

What part of Europe? This is pretty sub-standard in the civilized Eastern-Europe...

There may be cities where this is the case, but this surely isn't standard. I'm European but I never saw something like that nor could I recall having read such an offer for an apartement.

I lived in Vienna for 8 years and Berlin for 3.5 and have never seen an apartment this small.

Plenty of them in Stockholm and Paris. I once shared a 20m^2 flat with my partner; it worked alright. Just can't accumulate a lot of stuff. To give you an idea, here are some for sale in Stockholm county right now:

https://www.hemnet.se/bostader?location_ids%5B%5D=17744&item...

Here's a 9.5m^2 (!) apartment for sale (including bed, work area, tiny kitchen, toilet, shower), although it's marketed as something in the middle between hotel room and apartment (that's one way to put it, I guess):

http://www.bjurfors.se/sv/tillsalu/stockholm/stockholm/bromm...

On the hemnet link, if you sarch for less then 20qm it finds 12. If you search eg. for 30-40qm it finds more then 600. Doesn't look like <20qm would be some kind of standard.

For sure they're not standard, I just replied to "never seen an apartment this small" and wanted to point out that in some cities they're not unusual.

Another example - Paris, 87 ads for condos 0-20m^2 [0], 104 for 30-40m^2 [1] on pap.fr, a popular site. Similar numbers for rentals ("location").

[0] http://www.pap.fr/annonce/vente-appartements-paris-75-g439-j...

[1] http://www.pap.fr/annonce/vente-appartements-paris-75-g439-e...

> In Europe full featured apartments under 20m2 (~215 square feet) are pretty standard.

Seriously?

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

From graphic. Bottom 25% percentile by country is between 40 and 120 sq m, or 420 and 1270 sq ft.

This is average, there are huge houses where I live. But there's also tiny ones.

I am a statistics noob, but with this average and the tiny ones are standard the huge ones must be really huge, super mansion like huge.

> My first apartment in Paris was ~118 square feet (11m2), but that was INCLUDING a kitchenette, an enclosed bathroom (toilet, shower, and second sink), and an inward slanting wall (it was inside the building roof) which eliminated maybe a good fifth of the volume, and also no closet.

> But an 8x10 bedroom for one? So?

It sounds like you're describing your main room as similar or even larger than 80 square feet, so I don't see how your story is supposed to trounce theirs. They might have access to a shared space but if they don't use it then it doesn't really matter.

The hard part, as you said, is sharing that small an area with someone else the entire day. Which is a separate issue from whether the shared room is 50 square feet or 150 square feet.

> It sounds like you're describing your main room as...

Oh dear, "main room". Which room was the not-main room?

> They might have access to a shared space but if they don't use it then it doesn't really matter.

So you're saying they never go to the bathroom, shower, or eat. Sure thing, boss.

Let me ask you a question. If you and your partner share a car, do you have a car or do you not have a car? If your partner is always the one who drives whenever you go somewhere, does that change your answer? Shared space isn't magically gone just because it's shared.

> The hard part, as you said, is sharing that small an area with someone else the entire day. Which is a separate issue from whether the shared room is 50 square feet or 150 square feet.

That means that fitting even two peoples' worth of belongings is not the hard part. That means the author is being entirely self-aggrandizing with intent to deceive. That means "BFD".

> Which room was the not-main room?

The bathroom. I should have said main room(s), but with you emphasizing the smallness and highlighting the bathroom as enclosed I assumed there was only one.

> So you're saying they never go to the bathroom, shower, or eat.

You have deeply misunderstood me. I'm saying that when it comes to calculating space to compare to the article, what matters is how many square feet are dedicated to the place(s) where you put the bed and the desk.

Did you have less than 80 square feet dedicated to that? Because when you describe a 118sqft apartment with bathroom, it sounds like after subtracting the bathroom you actually had more space than the article's 80sqft.

So why are you bored at how large the article's space is in comparison to your own experience?

> Shared space isn't magically gone just because it's shared.

Of course. I'm suggesting that he is not using any shared space outside of the bathroom. And a bathroom easily fits in less than 38sqft.

> You have deeply misunderstood me.

You're probably right, then maybe let's back up. I'm saying that it's delusional to say "I live in" instead of "I sleep in". Describing just your bedroom isn't the same as describing your living space unless you actually have no other space available, and I just do not believe that to be the case for the author because the author didn't mention it. And it's definitely the sort of thing that one would mention when writing something like this if it were the case.

And then I further said, from experience, that 80ft2 is just plenty of space for one person's bedroom. And I described the experience showing that even two people can fit in that space without problems relating to storing things.

I then said as a follow-on that the hot pro tips given in the original post are entirely useless, and that the displayed "don't put things away" mindset is evidence of him not actually being tight on space to begin with.

The article really just sounds like a kid showing up to the same small university dorm that millions of other people went through and thinking that he's a special genius because...what...because he bought a corner desk through Amazon? Please.

> when it comes to calculating space to compare to the article, what matters is how many square feet are dedicated to the place(s) where you put the bed and the desk.

We can go there if you want, but you're leaving out that that's also per person.

> it sounds like after subtracting the bathroom you actually had more space than the article's 80sqft.

It sounds like you forgot to divide by two.

> And a bathroom easily fits in less than 38sqft.

I'm going to assume you meant to include kitchenette as well in that. You'd be surprised how quickly square footage adds up. And you still at the end have to divide the space by the number of people, because nearly every thing isn't shared between partners though they are sharing the spaces. Even the bed needs to be twice as large if you want to not go insane in the process.

> I'm saying that it's delusional to say "I live in" instead of "I sleep in".

He has his desk in the bedroom. I don't see any reason to assume he uses other rooms unless he mentions them.

> It sounds like you forgot to divide by two.

It seemed like you were unimpressed by the space itself.

> The article really just sounds like a kid showing up to the same small university dorm that millions of other people went through and thinking that he's a special genius because...what...because he bought a corner desk through Amazon? Please.

I won't disagree there.

> And then I further said, from experience, that 80ft2 is just plenty of space for one person's bedroom. And I described the experience showing that even two people can fit in that space without problems relating to storing things.

Okay, that's fine then if you were calling your experience comparable. It really seemed to me like you were saying your past experience was significantly smaller. If you weren't doing that, then I apologize and have no further argument.

> I don't see any reason to assume he uses other rooms unless he mentions them.

My eyes are rolling so hard they might get arrested.

> It seemed like you were unimpressed by the space itself.

I am.

> It really seemed to me like you were saying your past experience was significantly smaller.

It was. You're still forgetting to divide the non-bathroom and cooking space by two. Let's be really generous and say that my bathroom and kitchenette were made for ants and took up zero space instead of probably ~28ft2 (3x8 + 2x2). This is of course not true, but it gives an upper bound on the possible square feet per person, 59. Of course if you subtract that 28 first, you end up with 45. And of course let us not forget that 3/4 of one wall had a 45 degree inward slant. So that wall is entirely unusable, as is the space above it.

If you want to yawn about the space itself, then I won't divide by two.

> My eyes are rolling so hard they might get arrested.

It's not unreasonable to think he lives out of a single room, and I want to give him a tiny bit of credit to think he's not the worst blog-writer in the world.

> If you want to yawn about the space itself, then I won't divide by two.

Area(really volume)-per-one-occupant's-reasonable-belongings-and-bed-space-needs-times-the-number-of-occupants is the metric that matters. If he were three people instead of one then it would be different. If he had a child, then it would be different. If he had a dog, then it would be different. But he doesn't. He's sleeping alone in a moderate-size bedroom, something that many people do without bragging about it, and publicly patting himself on the back for buying a computer desk and shelves.

> It's not unreasonable to think he lives out of a single room

It is, because that's not what he does. He sleeps, computes, and dresses himself (let's assume) in a single room. He necessarily excretes and washes (and probably eats) somewhere else unless he has those facilities in the room and just accidentally failed to mention it in his excitement over living in the 21st century. Sleep is only a fraction of domesticity. Though I admit it's possible that he's also that guy with the anti-bathing blog who complains that women discriminate against him by not fellating him just because he smells bad.

> I want to give him a tiny bit of credit to think he's not the worst blog-writer in the world.

Given the amount of space he spends delighting in having finally discovered Amazon, I don't feel so generous. But I'm also just mean about things like this.

I've been and known lots of people in NYC with no bathroom (shared, down the hall) and no kitchen (they just eat out every night, or worst case grab some chicken cutlets from a deli on the way home from work). So those things missing isn't really indicative.

> no bathroom (shared

You mean shared bathroom.

> no kitchen

I'm going to assume that you mean either a shared kitchen or a kitchenette because of your mistake about the bathroom.

Sharing something doesn't mean you don't have it.

It means you don't have it in your apartment.

It means you don't have it in your bedroom. Because having something is not the same thing as not having something, and it doesn't matter if that thing is shared with a small collective or isn't directly attached. It means that when you live in an environment with shared bathrooms, then your notion of "living in" is wrong if you don't include them. There is an important difference between "I live in" and "I sleep in".

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