Living Together

I really like the new Ikea video above - particularly the music - and it got me thinking about living together and sharing a space with someone else.

When I was at University I shared a room for one year & after graduating I shared a house with girlfriends in London.

I spent 2 extremely happy years in a stunning three storey house overlooking Clapham Common West Side in the days when I was a single girl working in the City with a large salary & a social life to match. 

Apart from the gorgeous house with its high ceilings, three bathrooms & handsome celebrity next door neighbour, the other thing I remember is the fridge - the smallest I have ever seen! Presumably because they knew that we were never home, so grocery shopping wasn't high on our list.

In those days, we shared easily, none of the furniture was ours & the landlord provided a cleaner.

It was a breeze.

Fast forward five years or so and I had moved to north London where I had two absolute nightmare flatshares - the first where I moved into a flat in Hampstead with two people who I didn't know & then the second where I moved in with someone who I did know but promptly fell out with when she moved her large boyfriend into our small two bed flat on the day we signed the lease.

That was when I knew it was time to get my own place :)

At this point I had met my husband (although we were still just dating), I knew I didn't want to share a flat anymore and so I rented somewhere alone.

Shortly afterwards we got engaged and then I moved into what would be our first married home together. Unlike nearly all of the rest of our friends, we never lived together before we got married - which is probably even more unusual these days.

We holidayed & travelled together but the issue of living together never really came up, we just knew we would wait until we were married.

There weren't any real surprises though, we have similar tastes & both want the same things from our home.

Probably the only thing we differ on is our approach to "stuff".

I " reduce, recycle, reuse" everything, de-cluttering being one of my favourite pastimes whereas my husband doesn't own anything that he feels he needs to be parted from ie, he never throws anything away & still owns socks & t-shirts he's had since he was 18!

That's probably our biggest difference.

I regularly clear out cupboards & drawers, I don't actually think I've ever seen him doing this.

He belongs to the school of why-throw-it-away-you-never-know-when-you-might-need-it.

He keeps shirts that he is never ever going to wear again - or dareIsay fit into.

He hates mess & clutter but wouldn't dream of tidying up or sorting out boxes.

So, of course I do it for him!!
I read a statistic the other day which claimed that a third of women said they had thrown away some of their partner's (old) possessions without their partner's knowledge.
And of course their partner had not even noticed!

What I love about the Ikea ad is its message that as you start a new life or a new home together, you find a middle ground.
Somehow you weave your possessions together.
And, of course, it's the things that you can't see that makes it a home....
the people in it, the ambience, the memories....
although great storage and his & hers spaces helps too!