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I lived in a one-room (plus bathroom) apartment for half a year. It was an awful experience. The apartment was very well designed with nice furniture and very v
by kartan 8y ago
I lived in a one-room (plus bathroom) apartment for half a year. It was an awful experience. The apartment was very well designed with nice furniture and very very centric. But it felt claustrophobic.
I have lived since then in similar apartments, equally small, but with at least 2 rooms (living room and bedroom). It feels so much better.
At first, one-room looks like is going to be better. There is more space as you don't have inner walls. But when you play games, watch tv, cook and sleep all in the same room it feels that there is something wrong.
Getting up in the morning, leaving the bedroom and going to the living room makes a big difference. The context-switching is welcome. It is also easier when going to sleep.
- felipemnoa 8y agoTo each their own I guess. I for one love studios.
- db48x 8y agoYea, I doubt that it's universal. Most humans who ever existed probably lived in a one-room house of some type or other.
- tjoff 8y agoI don't recognize those issues. The two problems I saw were getting it dark enough to sleep (wasn't hard but was a bit of a chore, automated blinds would have helped) and noise from the refrigerator, but that's pretty much it.
- crooked-v 8y agoYou forgot to mention putting duct tape over all the unbearably bright LEDs designers insist on putting on anything electronic these days. Now I need to figure out how to stop my refrigerator from sometimes making a whining noise all night...
- Waterluvian 8y agoWho are the clowns who decided the LED should be illuminated when the device is off?! So that I know where to point the remote? Never had that problem before.
- sjg007 8y agoYou can vote with your dollars and only buy TVs that let you disable the led, or don’t have one.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI kind of agree. It's hard to give weight to such a trivial, solvable irritant. I just wish it wasn't this way.
- crooked-v 8y agoIf anyone's looking for relevant brands, my Vizio has a single small and dim LED while turned on, and it can be disabled entirely in the options menu.
- tjoff 8y agoHow could I have forgot that. 4 layers of duct tape and that computer-case LED still went through enough to be annoying, unbelievable.
- tzahola 8y agoUse black nail polish.
- samb1729 8y agoOpen up your case and disconnect the power and disk-activity LEDs
- wool_gather 8y agoTry electrical tape next time. Duct tape plastic is usually actually pretty thin. It's just strong because of the fibers.
- spython 8y agoA friend of mine had a generalized anxiety disorder, and for a while she was living in an apartment which had a large living room / kitchen which connected all other rooms. Basically, you entered directly into a large room, some part of which was used for cooking, another for playing games and watching tv, other again for dining and some part was just a transfer zone between the rooms and the lavatory. She reported feeling uneasy when entering her apartment, as the potential for action was too large, and she couldn't concentrate on the one task she had in front of her - the task of arriving at home. I guess it is connected to the concept of 'affordance' that is used in psychology and UX design. In the view of Gibson it is more about relations to the environment whereas Norman appropriated it to mean the perceived possible actions that are offered by objects, and as such are object properties. In both senses, the affordance of the space was too rich and uneven, and offered too many possible uses for the room. My feeling is that we are having this problem more and more with generalized soft- and hardware. As browsers and phones offer ever expanding possibilities for action, they become more and more faceless and bland. My hope is that we will embrace limited affordances as a force for good, creating highly opinionated, characteristic and specialized products that offer precise ways of using them.
- greggman 8y agoLots of people around the world live in 1 room apartments. Tokyo and HK are full of them. I have friends that grew up in 1 room apartments, parents and all. There's also that eco movement for tiny multipurpose 1 room housing. Not saying I don't prefer more rooms but I certainly wouldn't go as far as saying something is wrong with 1 room.
- sacado2 8y agoAlthough I don't think living in 1 room when you're alone (or maybe a couple) in necessarily bad, I can't understand how living with a whole family in a single room can be ok. I mean, how are you supposed to have sex when your parents / children are in the same room? How can you get a good quality of sleep when other people are awake in the same room or when you are forced to go to bed because other people want to sleep? How can you focus when doing your homework is the room someone is watching TV or playing video games? I know sometimes you don't have the choice, but I can't see it as something good or even neutral.
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago> how are you supposed to have sex when your parents / children are in the same room? Really quietly ;-) But in all seriousness, for a big family to sleep in the same room/place was the norm for much of humanity's existence. I agree that I'd find it awkward to be intimate without some privacy, but it doesn't seem to have stopped our ancestors.
- stordoff 8y agoI had both at university - a single room for two years, then a two-room set for a year - and found they had different strengths. In the single room, I could go to my bed for a break, or to fetch something from over there, without completely losing my focus. In the set, it was nice to have a separate room for sleeping and keeping clothes (so I didn't have to worry about keeping them out of the way - they aren't taking up space in my work area). Ultimately though, I didn't find them to be fundamentally different, other than literally having more space in the two-room set. Worth noting that I didn't cook in either - there was a separate (shared) kitchen, though most of the time I would be eating in Hall anyway, which may have been a factor.
- neuland 8y agoI lived in this kind of studio apartment for 2 years and didn't have any of the issues you describe. There was a discussion recently about airplanes with no windows and I felt similarly. I just don't really get anxiety about enclosed spaces. Coincidentally, I work remotely from my home and I think that this contributes to why I like it. A lot of people have trouble working and relaxing in the same space. But I don't have an issue with it. Not sure what all that adds to the conversation. Maybe I'm the weird one, and this is a normal feeling. But I just wanted to say this is not a universal thing necessarily.
- DenisM 8y agoIt might yet get worse with age.
- Khaine 8y agoI lived in basically a one room (there were no walls) but the bed room was a corridor away from the living/kitchen area apartment. I made sure to create seperate zones where I did things, although I would often violate the point of these zones (i.e. work on my couch watching TV, rather than at my desk. I feel as long as you keep the areas mentally separately, even if you can't physically seperate the areas you should be okay.
- pm90 8y agoOn the contrary... I feel a much closer connection to my current 1BR apt than I felt to a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 3 story townhouse. It’s small enough that I can remember exactly where I keep shit(Smaller RAM). It’s less space to vacuum so I do that often.
- crehn 8y agoI live in a small corner studio in the densest area of Seoul. Everything is close (piano, bed, PS4, kitchen, wardrobe, small table, bathroom), the view is nice and it still feels spacious and relaxed. I don't own too many things and actively try to reduce cleaning surface and remove anything that is even a tiny non-necessary maintenance burden. Keeping the house spotless is super easy. No anxiety due to visual complexity or owning too much. Loving it.