Rearranging the apartment
23 August 2025For some time I had concluded that having a two-bed two-bathroom apartment did not suit my needs and was a result planned to move into a one-bed that had a better portioning of floor space, but having kept my eye on rental listings felt that finding such a place that would be worth-while moving to and at the right time was most likely not going to happen. As a result in lieu of moving a drastic rearranging of what was where with the goal of liberating space within the living room was done, and with the results the best option now seems to stay in this place indefinitely. Unlike most of the time recently where the place has felt like an outpost, it now feels that bit more like an actual home.
General-use space
What matters is general living space which is room to do stuff that does not have its own dedicated space, in practice meaning anywhere that is not a bedroom, bathroom, hallway, and in most cases kitchen. In practice this floor space is reduced due to awkward room shape such as the top-right corner in the floor-plan shown below where a heater is located, and the dead-weight of furniture that services no useful purpose — the latter being a complaint of every flat I have ever lived in with the exception of London which was deliberately kept things minimalist. In the Manchester flat this general-living floor space is 16 square meters but in the London flat it is nearer 40 square meters.
Having recently spent a lot of time down south rather than up north and in doing so almost finished a long overdue tidy-up and clear-out, the difference that general-use space makes was unmissable. In contrast after I moving apartments back in 2020 the smaller bedroom was a non-issue but the much smaller living area, especially before clearing out some thing that simply could not be kept, had an undeniably negative impact on my life. Having two bathrooms is outright extravagance and having the second bedroom presents dubious value.
Requirements for new place
Realistically any new place would be in the same general area, both for logistical reasons of being able to easily do viewings during the day and the actual moving process, as well as proximity requirements that made me choose the existing flat in the first place such as walking distance to my company's office. Price-wise it would be hard to justify going from a two-bed to a one-bed without saving a bit of money on rent which meant a provisional budget of £1,100 a month, and moving into another two-bed would defeat the point of the whole exercise of trading types of floor-space. Finally the new place needs to actually have significantly more general living space as that is the underlying objective of going through the effort of moving in the first place. In the past did come across places that looked like they would meet all these requirements but more recently all the one-bed places in the search area either had much the same living room dimensions, or more often were asking for a level of rent which I considered not worth while accepting.
Finding the right place at the right time felt like a tall order and ultimately did wonder whether it was simply far less hassle to stay put, not least the need to set aside some cash for a second deposit and an overlap of paying rent on a second place. Around this time the number of days being spent down south was rapidly increasing to the point where it had been suggested that I might move over to only spending three nights a week in Manchester, and as a result the idea of changing accommodation lost a lot of traction. It was at this point that a drastic rearranging of things in the flat could liberate space for general use came into mind.
Rearranging floor space
The two major changes were shunting one of the sofas into the “master” bedroom since for me it is dead-weight, and using this bedroom for laundry as the space in there was of no other use unlike its previous position in the living room where it blocked access. As an alternative I had considered shunting both sofas into the bedroom and keeping laundry in the main living area but decided that the extra rearranging of things in the bedroom made it much more of a pain. By this stage this bedroom was no longer used for sleeping but decided to at least keep it in a state that it was still usable for this purpose, even though the odds of someone actually staying overnight are very low. The coffee table was also moved into some dead space on the other side of the living room.
All this freed up what amounted to just over two square meters in a corner of the room that made way for a new table, which meant what was previously dead space when occupied by a sofa is now a large surface area for doing stuff. For projects that need more than just a computer this separate extra space makes a big difference and it would for instance allow for electronics projects. Yes it makes the living room feel more like an office or workshop than an actual living space but that is the type of utilisation that is most useful for what I would want to do. The breakfast bar and the small table that came with the apartment is basically glorified shelving.
This had an almost immediate effect with a project of investigation and experimentation with enclosure boxes starting the very next week, which up until that point was going to be limited to weekends down south. Without such project space there is the pain of having to pack/unpack bits and pieces which is disruptive and even without such projects in progress the extra table space is a great help with general organisation as stuff is not piled up.
The general tidy-up
With furniture being rearranged also comes the rare deep spring-clean that leaves nothing unturned, and was surprised that dust was able to noticeably accumulate on near-vertical desk legs. Perhaps due to being older the Manchester apartment seems to accumulate dust at a rate far higher than the London place and the vacuum cleaner was looking rather full after a single session. The re-think of where things should be means those that really should no longer be around finally got cleared out for disposal, such as the pile of card-board and other bits of packaging in the bedroom which were likely from not long after moving in. From past experience this sort of extensive clear-out is typically a once-in-a-year effort.
Another clear-out was items that have gone unused several of which were bought up either before moving into the apartment or shortly afterwards, with some having been almost forgotten about due to the lack of use. Toiletries were all concentrated into one bathroom due to the excess duplication with a similar thing being done with health-related things that were scattered in multiple locations. There is not nearly the same levels of comprehensive organised storage as there is down in London and with trips between the two places being far more frequent the priority is reducing clutter rather than contingency. Mindful of the possibility albeit increasingly odds-off of having to move in the not too distant future there was also a desire to limit the amount of stuff that potentially needs moving.