I have always adored tiny things. My first design and property loves were my Polly Pockets and a doll house my grandpa made for me, which I lovingly filled with tiny objects fashioned from polymer clay.
As an adult, I go mad for an item that can pack down to a fraction of its size or be reconfigured for multipurpose use. I find photos of those tiny apartments in Japan and vans converted into mobile homes deeply soothing to look at. My bookcase folds flat, and my bedside table can roll around on wheels as a mobile surface.
I know it’s a marketing stunt, but if I could move into that life-size Polly Pocket house that Airbnb built in Massachusetts, I would do so in a heartbeat. Ship it to London and I will have it set down beside the guy who lives in a converted skip.
This space-saving obsession has served me well in London, where square footage is always at an absolute premium.
I’ve happily lived in some seriously small rooms, in houses that lacked any communal space, content with having the whole city at my door. But sometimes when I stay somewhere where I can walk all the way around my bed or get a thing out of a cupboard without playing Tetris, I wonder if I’ve scammed myself.
Stockholm syndrome is debunked nonsense, but there is something a little cultish about how Londoners are prepared to pay a premium to pack ourselves in like so many sardines. Couldn’t we be living in abandoned Italian castles for these prices?
I know that, logically, studio flats tiny homes are a nightmare to get a mortgage on. But then I look at projects like Louise Glynn’s small yet perfectly (re)formed flat in Bermondsey, and it scratches my brain in a way that puts all thought of spare bedrooms and pantries out of my mind. I’m not alone either; our story on a tiny house in Peckham was one of our most read last year.
I’m a sucker for space-saving solutions, too, and I’m not sorry.
