Your First Place
Bachelor Only — Running a home on your own
Your First Place
Damp Has Three Causes and They Are Not Fixed the Same Way
Your First Place
Furnish a Flat in the Order You Actually Use It
The digest
- Measure the Doorway Before You Buy the SofaYour First Place
- What a Landlord Repairs and What Falls to YouYour First Place
- Reading a Tenancy Agreement Line by LineYour First Place
- The Smallest Kitchen Kit That Can Still Cook Real FoodYour First Place
- Second-Hand Furniture: What Survives a Move and What Does NotYour First Place
- The Cheap Flat That Costs More Every MonthYour First Place
- Find the Stopcock Before the Pipe BurstsYour First Place
- The Three Things You Only Notice After You Move InYour First Place
Your First Place
All your first place →Your First Place
The Viewing Questions That Tell You More Than the Photographs
A flat photographs well from one corner and badly from every other. Twenty minutes and a short list of blunt questions will tell…
Your First Place
Damp Has Three Causes and They Are Not Fixed the Same Way
Rising damp, penetrating damp and condensation look similar on a wall and come from completely different places. Treating one as…
Your First Place
The Inventory You Take on Day One Decides the Argument at the End
A deposit dispute is settled on evidence, and almost all of the useful evidence has to be collected in your first week. It takes an…
Your First Place
Furnish a Flat in the Order You Actually Use It
The instinct is to buy a sofa first because a sofa is the thing that makes a room look finished. Sleep, storage and light come…
Cooking for One
All cooking for one →Cooking for One
Cooking for One Is a Shopping Problem Before It Is a Cooking Problem
The recipes are fine. What defeats people is buying ingredients in quantities designed for a family of four and watching two thirds…
Cooking for One
The Freezer Is the Most Useful Appliance One Person Owns
For a household of one it does something no other appliance does: it pauses time on food you have already paid for. Most people use…
Cooking for One
Batch Cooking Without Eating the Same Dinner Five Nights Running
The reason batch cooking fails is not effort. It is that four identical containers of the same stew stop being appealing somewhere…
Cooking for One
Cooling Cooked Food Is the Step Almost Everyone Skips
Most home food safety advice concentrates on cooking temperatures. The part that actually goes wrong in a domestic kitchen is what…
Laundry & Clothes
All laundry & clothes →Laundry & Clothes
The Washing Machine Symbols Are a Temperature and Agitation Code
The little pictures on a care label are not decoration. Each one carries two pieces of information, and once you can read the…
Laundry & Clothes
Sorting Laundry by Colour Is the Least Important Sort
Everyone learns to separate whites from colours and almost nobody learns the sorts that actually matter. Fabric weight and…
Laundry & Clothes
Too Much Detergent Is Why Your Towels Smell
The instinct when washing does not seem to work is to add more. With detergent that is precisely backwards, and it is the cause of…
Laundry & Clothes
The Washing Machine Needs Washing Too
An appliance that runs warm and stays damp is an appliance that grows things. Three parts need attention and none of them takes…
Fixing Things
All fixing things →Fixing Things
What Actually Belongs in a First Toolkit
Two hundred piece toolkits are sold on the number rather than the contents. About a dozen items cover almost every repair a tenant…
Fixing Things
The Line Between a Repair and a Job for a Professional
Some household repairs are genuinely simple and some are regulated work where being wrong causes a fire, a flood or worse. The…
Fixing Things
A Slow Leak Costs More Than a Fast One
A burst pipe announces itself and gets dealt with within the hour. A drip behind a cupboard runs for eight months and takes the…
Fixing Things
A Dripping Tap Is Usually a Washer or a Cartridge
The noise is annoying and the wasted water is the smaller cost. Which of the two designs you have decides whether this is a…
Money & Bills
All money & bills →Money & Bills
A Deposit Is Held, Not Paid
The single most useful thing to understand about a tenancy deposit is that it never stops being your money. Everything about how it…
Money & Bills
A Standing Order Beats Remembering
Every recurring payment you make manually is a monthly opportunity to forget. Automating the boring ones removes an entire category…
Money & Bills
The Standing Charge Is Why Your Bill Is Never Zero
A utility bill has two parts that behave completely differently. Understanding which is which explains why a light user does not…
Money & Bills
An Estimated Meter Reading Is a Loan You Did Not Ask For
When nobody reads the meter, the supplier guesses. The guess is eventually corrected, and the correction arrives as a single bill…
Routine & Upkeep
All routine & upkeep →Routine & Upkeep
Cleaning as You Go Beats a Saturday Blitz
The blitz model treats mess as something that accumulates and is then removed. In a one-person flat that guarantees the mess is…
Routine & Upkeep
Store Food So You Can See It
What you cannot see, you will not eat. Almost every kitchen storage problem is a visibility problem wearing the costume of a space…
Routine & Upkeep
The Ten-Minute Reset That Makes a Flat Look Kept
There is a large difference between a flat being clean and a flat looking kept, and most of it comes down to about eight surfaces.…
Routine & Upkeep
Build the Cleaning Rota Around Surfaces, Not Rooms
Room-by-room cleaning means fetching the same products four times and cleaning things that did not need it. Grouping by surface…