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…
Zubin Wadia
Editor, Bachelor Only
Zubin edits Bachelor Only and moved into his first flat with a kettle and no plates.
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26 articles
Your First Place
What a Landlord Repairs and What Falls to You
The split is not arbitrary and it is not decided by whoever complains loudest. In most systems the landlord owns the structure and…
Your First Place
The Three Things You Only Notice After You Move In
Sockets, storage and light are invisible during a viewing and decide how the flat works every day afterwards. All three have…
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…
Cooking for One
Half an Onion, Half a Tin, and What to Do With the Rest
Nothing in a shop is sold in the quantity one person uses in one meal. The other half is where most household food waste actually…
Cooking for One
One Pan, One Board and Fifteen Minutes
Most weeknight cooking fails on the same two points: the pan is not hot enough and there is too much in it. Both are fixable and…
Laundry & Clothes
Wool, Silk and the Fibres That Punish a Hot Wash
Some laundry mistakes are recoverable and a few are not. Knowing which fibre you are holding tells you which category the next hour…
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…
Fixing Things
Putting a Shelf Up Straight and Keeping It There
Shelves fail for two reasons: the fixing was wrong for the wall, or nobody worked out what the shelf would eventually hold. Both…
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
A Budget That Survives an Irregular Month
Most budgets are built for an average month, and almost no month is average. The ones that work put the irregular costs in first…
Money & Bills
Putting the Accounts in Your Own Name Without Losing a Week
Setting up utilities, broadband and everything else at a new address is mostly a sequencing problem. Done in the right order it…
Money & Bills
Ten Minutes a Week Stops the Paper Pile
Household admin is not difficult and it is relentless. What makes it overwhelming is that it accumulates silently until a deadline…
Money & Bills
Leaving a Flat Without Losing the Deposit
The end of a tenancy is a sequence with deadlines in it, and most of the money lost is lost on the administrative half rather than…
Money & Bills
What to Do When a Bill Is Wrong
Most billing errors are resolved by one clear message with the right information in it. The ones that drag on are the ones where…
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
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…
Routine & Upkeep
Four Cleaning Products Are Enough and Two Must Never Meet
The cupboard full of bottles is mostly marketing. Four products cover a flat, and the important knowledge is which combinations are…
Routine & Upkeep
The Systems That Survive a Bad Week
Every household routine works when you feel fine. What matters is which parts still function during a week when you are ill…
Routine & Upkeep
Bins, Recycling and the Smell That Starts in the Caddy
Kitchen waste smells for a specific reason, and it is not the bin. It is the small amount of wet organic material sitting warm in a…
Routine & Upkeep
What Genuinely Needs Cleaning Weekly and What Does Not
A lot of cleaning effort goes into things that did not need it while genuinely important surfaces get missed. The distinction is…
Routine & Upkeep
The Alarm Test Nobody Does and How Long It Takes
A smoke alarm with a flat battery is a plastic disc on a ceiling. Testing takes about five seconds a month, and the reason people…
Routine & Upkeep
The Bathroom Habit That Prevents Limescale and Mould
Bathrooms deteriorate through two slow processes that both run on standing water. Thirty seconds after each shower prevents most of…
Routine & Upkeep
Nobody Else Is Going to Notice the Bin
The practical reality of living alone is that every household task has exactly one person assigned to it, and no external prompt…