According to houseshare website Spare Room, renting can set you back anywhere from £70 a week (the Belfast average) to a scary £211 for a half-decent flatshare with a working toilet, a safe enough distance from Kingsland Road.
Which means that even if you do manage to score a job with some sort of salary, there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to stretch out starfish-style like you did when you were living with Mum and Dad. You’ll be in a single bed. With no storage and broken shelves, to boot.
What is this fresh hell, you ask? And can you still have sex? Here’s what I learnt from spending six months in a single bed:
1. Be tidy
Your bedroom might be more suited to mice, or the baby screaming in the flat next door, but it’s yours, and this means space is sacred. Any rogue sock found lingering near your old ladies’ woven plastic carrier bag of washing (you know exactly what I mean) could cause a full blown breakdown. Swift entry and exit from the small cave that hold your possessions is a must.
2. Get sexy
Your bed is probably older than some of the display models in the Ikea Museum.It has probably seen tens, if not hundreds of other inhabitants sex it up for however long it is that sad people stay in single bedrooms for. Don’t believe me? Look (but not too closely) at the sagging springs and weird stains. The only real way to deal with this distressing issue is to have some sexy sex yourself, even though that may feel like going for a ride on a poor, knackered seaside donkey the day before its retirement.
3. But not that sexy
Single bed sex is wriggly sex, and I probably look a lot less attractive than I would if I was doing it in a double bed, partly because the linen options for singletons are much less alluring. It isn’t that I’m not a stone fox in the bedroom, of course, but manoeuvring from starter position one to warm-up position two becomes an obstacle course of knees, elbows and arses. The only advice I can offer here is ‘close your eyes’.
4. Know your place
I’m sure all the lovers out there will know that slow-burning, passionate, night-time rage as your STUPID partner softly slumbers in the middle of the bed while you’re desperately clinging onto the mattress, your arm trapped so tightly that you’re unwillingly channelling James Franco in 12_7 Hours_. Consider the width of your average single bed. The only safe way to manoeuvre this is to ensure that you’re not the one stuck in the corner. The crack between the wall and bed becomes the special place reserved only for your night-time partner. HA!
**5. Abandon the idea of sleepovers
**
I love a night in with Disney’s Frozen and an artisanal cocktail of Glen’s Vodka and Tesco own-brand juice as much as the next gal, but having a friend stay over in a singe bed will result in one of the following:
A night of full-frontal, merry friendship spooning
Sleepless nights of pretending your friend’s boobs aren’t pressed against your back with your bum in her lap.
Or worse, waking up to find your own hairy leg cocked over your bed sharer. Yeah.
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Picture: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.