A clean sheet: Small changes in the house can make a big difference in locking out | Houses

I’m tired of my one-room apartment. It started last year when we were first thrown into lockdown. As it turns out, a bedroom, bathroom, and living area is a very small space to share with a partner around the clock.

The claustrophobia gradually developed – at first it felt new to spend some time at home surrounded by my belongings, even comforting. Then the familiar became too familiar. So we bought new pillows, swapped our coffee table and organized the linen closet. These loopholes worked.

With this lockdown in Sydney, I lost myself in the itchy feeling of tightness, desperate for a new place or more space. It was five years in our one-bedroom rental last week and now I dream of gardens, multiple views, hours of daylight and all the ways we’d use two living spaces.

In response, I made small changes again to make my apartment feel different. A patterned throw updates the bedroom. A replacement mattress protector will make the sheets appear cleaner on top. New candles change the smell of every room.

I am not alone in my search. Tegan Cone lives with her partner and a friend in a two bedroom house. Last year during the lockdown, she color-coded her bookshelf and started making her bed every day as she worked from the bedroom. She also changed the location of her pantry to better fit a routine that involved more cooking.

This time she put curtains on the window next to her desk. They help keep the warmth inside and make the room cozier, she says.

Others have made major, unexpected changes. Simon, 31, and his roommates installed a climbing wall in the back yard of their rented townhouse in Melbourne.

“My roommate was the main reason for this,” he says. “In normal times we went climbing and bouldering all the time, for example several times a week.

“We were lucky because we live next to the railway line and already had a huge wall that we could build on.”

The project was fun, he notes, and “something to focus on with an end goal”. When a roommate recently moved out, the $ 2,000 wall went with him. It is installed in a house that he is building in the country.

Back in Sydney, Zui Duckers turned the back half of their garage into a music and office space. Duckers lives in a two bedroom apartment with her partner, baby, and dog, and she needed a space where she could be alone and feel creative and productive.

Your partner is a carpenter. “So substitute building materials and bunnings were our best friends,” she says. They installed soundproof sliding doors – the most expensive part of the $ 250 spent on supplies – a desk, and a spare bench seat from their van, and painted the walls black.

Deb Saunders, a contestant with her husband Andy on The Block in 2019, improved her own home and organized and styled her pantry during the lockdown.

“We had a couple of empty coffee glasses that I recycled and used to store food,” she says. “Then I designed the room with neutral ceramics and some natural rattan baskets and food lids.”

As the interior designer explains, small but effective changes don’t have to cost a lot. She recommends rearranging your furniture or painting a room or front door (if you’re renting, ask your landlord for permission first).

In lockdown, we cannot control anything beyond our balconies, courtyards, gardens and front doors. But inside, things can be organized and rearranged, tidied up and cleaned until they are exactly how we want them to be.