The Best Hacks for Living Alone

A little helping hand for solo dwellers

Living alone is the best. Don’t want to wash up tonight? Fine. Want to walk around wearing only your socks? Sure. Feel like watching Game of Thrones on repeat? Go for it.

However, along with hiding a spare key and cooking enough dinner for frozen leftovers, there are a few hacks that every ‘solo liver’ should know:

Have weekly visitors
Guests are not only great for a bit of social interaction, they are also the perfect catalyst for doing some shopping (at least a packet of chips), and doing some cleaning. Otherwise, if you’re like us, you might never get to it.

Automate your place
Coming home after work to a dark and cold apartment isn’t fun, so why not buy some timers or automatic switches (from IKEA) and programme your lamps to come on at sunset and your heater (or music) to turn on for when you walk in the door. It screams ‘Welcome home!’.

via Instagram @brooketestoni

Set up an emergency fund
Boring but essential. Just set up a small automatic payment from your bank account into an emergency fund each pay day for when your heater/kettle/fridge breaks or when the apartment upstairs floods, ruining your couch…

Bring your phone to the shower
This is a ‘just in case’ situation, but if you fall over or faint in the shower, or are throwing up in the toilet and need a little help, always remember to bring your phone into the bathroom with you. And have a friend on speed dial.

Buy a wine pump
An absolute wallet-saver, wine pumps mean one bottle of wine can last several days… That is, unless you’ve had a REALLY bad day and then, well, you may not need it.