Hitting The Small Time.

Did living in a smaller place change your mind about what sort of accommodation you can happily live in?

Yeah, 100 per cent. I'm kind of a minimalist and I get really overwhelmed with clutter. I can't work well or think well when there's lots of stuff going on, so being in a smaller place for me was amazing. It meant that everything was downsized, and I had a lot less stuff. Also, the place was so beautifully designed I didn't need to fill it with crap. It also helped because I still had gardens, a pool, and plenty of outside space I could utilise, so it wasn't just a bedroom and kitchen. I had all of Habitat (a mixed-use village), so it was like the smallness and possible negatives were mitigated.

Can you tell us about some of your other rental experiences around the Byron Shire?

My first place was in Byron. I was 18 and completely sheltered as a person. I'd never seen a drug in my life, and I moved in with the most hectic drug dealer ever. It was five girls in a four-bedroom house, but it had this little storage shed in the backyard they'd made into a room. I paid $220 a week and I constantly came home to orgies, parties, naked men in my kitchen snorting cocaine. I'd work 12-hour shifts at The Farm and I'd come home to chaos in the house. $220 a week and I was in the storage shed that only just fit a double bed. I had a clothes rack, but only one of those hanging ones. Then the one I had before Habitat was in Bangalow. It was a Queenslander on stilts. I lived with two girls and two dogs, and I love dogs, but these were the most hectic dogs ever. That house was constantly dirty, it was old, there was dog hair everywhere, no one was friends, so no one cared about cleaning it. It was too big. There was the garden to look after, the huge wrap around deck to look after, and the bottom carport garage. Every room of the house seemed to have tonnes of crap in there, so it never felt clean. It always felt unmanageable.

In the mixed-use village, did you enjoy having shared facilities like the storage shed for surfboards and pool? Or did you find sharing those things a bit awkward?

My partner had heaps of surfboards and used the shed, which was great. Habitat is one of the places I'm the most comfortable, which might be because I've been around there for over four years, but when I go home to my new place now, I avoid my neighbours like the plague. But when I was in that community, if I went to the pool, it was a choice and I felt like I could be social or not. Most times when I'm walking around or using the pool or going to the coffee shop, I actually want to speak to people. My entire friend group, community, every job I've ever had, every connection I've made is from that one place and they're people I love, they're not people that I want to avoid in the street. I'm friends with 40-year-olds with kids and I have barbecues with them on a Friday. Then I'm friends with 20-year-olds I work with at the cafe, and we go out and party together. There's one older guy who works for the council and we stop and have a chat. It's people I'd never usually get to meet in my life. Because of living in a community, I also have endless amounts of work because I get talking with people and they offer me jobs.

Did having compost pods and e-bikes help you be green without trying?

Totally. I hate fruit flies so much, so I also hate those little green composting bins in the kitchen. They give me the heebie-jeebies. I want to be an environmentalist, but only if I can avoid having annoying fruit flies in my house, so we used the little Subpods all the time.

Did having less space to clean and tidy equate to more time doing things you love?

Yes, 100 per cent. Right now, I have my own business doing graphic design and in my new house there's zero storage, and I have ADHD, so having stuff lying around makes my brain so cluttered. Sometimes I can lose hours cleaning my place and I never did that when I was living in my little apartment.

Does living by yourself feel like a luxury?

Oh, hell yeah. It feels like a huge luxury. I'm not paying that much more than the $220 I did back when I had to share with five girls. So, to have my house I'm so grateful for it. I'd really struggled to live with house mates again because it doesn't suit me completely.

If you had a bigger place, would you fill it with stuff?

It's like that saying, if you earn more money, you spend more. Of course, if I had a bigger house, I'd end up filling it with more shit. ▲