Living with My Bestie (2025)

For about six months of 2025, I lived with one of my best friends and it was a highlight of the year, as well as my favourite living situation to date. For those who don’t know, in 2023 I bought a flat in London. Since then, I’ve lived both with flatmates and alone, however when I found out that my best friend’s tenancy was ending and she was aiming to move abroad so would need somewhere to stay in the interim, it provided the perfect opportunity to live together. Furthermore, we’d spent weeks travelling together through South America, so knew that we wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves, and had both been through recent break ups, so were very excited to live together. 

My bestie moved into the flat in January, although at the time we weren’t sure whether we’d be living together for a month, a year, or anything in between. Despite this, we made a little bucket list of things that we wanted to do whilst living together, and credit to us, we actually did all but one of the activities!

Habits we implemented

It started with going to a pub quiz. I love a pub quiz and had gone to them regularly at different points in my life, however it was always short-lived. That said, we got a group together for a pub quiz in Clapham and ended up enjoying it so much that we went pretty much weekly over the winter. Our performance varied significantly, from coming second-to-last to winning, but it was a lot of fun and a great winter activity to get us out of the house and socialising. Another thing we did regularly was eat dinner together, and we often cooked for each other, whether that be cottage pie, croquetas, quiche, fajitas, or bangers and mash, which was very family-coded. 

Meals

On a similar vein, we wanted to get more creative with our dishes, so we made a few meals together from scratch, including pizza, sushi, and even a roast! I enjoy cooking quite a lot so this was a lot of fun for me, and we celebrated things like Pancake Day (both fluffy pancakes and crepes were involved) and National Pizza Day together too, which was very wholesome. That said, we also had a few takeaways, including Indian, Chinese and Domino's, often post-travel or as a treat whilst we enjoyed wherever show we were watching at the time (Little Fires Everywhere was a personal favourite, but Virgin Island and Say Nothing also made the cut). Another thing we were partial to was many a wine night, or if we were feeling fancy, a wine and cheese night.

Things we hosted

One thing that often surprises people about me is that I don’t enjoy hosting, however whilst living with my bestie, I realised that I actually don’t mind hosting (and have actually come to enjoy it), but I don’t like hosting alone. Therefore, we instead hosted quite a bit together, including a Galentine's Day “bring-a-board” evening, St Paddy’s Day pre-drinks, a couple of board game nights, a fry-up on the terrace, and a BBQ. I enjoyed all of the events a lot and have found hosting to be way less stressful, which is ideal since one of my resolutions this year is to host more! 

Flatmate bonding core

Although it was a lot of fun having others round, we also spent a lot of time hanging out just the two of us, with one of my earliest memories of living together being us grabbing a coffee and going on a little walk. We did a parkrun together (which only one of us really enjoyed), went to a jazz night at Nightjar, had a mini spa evening, enjoyed a picnic on the Common together, went to a comedy night at The Railway, played PlayStation, went on a dog walk, did a mini pub crawl locally, and had many a movie night and drinks on the terrace. We even went on a little couples' retreat to Cornwall over the late may bank holiday!

I absolutely loved living with one of my best friends, and despite others warning against it, the times I’ve lived with my closest pals have been some of my favourite memories. That said, there is still one item on the bucket list that hasn’t been completed, and that is going to Infernos. Despite me loving the place and living within a stone’s throw away, I haven’t been since I bought my flat two years ago and at this point it seems like it’s simply not meant to be.