A man from Newquay saved £2,500 by paying just £150-a-month to live in a three foot wide 10 foot long "shoe cupboard" - after being unable to find a sublet in Bristol, writes Emily Phillips from SWNS.

Liam Gardener, 26, was planning a move to Australia in June 2024 when the tenancy at his old flat ran out.

To earn some extra cash to put towards his travels, Liam was keen to stay living and working in Bristol in his commission-based recruitment job.

Down on his luck in finding a suitable sublet to see him through his five-month stint, a co-worker offered up her "shoe cupboard" for Liam to stay in.

After clearing out the space to see if it would work, Liam took his friend up on her offer - drafting an agreement that stated he would pay £200-a-month to live there.

His friend said he “didn’t have to” pay anything, but it was decided he would contribute a third of the bills at £50, and an extra £100 rent.

Liam sold most of his old belongings - moving in with just a single mattress and a duffel bag of clothes.

The temporary fix, supposed to last just a month until Liam found a proper place to live, ended up going on for five months after it ended up "working really well".

Liam, a recruitment consultant, said: "My friend at work who was sat opposite me I remember joking about it how I couldn't find a sublet.

"As a bit of a joke she said 'you can stay in my shoe cupboard if it comes to it'.

"As it got closer and closer to my tenancy being up I couldn't find anything.

“A lot of them were either one-year tenancies or six-month tenancies, and I didn’t want to lock into another agreement in case I left early.

“Sublets I couldn’t find anything on [...] all those apps, they were either crazy expensive month to month or just a dump.

"In the end, I said 'how big is your shoe cupboard?'.

“It was just a general ‘we don’t know where to put stuff so we’ll shove it in this’ little cupboard – things like washing hangers and vacuums”.

"I went round to her's after work one day, cleared the stuff out and there's a video of me lying down in it and fit the length of me and just a little bit of space after.

"I drafted a fake contract saying I'd be paying a third of the bills and £100 quid rent, so it ended up costing me around £150 per month all in all.

"The plan was to do a month or so but it ended up working really well and I became good mates with the two girls living there.

"They had cheaper rent and I was paying next to nothing."

Liam's single IKEA mattress just about fit into the tiny space with its "corners rolled up", and as an unofficial extra tenant – it is illegal to sublet if you are renting without the landlord’s permission - Liam had to pretend to be his flatmate's girlfriend so as not to raise suspicions.

"I never actually had to do it, but that was the backstory if anyone asked," he said.

"One time the landlord came round to fix something and I basically had to empty the room and make it look messy again.

"The room had a slanted roof so I kind of had to crawl into bed and there were no windows.

"Especially at the start I would wake up in the middle of the night and obviously there are just walls everywhere really close.

"I'd wake up confused, reach out and it would just be wall. I'd freak out for five seconds.

"It would take me a couple of seconds to adjust and be like 'I'm in the cupboard'."

After dropping some of his belongings at his parents home in Cornwall, Liam chose to sell larger items like DJ decks and computers to put towards his year abroad funds to “kill two birds with one stone” as he couldn’t fit much in the “cupboard”.

With the cupboard only having a handle on the outside, Liam says it "clicked locked" when it was closed, so to avoid getting stuck he jammed a towel in the corner of the frame and kept a pair of pliers close by "just in case" he got trapped.

"I could hear into the flat above and hear into their living room which sometimes felt a bit invasive but that's the only weird thing," he said.

"I didn't see any mice but especially at the start I saw holes in the skirting board and wall, and I remember hearing them in the wall.

"I told all my mates and stuff I was living there they thought it was funny.

"I knew my mum would freak out so I said I was staying in my friends' spare room.

"And then it came down to it, they came up to Bristol from Cornwall to take some stuff back home and I said 'come and look where I’ve been living'.

"She freaked out a little bit. She thinks it's funny now, but she didn’t at the time.

"My flatmates moved out six months later and I'm still really close to one of them.

"If I ever meet any of her mates she'll say 'this is cupboard boy'."

Liam spent the year in Australia and is now working in London, and is currently staying in an Airbnb until he finds a flat to live in.