Step into your shower. Close the door. Look around. Welcome to the typical mid-21st-century apartment. Cup of tea? But how? According to a survey for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), Britain’s homes are shrinking and shrinking fast. Among private homes built between 2003 and 2006, of those surveyed, more than half lacked storage space, almost half struggled to contain furniture, and more than a third barely had room for a microwave. Or, one presumes, a kettle.

They’re calling it “Rabbit Hutch Britain”, but at least your average rabbit hutch has a bit of outdoor space. Are we really ready to live like this?

Some say it isn’t so bad. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, 33, a film critic, lived in her own rabbit hutch — a 9ft by 11ft former broom cupboard — for three years. That’s roughly the size of a prison cell. “It was opposite Harrods,” she says. “You had to leave the room if somebody wanted to go to the loo, and it was important to be selective when I had a party. I used to go around to friends’ houses and marvel at the space they wasted. A hall! Without even any cupboards!” Ivan-Zadeh had a showerhead over her toilet, and kept her CDs in the microwave. She bought the place in 2003 for £110,000. For a while, she had a £7 Ikea chair sitting on £7,000 of property. She had to move out after the inhabitants of the (presumably bigger) flat upstairs left their bath running and caused a flood.

London’s smallest house is probably 10 Hyde Park Place, W2. It’s about a metre wide at the front, but now occupied by part of the cloistered order of (presumably very small) nuns from the Tyburn Convent. Britain’s smallest house is a matter of some dissent, but contenders include a one-up, one-down in Conwy, North Wales (now a tourist attraction), and a place called The Wedge on the Scottish island of Great Cumbrae, which is 1.19m at its narrowest point.

Britons already have smaller homes than anybody else in Europe. According to the website swingacat.info, the average newbuild has 78 sq m of floorspace, compared with 137 sq m in Denmark, 112.8 sq m in France, and even 104.1 sq m in supposedly tiny Luxembourg.

Lord knows what those figures will look like in a couple of decades. Time to start existing on a diet of lettuce leaves.

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