In one apartment in the Ottakring district of Vienna, the simple, tedious act of hanging laundry has taken on the feel of a party. Three young women dance around their living room while singing along to the German folk band Kofelgschroa's ode to laundry, " Wäsche ". The flatmates take their time completing the task so that it lasts the entire length of the song: "__The washing dries in the sun / The washing dries in the wind / The washing dries in the light / How beautiful is that?"

Recently, the group even managed to convince the people in the flat above to adopt their model. "Our goal is to take over the entire building," Anna laughs. "Our borders are fluid – why the hell would you live any other way if you didn't have to?"

For most people, a life without privacy would not be ideal, but it seems to be working for Anna* and her brother, Daniel* – who first moved into this ground floor apartment a year-and-a-half ago – as well as their housemates Marie*, Laura* and Paul*.

The housemates in this flatshare have split up the rooms not by person, but by function – there's a small bedroom that they all share, a living room, a study and a sex room. This way, they can fit an extra person, or maybe two, into the apartment. In theory, everyone has their own wardrobe, but practically speaking they've all agreed to share clothes, as well as the contents of the fridge, and the shower. The apartment is also home to one person who has decided against the open arrangement and so occupies their own room.

But after months of travelling and spending every night in hostels, she started getting used to not having her own room. This sparked an idea: instead of wasting massive amounts of space living in a traditional flat-share, she'd put her huge flat to much better use and save some cash in the process.

Though it was Anna who convinced her housemates to adopt this lifestyle, it didn't come naturally to her. "I used to think it was completely crazy," she says. "I thought it was the type of thing only hippies or social anthropology students did."

"Before, we all had our own rooms and we never had a common space," Ann explains. "Now, we all have access to a study, living room and a quiet room." It took some time for them as a group to settle into this style of living and adapt their wider attitudes to the concept of ownership.

"It makes no sense at all to have three of everything," Marie tells me. "I had a hard time with it in the beginning, but it's much more practical to share." The only things they count as individual possessions are their laptops and mobile phones.

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This has been their normal since Marie, Laura and Paul moved in seven months ago – but visitors still find it strange. "The first question people always want to know is: 'How do you masturbate?'" Anna says. "And those who are too shy to ask want to know what we do when we bring a date home."

Well, the lower level of the apartment has a room with a blue door, which leads to their sex room. And when it comes to masturbating, that usually happens when no one else is home, they tell me.