Expat Diaries: Shoebox Apartments

Welcome to the third installment of the Expat Diaries! Go ahead and link up you expat/travel stories below and make sure to stop by some other bloggers and say hi! I so look forward to reading everyone's stories each month! Thanks so much for being a part of this!

So let's get started shall we?

We live in a small apartment here in Korea. Well, let me rephrase that to say that in American standards, we live in a small apartment. We feel very blessed and fortunate to have the size apartment that we do because we have known couples whose work has provided them with a 300 square foot studio apartment for the both of them. How they're both still alive is beyond me. But needless to say, all three of our apartments in Korea have been smaller than what we're accustomed to back home in the States. And while some things on this list may not apply to our current spot, they all could have been said about at least one of them.

So if you're sitting there wondering what qualifies as a small apartment or wonder if yours fits the bill, this should help. You know you live in a small apartment if:

.It takes you 15 minutes to clean the entire thing

.It takes just as long for it to look like a train wreck again

.It's impossible to lose or misplace anything

.You can vacuum the entire place without switching wall outlets

.You have an oven the size of a toaster oven and even that you have difficulty finding a place for

I'm just impressed we could fit a turkey inside. Even though it was so close to the elements that it had lines on it.

.You can see every room from one spot

.When the trash bag is full, you can smell it from every room

.If you leave the door open when showering, all the windows in the apartment fog up

.Your kitchen table is where you do most of your cooking because you can barely fit a cutting board on your counter.

Our first kitchen. I did most of my cooking on the table since I could barely fit anything besides a plate on the counter.

.It takes about five minutes for the place to cool down or heat up

.You don't have seasonal decorations, not because you don't want them but because you don't know where you'd store them

.You have a dorm sized fridge because you can't fit much else. Thankfully we were able to upgrade to at least a half sized fridge

.You don't have to yell or even raise your voice in order for another person to hear you across the apartment or in another room

.Your social events have a max capacity guest list

.You have to find new and unique places to store things...like under the couch

This is where we kept out out of season clothes

.You are constantly switching out the clothes in your closet because only one season fits at a time. The rest go under the bed or in our case...under our couch.

.Every time you buy something new, you have to get rid of something. Not because you think it's the  ethical thing to do, but because you don't have enough room.

.At least one or more people have to sit on the floor when they come over...good thing we live in Asia and this is seen as normal.

I just want to end this by saying that even though we live in a place smaller than what we're accustomed to, we now very much prefer it and no longer want to get a large house when we move back to the states. It's funny the things you can get used to!

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