Our apartment is better than I expected. I was imagining some older dated unit that was squished between 2 larger building. But it turned out to be the opposite. We have everything we need and the landlord allows pets, which was the real make or break deal for us. Our unit has a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and 2 bedrooms. All of this packed into about 400 Sq. ft. We are on the top floor and have a corner unit, so we don’t have to deal with any loud upstairs neighbors and we get awesome cross-breeze when all the windows are open… I am not sure which is better. We are right next to a good size park and have space between all the buildings around us. We wake up to natural sunlight pouring in the bedroom window, which makes it so much easier to get up. Plus, Korea doesn’t have stupid daylight savings time, so it’s not dark when we wake up before 7am. Our front door has a cool touch-screen key pad whereby we enter our 4 digit code and the door unlocks. The best thing about this cool lock is that we don’t have to carry around a door key, which is just one less thing to have to grab you leave. We don’t have a dishwasher or dryer, which are appliances that would lead to some convenience from doing dishes by hand and hang-drying the clothes. We also don’t have a 5 burner stove-top and a double oven, and a kitchen-aid mixer, and toaster oven, and dehydrator, and a bar island, and a wine fridge but that’s ok, I guess. We have a fridge, a 2 burner cook top, a sink, and a microwave and as a result we only have a couple cook pans, 2 set of dishes and 2 sets of silverware. Everything gets used all the time and is so efficient. Our kitchen is less than ½ the size of our kitchen back home and yet we cook more and cook quicker than before. Who would have thought? The shower room is super cool too since the whole bathroom is in there. The toilet, sink, and shower head are all in 1 room. The door seals tight so your shower turns into a super-hot steam bath and allows you to do all your bathroom stuff at once. Our bathroom is less than ½ size of our bathroom back home and yet the showers are more enjoyable and shorter than before. Who would have thought? The central heating system is powered by hot water flowing under the floor tiles, so you can walk around on a warm floor and enjoy the heat radiating up your pant legs before bed. No hot dry air blowing in your face or heat-ducts to maintain. I haven’t figured out how the A/C unit works yet since it’s been below 70 degrees since we moved here, but I’ll get to it in May. Our 2 cats feel very safe with us since they can see us all the time and are never that far from us… well no one or anything is ever that far from anyone or anything when you live in 400 sq. ft. The cats don’t really seem to give two shits about anything other than getting fed twice a day, but that’s what we expected. They have a couple of large windows to look outside while enjoying the fresh air and watch the birds fly around. The best thing about our apartment in Cheonan, South Korea, is that it has forced us to further live as minimalists. This has been a long-term goal we started back in Seattle, but we’ve been pushed into a smaller living space and now have to further adapt. We’ve made several steps in our life to down-size our living space and possessions, so it is really no big shock living in a such a small space. But we do dislike hand washing dishes several times a day and hanging clothes in the sun room to air dry, other than that, we really love everything about living in a typical Korean apartment.
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