I live in a tiny home……

Oh!!!!  How I wish that meant that I was living in a quaint, ivy covered, thatched cottage in the Irish countryside. Or even better, a small yet sophisticated apartment in the center of Paris. But alas, Nope!  I am living in US Army quarters. Just a plain little house which some could easily liken to a bunker.  We are six people and one dog in approximately 1200 square feet….you might need to read that again!!!!  TWELVE HUNDRED SQUARE FEET!!!!!  At the best of times this is not easy.  I do try to look at the bright side, after all, I have so much to be grateful for.  Here I am in one of the most AHH-Mazing cities in the world, Seoul, Korea. We are a quick walk to the cosmopolitan streets of Itaewon and from there we can jump on a subway to anywhere in this great city.

What it is like to live in on-base housing in Yongsan, Korea….

We are lucky to have a four bedroom two story end unit in a relatively secluded section of our neighborhood, so it is somewhat quiet and private. The homes are old and in need of repair, but there is very little money being put into them because for years there has been plans for closing this base. I have some spectacular mismatched flooring and some lovely sparkly golden caulking around our kitchen counters. And I really must embrace the golden linoleum; this is the one and only time I will ever have anything like that! Our walls are made of concrete and require a pneumatic drill in order to hang anything…..which makes my hanging addiction a little difficult. I do love a good gallery wall.

Being a military family makes us very adaptable.  This means that most of my furniture is usually bought used or is relatively inexpensive. Luckily I do enjoy painting and refinishing old furniture to make it work with my decorating style, which by default is a kind of “shabby chic” look. Because we move regularly, our household goods can easily get broken or damaged and I would rather it not be something I paid lots of money for!!!!  We cannot be too sentimental with our belongings. In the past we have had to let pieces go that we have been genuinely fond of because of space and weight constraints (any military wives out there will know what I mean….we are bound by our weights!!!)

Most things I own I consider to be “adaptable”, meaning that they do not have a fixed purpose. So a dresser can go in a bedroom or a dinning room or a kitchen if the need fits. I simply have to make it work depending on the house in which we live and the space we are given. We are forced to live in an almost minimalistic fashion. (We will not discuss all the junk, stuff,  beautiful treasures I have in storage back in the States….right now I am pretending to embrace minimalism.)

This house in particular is one of the hardest we have had to endure……it is a weird open plan and there is very little privacy within the home. It is also lacking in natural light and is very dark. Our kitchen is so tiny that I lose my mind if another person comes in while I am trying to cook dinner or put away groceries. If the dishwasher or fridge door is left open it blocks the entire kitchen! The flip side is that I have very little food in there that does not get used, I will never find an old package of spaghetti from 2010!!! There is no room for hoarding…..I only have what I will actually use, which means there is no place to hide if I want to indulge in my pottery addiction!

We also have very little control over our environment. All of our utilities are controlled by an outside source, The Housing Office!!! Meaning that we cannot decide to just flip on our air conditioning on a hot day in April, nor can we heat our houses on a cold day in September.  The heat and AC is only provided at certain times and the temperatures are capped….you know for energy saving purposes ;).

This is our very small bedroom. Luckily we do have built-in wardrobes for our clothing storage.  I would just like to note that the mosquito net is not for aesthetics…it is a total necessity here.  The mosquitoes here are ruthless savages and manage to live inside the house despite our best efforts to keep them out. Hence the netting!!!

And if you notice I have drum shades in most of my rooms. This house  came with some really awful glass shell light fixtures that simply coupld not be tolerated. Placing a large Ikea drum shade over the fixture was a cheap, simple and much more palatable solution!

So there you have it, that is just a small peek into what it is like to live where and how I live.  In the interest of full disclosure: this post was only made possible by the fact that I had just had my sweet cleaning lady come to work miracles on this house and my children were still at school.  Otherwise my home is never tidy enough for me to actually photograph it!!!!

Come back soon…..

♥Criona