First World Housing Problems

One of the realities of Foreign Service life is moving sight-unseen into a new living space every few years.  Each house has its own little quirks that become apparent as we work to turn the space into our home.  And overseas, there's often the added fun of amenities that aren't designed for our oversized American belongings.

One of the first oddities we noticed in our apartment in Baku was the tall height of the bathtub side.  It's higher than our knees!  As Jeremy is demonstrating below, the tub height allows him to do an excellent Captain Morgan pose!

Jeremy high-stepping into the tub 

Also in the bathroom, the toilet paper holder is positioned directly under the towel bar and our luxurious American bathsheet towels are so long they reach the toilet paper holder.  Not a good recipe for keeping the toilet paper dry!

Towel interfering with the toilet paper

We conveniently have a trash chute in our kitchen closet.  However, we've discovered that our kitchen trash can is the same girth as the trash chute.  This makes it tricky to neatly drop a full trash bag into the chute without pushing and shoving it in.  I usually prefer to avoid manhandling full trash bags!

Trash chute of similar size to our trash can

The bedroom has plenty of built-in closet space.  What's crazy is the height of the closet bar.  It's so high, I can only reach it when standing on tip toes.  I know I'm not a tall person, but that's a tad extreme!

Erica stretching to hang her clothes

Of course, we are extremely grateful to have a warm house to move into.  It certainly beats the flip side - to arrive in a new country with no place to live.  And in the grand scheme of things, towels that are too long and trash chutes that are too small aren't bad problems to have and are absolutely First World Problems.