Why I prefer a smaller but more ‘luxury’ apartment:

My theory on living quarters:

Where you live, in what you live in is important. For example, I would NOT want to live inside a McDonalds for my personal flourishing.

My preferences

For myself I prefer the ‘minimum viable’ living situation. Maximal simplicity allows maximal creative output.

Benefits of the barbell between minimalism and luxury

My thought:

Perhaps this notion of a minimalist luxury apartment is a good one, because it simplifies my life to the max, while keeping it hygienic, clean, and aesthetically beautiful.

For example:

1. Ceiling to floor window (small, but I get a great view of the city). Also allows in for maximal natural light; something important to me.
2. To give you a sense; if I plug in my vacuum in the middle of my apartment I can practically vacuum every corner of my apartment without having to re-plugin it. This is great; to clean is soooo much easier. Anything I can do to simplify my cleaning is good.
3. Washer and dryer inside the unit. This is soooo insanely great I cannot explain. I have some friends who literally plan their whole day around doing laundry. Not for me anymore!
4. High ceilings. Something I didn’t expect, but the apartment has relatively high ceilings. This makes me feel taller, more grand, and less cooped up at home. This is good.
5. Easy access to outside. This means I don’t gotta stay home all day. I can quickly and easily leave, exiting to the street for nice walks.
6. Stairs are good. I like the stairs, free exercise for me!

In short, my philosophy is this:

I want to maintain my living quarters as little as possible.

In fact, one of our living experiments which was very good was living inside a small hotel room for nearly 3 months in Saigon. The benefit; the ultimate streamlined life. Wake up, cindy would get breakfast upstairs. No need to cook or clean. Every day our room was made, and cleaned. We would spend our entire day outside (coffee shops, walking, meeting friends, having dinner outside). This was a great lifestyle, but I think I actually currently prefer my life in providence Rhode Island, because I have easy access to ‘meat on tap’ (crock pot always full of meat), which means I am actually getting more muscular gains than I did in Vietnam. And now one of my pseudo-goals in life:

See how buff I can get.

Other hidden benefits

Having insanely fast wifi is very useful for my work. This has allowed me to upload soooo much more videos online, and quickly. It has allowed me to experiment more with shooting 4K video, and also allowing me to upload more 360 GoPro fusion virtual augmented reality footage.

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Experiment for yourself

My ultimate tip is this:

You cannot let others or society dictate what your personal preferences are for your living situation.

For example, you might prefer to live in the woods in a big-ass house! Or you might prefer life in the burbs! Or you might prefer to live downtown. I have no idea! Only you know.

But my suggestion:

Don’t get suckered; strive to know your own tastes and real preferences, and don’t let society superimpose her preferences upon you!

ERIC