Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

There seems to be an unusually large number of newbies this new school year. As a public service, I think the ones who have been living independently for a time should volunteer some housekeeping advice (learned from our moms or learned the hard way).

I'll volunteer these:

#1. Wet bathroom floors are a pain in the neck and potentially other parts of the anatomy. Running out of the bathroom with wet feet can bring broken toes when you slip and slide into the refrigerator. There are two known ways to avoid this (three if you decide to just let the phone ring and not answer it).

a) Buy a pair of plastic slippers and leave at the bathroom door, like the natives do.

b) Buy a blue rubber mop at any largish grocery store (the blue sponge is hard as a rock until you get it wet). Keep it behind the bathroom door and use it to mop the floor right after your shower. Be sure to run it over the drain to scrape off the hair before it clogs the drain. Your floor will be clean AND dry.

#2. When you find a loaf of bread that is not booby trapped with kernels of corn or other unidentifiable substances, buy all they have and freeze it. A slice thaws out in the minute or two it takes to mix the tuna for a sandwich.

#3. Keep your wet food scraps in a zip-lock bag. It keeps the smell down in your kitchen. It is easy to bury it in the middle of the garbage bag if you don't separate your garbage. It is also easy to dump out in the bin if you do.

#4. Most Korean canned peas are just bee-bees that have been painted green. If you find a brand that is a vegetable, post it quick.

#5. Any hof owner will be reasonably polite if you are a regular customer. (They are not stupid.) You will know a good hof when the owner grins like a maniac when you come in the door the first time and falls all over himself/herself bringing you 'service'. Shop around until you find the grinning maniac. [I know this one is not a household hint, but I wanted to get to 10, so I buried this one in the middle where many people will not notice it is off-topic.]

#6. When the phone rings and you don't know who the caller is, make a game of seeing how many times the two of you can say "Yo-bo-say-yo". Keep a record in pencil on the wall. Include dates. Try to break the current record. It is not advisable to make a date to meet any of these callers in a dark and lonely alley, especially on a dark and stormy night.

#7. If a couple of unknown women come to the door and try to get in, don't let them. You don't know where they've been. However, you have to let the gas meter-reader in. And the door-to-door bug sprayers.

#8. If you hear a strange chant in the hallway/stairwell of a large apt building, it does not mean the building is haunted. It is most likely the neighborhood dry cleaner trying to scare up business.

#9. You can get money back for returning soju bottles etc to the grocery store. If that is a hassle, and it is, just leave them out somewhere public. Elderly people go around picking them up. They seem to make a living by returning them.

#10. Carry one or two big plastic grocery bags with you when you go shopping. If not, you'll have to buy more and they soon take over the space under the sink. There is no known use for them except at mass auto-eroticism parties.

Please feel free to add any other helpful hints.

[bignate]

Soju - stove cleaner, drink while ya scrub.....

[kermo]

*wild applause*

[fidel]

Perhaps those with a shower in bath contraption may want to think about spending a few won to buy a shower curtain. The net result of this is dry bathroom floors.

Water delivery companies often supply the actual cooler thingy for free and deliver the big 12/20 litre bottles every week. Not only is it cheaper than buying 1 litre bottles in the store you save your back and hands from damage.

Supermarkets and many/most small grocery stores will deliver your groceries for free if you purchase over 30K. Why go to the bother of carrying stuff when you don't need to.


Not really a housekeeping tip but what the hell!
Even if you are going to be here only a year my advice is to purchase a car. You can get one with less than 100K on the clock for less than 1 million. WHile public transport in the large cities is cheap you'll see a lot more of Korea if you have a car and it provides you with freedom to roam where you heart takes you. Motorbikes are ok, though you can't ride on the highways, they are dangerous, it sucks in the snow and rain and it's a little difficult to make out with your girl on one.

[desultude]

A hint I got from a neighbor- your food waste first goes in the zip lock bag, then in the freezer. That way it isn't sitting out fermenting. If you are a really good person with your trash, the frozen waste easily falls out of the zip lock bag, which can then go in the plastics trash.

As for the slick wet bathroom floor- get a long handled squeegie- the kind of thing used to clean windows. This gets the floor dry fast. I wish they could figure out how to put ondol under the bathroom floor! It would be warm on cold mornings, and dry fast.

[magicwolfman]

[JongnoGuru]

[krats1976]

Dang, this is one of the most useful threads I've seen in ages!

[red dog]

[periwinkle]

Why do so many Koreans like those smelly moth ball things that are hung in the bathrooms?

[billybrobby]

If your room smells even after you clean it, do three things:

1. strongly consider the idea that its coming from a drain. pour some cleaner down that drain and keep it covered up when its not in use.

2. buy one of those things that sucks up the odors in your fridge. they sell them in grocery stores and looks like this:



3. Then make like these lovely ladies and get your self a closet freshner/dehumidifier



if all else fails: febreeze.

[Ya-ta Boy]

#11. I can offer an alternative to those smelly mothball things in the bathroom. Get a nice candle (if your bathroom is big enough that it won't get wet.) I discovered this when I moved in to a really foul smelling apt in Hongdae. I was worried that I might blow up the house. So I unwound a wire clothes hanger, taped a match to the end of it. Put the candle on the bathroom floor just inside the door, sat outside the door, lit the match and lit the candle and slammed the door shut. (I was making a try for beating the exploding flames like they do in the movies.) No flames. No smell in the bathroom either.

#12. Are you the sort of person who wants to live a socially conscious, useful and productive life that matters to yourself and the rest of the world? Think about this. Think seriously about this. If you spend three minutes a week matching socks and searching for missing ones, then you are spending 156 minutes a year in a useless endeavor. Multiplied by 72 years that is 187.2 hours out of your life. That is 7.8 DAYS wasted. On your death bed you can think about that week + that you spent matching your freaking socks.

Solution: Throw out all your socks or turn them into sock puppets. Go to the local bahk-wah-jahm and buy 6 or 7 pairs of matching socks, all the same size and color. Take them home. Remove the sticky paper holding them together and that mysteriously soft metal clip thingie. Toss all 12 or 14 socks in a drawer, loose. Close your eyes. Reach in and take out two socks at random. Open your eyes. Voila! They match. Do it again and again until you have convinced yourself that all your socks match. You no longer are doomed to wasting a week of your life.

[bignate]

[morituri]

Regarding Yata boy's problem with his socks. An alternative solution is to to get very small safety pins and pin each pair of socks together. We had to do this at boarding school in England, and the hags (matrons in charge of laundry) wouldn't take our laundry bags otherwise. If the socks are of thin material tho, they tend to get damaged this way, so it is better to put all socks separately in one wash. The final solution is to go all the way, and do iwthout socks altogether, painting one's feet black or brown or grey instead as the occasion demanded. 'Extreme casual.'

Roach killer: a spray bottle of Tilex mould remover works like a dream.

Before moving into a new partment have the place disinfected for roaches by a professionals, rather than just spraying Raid. If the flat is full of dead roaches, look elsewhere.

(Doesn't really apply to most people as they are provided flats by school without any choice in the matter.) When looking for a flat, move into one which is occupied and whose lease runs out, rather than one already empty. If empty for more than a month there is usually a reason. Don't take an apartment which has an unlucky history: divorce, bankrupcty, death. Ask why the previous tenant left. If the existing tenants look surly, chances are they are not happy with the landlord. Check the corridors for rubbish left out and other signs of slumminess.

Never run out of the shower to answer the phone. You will end up panting and sounding frantic, if it is your significant other on the other end, you will have a lot of explaining to do. (He: Gasp gasp He..ll..o? She: 'Why are you panting? He: Gasp gasp, I was just having a shower. She: Are you sure? what's that noise? I'm coming over right now. You're dead meat if you're lying. ...)

[desultude]