The Air Out Here

After three weeks of living in a serviced apartment, we are finally in our new home way out in an area of Singapore named The Woodlands.  Sounds country-ish, doesn't it?  But "country" is all relative.  In Singapore, that means less high-rise businesses around. 

A Blank Slate

Our household goods have yet to arrive at our new home, so we are currently making due with the minimal amount of loaner furniture that my husband's work has provided.  I don't know if this makes life easier or harder.  But, it does make it feel as if we are still hovering between visiting here and living here. 
Right now, I'm mainly just putting together ideas and plans as to what I would love to do with my space here in Singapore and how I'd like for my family to live.  Pinterest is amazing for that type of thing!
So, here's our new place.  The blank slate:

Our house is the end unit

This is our yard - all slate tile

 Dealing With Air

The air in Singapore tends to be real warm and moist for the most part.  This makes it difficult to get cool without help.  I'm trying hard to not rely on air conditioning units, but it gets unbearable at times. 

Each room has it's own A/C wall unit

Right now we are turning them on at bedtime in the bedrooms, and turning them off upon waking up.  The main unit downstairs has been on and off each day as I try to figure out cooling our common living areas.  I've been experimenting with opening different windows, trying to figure out the best way to create cross breezes and venting hot air out while sucking cooler air in.

 

I was able to sleep well the other night without having the air turned on in our bedroom, but with the windows open.  The issue with opening windows, though, is that there are no screens to prevent bugs from flying in.  And in a country that has epidemics of mosquito-bourn diseases, that is a concern. I keep the light curtains closed at all times and have been experimenting also with which heavy, black-out shades to keep closed and which to open in order to figure out the best way to utilize natural lighting while also trying to keep out the sun's warming rays.

Laundry

While we have a washer and dryer on our back porch, it is quite noticeable that hardly anyone uses clothes dryers in this area.  There are a wide array of creative ways of hanging out clothes to dry, but none are the backyard drying lines that I am used to.  Many people use drying racks and long wooden or metal poles and hang clothes on hangers off of them.  I really, really, really want the retractable clothes lines that I used back home!  But my husband doesn't want to be drilling into the concrete walls to install them, so I'm trying to figure out something else that suits my drying needs. 
It's hard for me to also to change my perception of "dry".  In a climate that is this humid, how do clothes dry while hanging outside in moist air?  I think that the clothes here are mostly hung on hangers in closets and perhaps the remainder of the drying occurs there?  And clothes tend to return to a quite moist state once you put them on your body anyway, so I'm not sure there truly is a good reason to get them absolutely dry in the first place.
Right now, while playing with the air flow of the house, I've decided to use the long railings that we have on the 2nd and 3rd story landings/hallways.  Since heat rises, the air will flow up to the clothes.  And with windows open on either side of these hallways, there's hopefully air flowing cross-ways as well.  So far, it takes about 16 hours for the heavier cotton clothes to dry this way, while thinner clothes dry more quickly.  Laundry seems to have become an all-consuming thing for me, since I have nothing else to focus on without my household stuff!

Hubby's work shirts tend to dry quickly since they are thin, and since they will be ironed anyway, I'm not too concerned about the wrinkles.