Simple Living in Türkiye: Finding Comfort Without Convenience

I’m writing this on the winter solstice, which feels fitting.

Winter is the season when simple living in Türkiye asks the most of you, especially in homes where central heating is rare and warmth has to be created deliberately. Not emotionally — practically. The cold arrives quietly, slipping through uninsulated walls, thin windows, old buildings never designed for warmth to linger. There is no switch to flip that solves it. Comfort, here, does not arrive automatically.

When I first moved, I was certain this would be the thing that broke me.

I could not imagine living without central heating. I could not imagine being cold inside. Dressing in layers indoors. Relying on space heaters, extra blankets, extra halı, extra perde — extra effort — just to feel somewhat comfortable. It felt unreasonable. Inconceivable. I remember thinking, no way, no way, no way.

And if I’m honest, there are still moments when it bothers me. Moments when I catch myself saying, “in the States…” — making an unfair comparison, longing for a version of comfort that once required no thought at all.

Winter mornings are the hardest. It’s dark. Cold. You have to force yourself out of bed, pull on layers, move through the chill to feed the cats, put water on for tea or coffee, heat more water to wash dishes. Everything takes time. Even laundry becomes a negotiation with the weather — planned around breaks in the rain, knowing clothes can take days to dry.

Winter in Türkiye is often mild by temperature standards, but the experience of cold indoors can feel sharper than expected, especially in older homes built for airflow rather than insulation, as reflected in regional climate patterns documented by the Turkish State Meteorological Service.

Convenience is absent. Comfort must be constructed.

And yet, something else begins to happen.

Because the lack of ease demands presence. When warmth isn’t guaranteed, you notice it more when it arrives — sunlight filtering through the perde, catching on dirty windows and the olive groves beyond. The softness of a cat curling against you at night because it’s too cold for the living room. The smell of cinnamon, cloves, rosemary, and oranges simmering on the stove at Christmas. The first sip of hot çay after waking up in a freezing apartment.

In winter, our world shrinks. Sometimes to a single room. But as the space contracts, the senses come alive. There is reflection. Planning. A quiet accounting of the year just lived and the one ahead — spring, Ramadan, birthdays in January and February, the annual hamam trip, bayram.

Comfort here is seasonal, not static.

Comfort Without Infrastructure

I learned this lesson most clearly the first time I tried to take a shower.

We had rented an apartment in Fethiye with a bathtub — a rare luxury. I didn’t think twice when I said I needed to shower. Gökhan mentioned turning on the hot water heater, which struck me as strange. In the States, hot water is invisible. It simply exists.

When he told me it was ready, a slow trickle of lukewarm water seeped from an old handheld showerhead. I stood there, freezing, calculating everything at once: My hair will never get wet enough. How do I shampoo and hold this at the same time? How do I shave? I’m going to freeze when I get out. I hate this. This isn’t worth it.

I yelled. I told him I was going home. That he had lied to me. That I couldn’t do this.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t defend himself — how could he? He had nothing to compare it to. Instead, he moved the one space heater we owned into the bathroom, wrapped me in three or four towels like a baby, and helped me dry my hair.

Many homes here are designed less for efficiency than for lived presence, shaped by habits and adaptation rather than modern convenience.

Four years later, I still hate winter showers. But I’ve learned to accept them as fleeting discomfort. I cut my hair short every fall. I treat the cold as a way to wake myself when I’m tired. A one- or two-night hotel stay an hour away feels like a small vacation — a kind of luxury I never would have noticed before.

Comfort stopped being guaranteed. It became negotiated. It became rewritten.

Habits That Replace Convenience

What I resent most now isn’t the cold itself — it’s the planning.

Laundry without dryers. Timing clothes days in advance. The mental gymnastics of navigating systems I still don’t fully understand because of language. The assumption — one I carried unconsciously — that English would always be enough. That if I needed something specific, I could just get in a car and drive to Target.

Here, nothing is that simple.

Living between two worlds requires constant self-regulation. Patience. Awareness. Translation — not just of language, but of expectations. It’s exhausting in ways people rarely talk about, perhaps because we don’t like admitting how much ease once did for us.

And yet, I’ve changed. Over time, I realized that simple living in Türkiye isn’t about having less by choice, but about learning how to live well within what already exists.

I trust myself more now. I trust Gökhan more. We live more connectedly than I ever did before. I’m surprised by how much I’ve adapted — by what I now tolerate, even embrace: fewer clothes, no dishwasher, no car, no dryer, no happy hours after work. Over time, this constant negotiation became part of a quieter process of belonging — one built through endurance rather than ease.

I’m proud of myself for staying.

I had traveled the world before Türkiye, but I had never truly lived it — not until I was immersed in the inconvenience, the friction, the muck of it all. These dualities — comfort and discomfort, loss and gain — can coexist peacefully with the right mindset.

Comfort as a Practice

If there’s one thing I miss most, it’s the laziness of comfort. The ease. Waking up comfortably warm — not hot, not cold — without thinking about it at all. Living simply in Türkiye is not easy.

That contrast is sharpest when I travel back to the States, which I avoid whenever possible. There, comfort is invisible again. Frictionless. Effortless. And somehow, less felt.

In Türkiye, comfort isn’t something you receive — it’s something you nurture, cultivate, and nourish. Like bread, comfort here is not ornamental — it’s foundational, sustaining, and quietly essential.

It arrives through habit, through attention, through care. Through soup simmering on the stove. Habits like soup — prepared not for pleasure but for grounding — become part of how comfort is sustained when ease is unavailable. Through tea poured without asking. Through shared space, shared warmth, shared effort.

It takes more work. But it also asks more of you.

And in return, it gives you something quieter — a deeper trust in yourself, and a life shaped not by convenience, but by participation.