6/14/07

"home is where you keep your stuff while you're out buying more stuff"

Pat and I have to admit that we have had house envy as of late. We have so many friends that have recently moved into new homes. We walk through them and say to ourselves "if only we had that much space." Zane's stuff seems to be clogging up our space that we've always enjoyed keeping simple. I think, "what if I just had one more closet to through stuff in?" But then is that the issue? We just have too much stuff! Do we need all of that? Do I really want a bigger house to put more stuff in? Or to clean? Do we want to live in one of the thousands of McMansion neighborhoods? This got me thinking...

With homes, the question of size often translates to a question of stuff. Without things (or more accurately, things in excess), I would hazard to guess that any one of us could live graciously in a space smaller than the average American family room (that's 300 square feet). Give us more room and we'll just fill it up with more stuff. When that starts to include spouses and offspring and all of their stuff, the walls must press exponentially outward and upward in accommodation. Couple that hypothetical tidbit with the fact that in our conspicuous consumer culture having all this stuff and a bigger home to keep it in also means having higher status and we're facing what Ned Flanders would call "a dilly of a pickle."
-Sam Grawe, Editor-in-Chief, Dwell
(post title from him too)

Once I read this it made some of Pat and I's past conversations come back to mind. We have a vision of a home that we'd like to live in eventually. It involves lots of open spaces, an area for our kids to just run with and a studio space for Pat. We don't care if the kids' stuff is out for people to see. As Pat always says about our friends Jimmy & Chrissy's house (who have 3 children) - "You can tell some fun took place there today!" And we love that!

We don't want a huge home. We don't want to have all of our money in our home and not be able to travel as a family to see what's out there beyond our home. We really would like our kids to share rooms instead of them each individually having a room. This just seems to add something to the family aspect in that we don't want them to retreat to their bedrooms but rather gather as a family in the home. Then we just need space for grandparents to stay and we're set.

We want to have something that's eco-friendly and if anyone would like to invest in starting a neighborhood with homes like this here we're up for it!!! But of course eco-friendly has a hefty cost right now...especially in Indiana.

As we dream away we realize that our 1,200 square foot home is just enough space for us right now. We can make it work. If we lived in NYC or London we'd be dealing with a much smaller space and would make it work. We're not dogging on our friends who have larger homes, everyone has different ideas of home. I just hope someday we can have our idea of home come to life and that we think of it fondly as we're on the plane back home from another family adventure.