Space Dreams
Once upon a time I was a girl who had a fascination with house floor plans. When I was a kid the area of San Diego I lived in was going through a tract housing boom. My parents would take us to look through all the beautifully decorated model homes just for the fun of it, and my favorite part was that I got to collect all the folders of available floor plans and site maps and keep them. In my spare time I would draw up floor plans and even make subdivision plot maps (maybe I was a little weird?). You'd think with that kind of a beginning I would have become an architect-- though majoring in urban planning in college is related, I guess. Well, my life took a different path but I still kept up my fascination with floor plans.
With the internet at my disposal I spent a lot of free time when we lived in Sanders pulling up floor plans for different builders' offerings in Arizona. Those were the years of the housing boom so there was a lot to find on the internet. Once Terence and I decided to move back to the valley and buy a house, my favorite part was my collection of floor plans from all the models we visited. It was great fun picturing our family trying to fit into different houses, and figuring out what I liked and what I thought was just awful. (There was plenty to make fun of!) Anyway, it was one of my most enjoyable free time activities.
Not long after we moved into our current house, I quit spending much of my free time musing over house plans. At first I was just too excited about being a homeowner for the very first time ever and being able to focus on what I wanted to do with our home. However, as the housing market crashed-- and then went into free fall-- it became clear to me that Terence and I were probably going to be staying in this house for the rest of our lives (unless we lost it, which was not a happy thought). At that point I quit looking at house plans of any kind. My goal became to be as content as possible with what I have, and I was afraid that dreaming over different layouts and new developments would only make me unhappy.
For the most part that strategy has worked pretty well. I'm happy with our house, and since it is our long term home, I'm very glad we chose this one. Every once in awhile though, I start to feel a little bit crammed and can't help wishing for a bit more space. (Usually when our whole family is hanging out in the office-- seven people in a ten foot square room gets beyond the feel of cozy. Or sometimes when I am trying to help clean up the girls' room-- three girls in one small bedroom is a tight fit, and it will only get more challenging as they get older. Oh, and I really can't wait until I have three or four teenagers sharing one bathroom!)
I feel bad even complaining about the space. I know how blessed we are compared to many people all over the world. There are many people who would consider themselves rich to live in such circumstances. In general I do focus on gratitude for our warm, comfortable house that is large enough for a family of seven. But my subconscious has been rebelling lately. For weeks now I've been having dreams where for one reason or another Terence and I are moving into a new house. (The most recent one was the craziest. I dreamed that part of our house caught fire, and we rebuilt it with three stories and a ton more square footage. Yep, that's going to happen.)
Occasionally in the blogging/facebook world I come across quotes that mention something about how much smaller the houses were 50 years ago but the family sizes were so much bigger. I keep scratching my head about that. How exactly did that work? Was it just because those bigger families also had no stuff to take up space? No gadgets and large quantities of clothes and huge collections of toys and DVD's and books and video games? Maybe. Terence also mentioned that maybe it just didn't seem small because the whole family wasn't hanging out inside all day long. Either they were out working on the farm or the kids were running the neighborhood from dawn til dusk. Or maybe nowadays we are all just spoiled rich kids who don't know what real life is like! Watching Downton Abbey you get the idea that it would really be a shock for some of these people to downgrade to a "cottage"-- one larger than any of our local McMansions. Depending on what you're used to, it's all relative I guess!
With the internet at my disposal I spent a lot of free time when we lived in Sanders pulling up floor plans for different builders' offerings in Arizona. Those were the years of the housing boom so there was a lot to find on the internet. Once Terence and I decided to move back to the valley and buy a house, my favorite part was my collection of floor plans from all the models we visited. It was great fun picturing our family trying to fit into different houses, and figuring out what I liked and what I thought was just awful. (There was plenty to make fun of!) Anyway, it was one of my most enjoyable free time activities.
Not long after we moved into our current house, I quit spending much of my free time musing over house plans. At first I was just too excited about being a homeowner for the very first time ever and being able to focus on what I wanted to do with our home. However, as the housing market crashed-- and then went into free fall-- it became clear to me that Terence and I were probably going to be staying in this house for the rest of our lives (unless we lost it, which was not a happy thought). At that point I quit looking at house plans of any kind. My goal became to be as content as possible with what I have, and I was afraid that dreaming over different layouts and new developments would only make me unhappy.
For the most part that strategy has worked pretty well. I'm happy with our house, and since it is our long term home, I'm very glad we chose this one. Every once in awhile though, I start to feel a little bit crammed and can't help wishing for a bit more space. (Usually when our whole family is hanging out in the office-- seven people in a ten foot square room gets beyond the feel of cozy. Or sometimes when I am trying to help clean up the girls' room-- three girls in one small bedroom is a tight fit, and it will only get more challenging as they get older. Oh, and I really can't wait until I have three or four teenagers sharing one bathroom!)
I feel bad even complaining about the space. I know how blessed we are compared to many people all over the world. There are many people who would consider themselves rich to live in such circumstances. In general I do focus on gratitude for our warm, comfortable house that is large enough for a family of seven. But my subconscious has been rebelling lately. For weeks now I've been having dreams where for one reason or another Terence and I are moving into a new house. (The most recent one was the craziest. I dreamed that part of our house caught fire, and we rebuilt it with three stories and a ton more square footage. Yep, that's going to happen.)
Occasionally in the blogging/facebook world I come across quotes that mention something about how much smaller the houses were 50 years ago but the family sizes were so much bigger. I keep scratching my head about that. How exactly did that work? Was it just because those bigger families also had no stuff to take up space? No gadgets and large quantities of clothes and huge collections of toys and DVD's and books and video games? Maybe. Terence also mentioned that maybe it just didn't seem small because the whole family wasn't hanging out inside all day long. Either they were out working on the farm or the kids were running the neighborhood from dawn til dusk. Or maybe nowadays we are all just spoiled rich kids who don't know what real life is like! Watching Downton Abbey you get the idea that it would really be a shock for some of these people to downgrade to a "cottage"-- one larger than any of our local McMansions. Depending on what you're used to, it's all relative I guess!
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