Big Enough for the Four of Us
Making a small house work for four people takes some time and effort. One must be conscientious about what comes in the door and not be afraid of letting things go once they have served their usefulness. Why all the effort? Why not move to a bigger, better house? Well, many years ago Wade & I had the fortune to buy our home here in San Diego. We bought before the housing market spiraled up into the thermosphere plus we got a sweetheart deal from Wade’s father. These two factors alone mean that our housing costs are very, very low for Southern California. We live close to things and people that we love. Staying in the same neighborhood in a bigger home might quintuple (or more) our costs even in a declining market. Buying a home further away from the center is simply not an option for us as my commute is very, very short and Nanna and Nonno live a few shorts minutes away. So here we will stay for the forseeable future.
For some this would be torture. For me it is a joy. One of the things that has reformed my thinking about what is necessary for gracious living is the Apartment Therapy website. I have been reading the website for years and over time my notion of what constitutes a home has changed. I think we all have an idea in our minds about what we think our home should look like, a certain number of bedrooms and bathrooms, a square footage that will allow us to pursue dreams and hobbies, a Platonic ideal against which all things are measured. In addition we have ideas of ’safety’ and neighbors and if we have kids we think of school districts. Probably many of our preferences are shaped by our childhoods and formative experiences. In fact with over half of the world existing on less than $1 a day, many of these concerns are just learned notions of what exactly a ‘home‘ is. Apartment Therapy questions our notions — our American, developed world notions — of what one needs to create a home. I have let go of some of my biases and embraced our current situation.
Another factor in my release of the notion ‘bigger is better’ is the long running column, Shelter by Toni Schlesinger, in the Village Voice. In one of her earlier columns she documents a family who share 500 square-foot apartment. At the time Wade & I were living in a 425 square-foot duplex near the beach. I remember looking around the space, which I had only gotten to work comfortably after many iterations of furniture moving and stuff organizing, and thinking, ‘ZOMG, could Wade & I raise a child here?’ I never found out the answer to that particular question, but here in CasaWeX, I am pursuing the factual actual question ‘can 2 adults and 2 kids share less than 1,000 square-feet and enjoy it’. One of the reasons that Wade & I have always embraced this house is that everything is very close together. One can be cooking in the kitchen and the other geeking on the computer and a conversation can be held at reasonable volume. We like being close to one another. But when two kids (and all their stuff) are added to the mix can it be made to work? The answer to that question remains to be seen, but suffice it to say so far, so good.