Friday, November 28, 2014

minimalism: house size

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the last post! As always, I love hearing your insights.

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I recently saw an infographic that the average five person family in the 1950s lived in a house that was a 1000 square feet.  The average four person family in 2014 lives in a 2500 square foot house.

When my mother was growing up, she lived in a two bedroom, one bath house in southern Ohio. It was about 1000 square feet in all. My mother recently moved to China and all of the family pictures are in storage, but here is a picture of the exterior taken from Google Maps.


The first floor was two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen with eat in dining area.  There was an attic that ran the length of the house that was my mother's bedroom. While the attic was probably about 12 feet wide, due to the pitch of the roof you could only stand up in the middle.

Here is a not to scale floor plan:
The kitchen was TINY--maybe 8 x 6?  There was one upper cabinet in the entire kitchen.  Along the back wall was a fridge, the sink and 12 inches of counterspace.  My mother reports that when they originally moved into the house, there was a wall between the kitchen and the dining room (running right where the fridge is in the above illustration), but it was torn down shortly after moving in.

On the opposite kitchen wall was the back door to the garage, and a tiny stove that had a pull out cooktop.  It looked sort of like this:

via

The stove was about 20 inches deep, and the electric burner stove top could be rolled out for use, and rolled back into the stove when not in use, although you had to wait for it to cool down before rolling it back in.  Rolling the top out meant that the available space between the fridge and stove was cut in half, so clearly you would want to roll the top back in when not in use.

 My grandparents bought the house when my mom was nine, for about $2,000.  My grandmother lived in that house for forty-five years.  It was the first home my mother lived in that had indoor plumbing.

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On the other end of the spectrum were my paternal grandparents.  Although they moved many times, for a long time they had a split level ranch house in southern New Jersey that was about 2300 square feet, with four bedrooms and 2.5 bath. (Again, I clipped the picture from GoogleMaps--when my grandparents lived there, there was an RV and a huge station wagon in the driveway, not fourteen garbage cans.)


That house was bigger than the 1950 average of 1000 sq ft, but keep in mind that my father is the oldest of eleven children, and thus there were 13 people living there, which brings us well below the average amount of square feet per person.

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Over the years the Mister and I have lived in ever-larger homes.  (Mostly.)  We started off in a ridiculously massive winter share (3000 sq ft), which quickly taught us that we couldn't afford the rent on a large house, and even if we could, we couldn't afford to keep the utilities on.

We moved into a 2 bedroom apartment in a pre-war apartment complex, then another 2 bedroom apartment in the attic of an old Victorian.  These were about 800 sq ft.  For a few months we moved in with the Mister's parents, then with my parents. After our wedding, we bought a 2 bedroom condo with a small loft, where we brought home our first child. The condo was 1100 sq ft.


I didn't feel like the condo was cramped--we had a small attic storage space with some junk, but nothing out of hand.  We bought the condo after we got married, and we really didn't have much furniture yet.

Then we bought our sidehall colonial that was about 1400 sq ft.


This is where I had my second and third child.  After having my second child I stopped working, and started reading design blogs for intellectual stimulation.  Prior to reading design blogs I enjoyed decorating but didn't spend much time or money on it. After reading design blogs the "lets buy fun stuff for the house!" train really took off.  (This is a topic for an entire separate post.) I also started buying stuff for the kids.

By the time we moved out, we had a full basement, and a full attic, and it felt cramped. In retrospect, it was a great house--we just needed to have less stuff in the house.

After we sold that house, we moved into the apartment above my inlaws, which was quite spacious.


That house was like a magic trick--it looked like a small Cape Cod, and then you walked in and it just kept going on forever.  The upstairs apartment was at least 1500 sq ft.  It was huge, for an apartment. And it had a ton of spacious closets. But we still had stuff in the basement and half of the garage. And I bought more and more decor stuff.  

Then we moved to the sidehall colonial in Westfield that was similar to the sidehall we had owned.


 Again, 1400ish sq ft, with large attic, basement, and garage.  Although the rooms were small and storage was lacking, it was a nice house.  (Except for the rats.) Regardless of the lack of storage, we still had too much stuff. We had so much stuff that when we moved out of that house to California, the moving company told us we were over the weight limit that the Mister's new company would pay for.


You think that would be a wakeup call, wouldn't you?

The wakeup call was when we moved into our house in California, which was similarly sized, but lacking the attic and basement.


And ALL THAT STUFF got put in the garage.


We couldn't find stuff, we couldn't move around the stuff, we couldn't move the stuff, we couldn't get the garbage cans out of the garage because there was no room to move, we couldn't reach the washer and dryer because of all the stuff.

And thus a small seed began to bloom....maybe we don't need all this stuff.

We got rid of at least three quarters of the stuff in that garage before we bought this house.  This house looked empty for a while. Remarkably, we didn't buy much new furniture for this house.  We simply figured out how to arrange the furniture.

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Our current house is 2594 square feet. For years, we thought this size house was what we wanted. Tons of space! Tons of storage!

It has much more space and storage than we need.  It costs quite a bit to keep up, from the mortgage and taxes to cleaning and keeping the lights on.  It is more space than we need.

My mother grew up in a tiny house that had approximately 333 sq ft per person.  My father grew up in a large house that had about 176 sq ft per person.  We are living in a house with about 500 sq ft per person. I could get rid of our formal living room, formal dining room, and fourth bedroom and not miss them. I would miss them two or three days a year when we have out of town guests, but 99.99% of the time, wouldn't  miss them.

When we move in the spring, for the first time in a decade, we'll be going to a much smaller house, rather than larger.  I'm looking forward to having less, cleaning less, paying less.




Friday, November 14, 2014

Minimalism vs. decor: where the rubber meets the road

I've been working on a number of minimalism posts having to do with food, and house size, and money.  They are turning into giant unwieldy tomes that need editing and and breaking up into smaller topics and blah blah blah they are taking too long.  So I thought I'd throw a quick little topic I've been thinking about out there in the meantime.  Can you adopt minimalism at the same time as being a decor enthusiast?

Minimalism starts with the concept that the "having of stuff" is not what defines your life.  Your life should be built around people, not things.

The notion of decor is, on the other hand, essentially defined by the having of stuff.  Pretty stuff. Stuff that will look nice on your mantel and in your bedroom.  Stuff that will make people walk into your house and gasp in delight at your design chutzpah.

What's a girl who likes (and sort of used to write) design blogs to do?  Can you be minimalist AND own pretty things and decorate your house and oh, say, RE-decorate your house again in a year or two just because you like to?

I feel uncomfortable with the question, because I fear the answer is no.

There are minimalist decor blogs, and they seem to revolve around the Scandi-chic look.  Paint all your rooms and the floors white, put up one black spider-arm sconce, a shabby vintage MCM sofa or leather sling chairs, a wooden trestle table, and the back wall of your house is floor to ceiling windows, and voila, minimalist decor.

But what if you like lots of color? You have some handmade quilts your grandmother made that you like to use in the bedroom?  You prefer layered rugs so your feet don't get cold traversing the bare floors in your wintry Scandinavian house?  Where does minimalism end and excess begin?

For a long time I've lived closer to the maximilist side. Only in the past few years have I thought about taking the minimalist plunge. I put away all our knick-knacks a while back, then brought a few back out.  But other people in this house also want to display stuff, so the majority of the tchotckes are probably going to be donated soon.


I read design blogs where people buy lots of knick-knacks, and it doesn't bother me--I don't feel the need to accumulate these things.  I can look at someone else's stuff and enjoy the beauty of it in someone else's house without feeling the need to own it.

Pillows, bedding and curtains, on the other hand, make me burn with envy.  Expensive pillows? I need them.  Bedding for every season?  Guilty.  To the trade fabrics that cost thousands of dollars? I WANT them. How do I justify spending thousands of dollars of fabric?  (I don't, but I want to.)

I  have more art than I have wall space.

 I also read design blogs/magazines/books where a room has cost $50,000, or a $100,000, or more.  If you can afford that, is it excessive?

Where does minimalism end and excess begin?  On the fifth painting or the fifteenth or the fiftieth?  When is your stuff too much?

Discuss amongst yourselves, please.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

One Room Challenge, Week Six: The Big (Seven Eighths) Reveal

As the title might indicate, I'm not quite done.


See Week One, Week Two/Three, Week Four, and Week Five.

I had some unexpected expenses last month and my budget ran out.  The room looks pretty good for nearly done.  

You might recall that the bedroom was originally navy blue, and the bathroom was full of gross carpet.



Since we are selling our house in the spring our realtor rather forcefully gently suggested that we paint the bedroom a neutral color and get that carpet the hell on up out of here.  As much as I liked the navy, I was thinking of painting the bedroom white anyways.




I love it.  It is so bright and airy.


I took an old canvas, painted it blue, threw a few stripes on it.  Nearly free art.






The only thing that I planned on doing and didn't get done in this room was new pillows. My budget ran out and I didn't want to buy something cheap just to be something new, so I'll eventually get the otomi pillow and embroidered shams when I save up some more pennies.

One thing I really like about the all white walls is that it makes the stupid pony wall less noticeable, and the space flows into the bathroom a bit more cohesively.


The new tile floor makes SUCH A DIFFERENCE.  Totally worth it.  Although my feet are freezing walking on that cold tile now.




I started painting the cabinets ugly beige, then changed course and just slapped a fresh coat of white on them.  I also decided to avoid mixing metals and am not going to put hardware on the cabinets.


We extended the tile into the toilet room.  You may remember Lady Vader from her time in the downstairs powder room.


Remaining to be done: I had hoped to get a window treatment up over the tub, and change out the vintage 80s Hollywood vanity light, and figure out what to do with the shower door, but it didn't happen.  The carpet will also be changed out, but not until right before we are ready to list the house.

I thought about framing out the vanity mirror with MirrorMate, but it is a few hundred dollars because of the large size.  I'll re-assess that decision in February.

The bathroom area looks SO MUCH BETTER now with the new floor.  I think the new floor took the room from "this is a gut job and I will make a lowball offer for this house" to "eh, its fine for now, although we'll have to do something with that tiny shower eventually." It is still dated, but it looks clean and functional.  I think a window treatment and a new light fixture would also go a long way towards making it feel a bit less white and sterile.    

Thanks to Linda at Calling It Home for giving me the incentive to get moving on this room!  See all the big reveals here.