TheBanyanTree: Living Space

[Margaret R. Kramer]

The home selling, home buying, and then the moving process are intense ones.
They overwhelmed my life and because my brain couldn’t think of anything
else, I sought out people who couldn’t think of anything else either but
selling, buying, and moving, too.  It’s like when I had a baby and all I
could think about was baby stuff.  Or when I was in school and all I could
think about was studying.  Or when I quit smoking and I found others who
were going through the agony of not having their nicotine fixes as well.
Whenever I’ve gone through a major change in my life, I’m drawn to people
who will talk about their experiences with me and I don’t have to worry
about boring them to death.

Home ownership is a hot topic for most people, even if they don’t own a
home.  A home, whether rented or owned, is a living space.  For most of us,
especially in the middle class, a home can be an extension of who we are.
As I’ve gone through the search for a new home, it’s been interesting to
discuss with other people and learn about how they define their living
spaces.

Some people feel that the big 3,000-4,000 square foot split level in the
suburbs is the ideal home for them.  They don’t mind a long and winding
commute to work, because when they come home, their home is truly their
castle.  They have the big lawn surrounding the house.  The houses are
spaced far apart to guarantee privacy.  And they have easy access to a
massive garage which is built as part of the front of the house.  The houses
have the formal living room, the family room, large open kitchens, and
plenty of bathrooms.

Other people, especially older and single people, like townhomes or condos.
They don’t want the castle, but a smaller home where yard work isn’t an
issue.  Some want their townhomes large and also in some far off suburb.
Others want their townhomes or condos conveniently located to work and
shopping.

I found out some of my coworkers feel that a family room and a formal living
room are important.  Others want an attached garage.  Some want a big
kitchen or lots of bedrooms.  I wanted storage.  Our last house had so much
finished space, there wasn’t enough room for storage, so all our excess junk
was shoved out in the garage  or into the crawl space.  Our new home has a
storage room on the top floor, plus lots of nooks and crannies in the
basement for stuff.  And then we have the massive garage . . .

And that brings me to stuff.  Why do we have so much stuff?  My parents grew
up in the depression and my mother kept everything, although it was well
organized stuff.  She kept a lot of her excess stuff in neatly labeled boxes
in storage areas my dad built in the basement.  My parents had a HUGE pantry
in the basement with enough food to last for 50 years.  They also had
freezer full of food in the basement, too.

I try not to keep so much stuff, but I do have a large collection of books,
CDs, and DVDs.  I have boxes that I haven’t unpacked, because I would never
display the stuff in the house, but I want to keep it.  A good example is my
horse collection.  I collected horse figurines as a young girl.  I’ve moved
the collection from place to place, but have never displayed it, because it’
s a dust collector.  I had to dust that collection every Saturday as a girl.
My Barbie doll collection is another example of unused stuff.

I have tons of dishes and I have now cabinet space in the kitchen to store
them.  I have way too many clothes, but again, in spite of the small closet
in our bedroom, I have an area to hang clothes in our storage room.

I thought Ray and I weeded out a lot of stuff, but we had to use one and a
half moving vans, plus a small truck Ray rented for garage stuff to get our
things from the old house to the new house.  After all the stuff was
unloaded from the trucks, our house was like a sea of boxes, and we had to
part the way like Moses just to move through the house.  Where did all this
stuff come from?

Some of my friends have more stuff than I do.  One of my friends never
throws out magazines.  I used to keep all my National Geographics until I
realized I never looked at them after I initially read them, so I threw them
out.  Now I give them to my son after I read them.

One of my coworkers lives in a five bedroom house.  His children have moved
out, but they adopted their granddaughter, so there is still a child in the
house.  However, he told me that they use two of the bedrooms for storage.
He said his wife just keeps buying things and cannot bring herself to weed
out what she has.

And that brings me to hoarders.  These are people who just can’t seem to get
rid of things, but keep acquiring.  I hoard certain things, but I’m like my
mother, I like my junk all neatly stashed away where I don’t have to look at
it.  I’m going to try real hard not to fill up this house just because I
have some excess room.

I read an article in the paper yesterday about a woman who wanted to move to
a smaller house, but she had so much stuff piled all over her current house
that she couldn’t put it on the market until she de-cluttered.  And because
she had so much stuff, she didn’t know where to start.  The article stated
it’s estimated that 2% of the population in the US are hoarders who just can
’t seem to throw anything out.

TV shows and magazine pictures show uncluttered living spaces, but it seems
a lot of Americans live in jam-packed-stuffed-to-the-gills homes.  I’m
always amazed when I visit someone’s home how jumbled and disorganized it
seems to be.  Basically, I would classify some homes not as necessarily
garbage houses, but just messy and junky.

My living space isn’t meant for me to cram as much junk in it as I can, but
to express my personality and interests.  I like to display interesting and
unusual glassware, photos (not endless pictures of my family either),
sculpture, and artistic things.  I like mixing colors and styles.  I like
having my things in logical places where I can find them.  Because I raised
by a neat freak, I like to have my home be a place where people can drop in
and I’m not embarrassed to have them in my living space.

Now that I’m older, I find I don’t need massive amounts of space, I like
small defined spaces in my home; bedroom, office, kitchen, work area,
laundry room.  These spaces all blended together in our last home.  I like
the compactness of this one.  It feels like home.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
~Margaret Atwood