Thursday, March 12, 2009

Housing....hmmmm

I have been wanting to get into a bigger house, but our needs for housing are so unique that it seems doubtful we'll find a place we can afford to rent. So I've been pondering housing a lot. See, if we can move, I don't want to end up in yet another difficult to live in space. And to avoid that, I have to know not only what's wrong with this house, but what would be more right.

Years ago, when pondering going on tour, I realized people need six things to live happily: someplace to be, something to eat, something to do, something to wear, something to believe, and someone to love.

Thinking of living in those terms, I've come up with three rules that should guide finding a place to live:

1. The place to be should make all the other five things easier to do joyfully. What's the point in making something your main place to be if it makes all those other things harder to do?

2. A house should serve its owners, not the other way round. We should not adapt our lifestyle to fit a house; the house should adapt to our needs.

3. A house is a commodity, to be used up, rather than an investment. When looking at a house, it's more important to find a place that would be nice to live, safe, and meet our own unique needs than to find a place that someone else might like sometime in the future. Likewise, when fixing up a house, things should be redone with making life easier in mind, not with what will give you the biggest return when you sell it. We shouldn't live our lives to make money. We should live our lives to make memories. Besides, if you move into a place as an investment solely, the first two rules are too hard to follow.

So there you have it, the summation of the last 10 pages of writing in my journal.

What I realized we mostly need is just plain more space, inside and out.

1 comment:

morelightthanburden said...

I totally agree!! My brother and his family and our family moved into houses within a few months of each other. They chose and investment and we chose a home. Our is light, spacious, and everyone comments on how lovely and wonderful it is when they visit (by the way, that's not about the decorations, just the feel). There's, by contrast, has tiny rooms, long halls and a distinct lack of windows and an overabundance of tiny bathrooms. It's like living in a walk-through kitchen. Yuck! We 'overpaid' on our house, but we were glad to, it is perfect. So, go all out, get what is best for your fam, I am a firm believer in this!