insanity...

[chelidon]

Taste for Space Is Spawning Mansions Fit for a Commoner (subhed: Hot Housing Market Opens Doors to Mini-Taj Mahals)

This is so totally wrong. The amount of waste involved with one of these monstrosities is completely insane. But that's the American Dream..,

...which, no matter what I do or don't think about it, will almost certainly come crashing to a halt as energy prices spiral upwards. I have to admit, I do like big houses, but my thinking is more along the lines of how many people I could fit in it.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

I wrote about the Tiny Homes movement earlier this year and interviewed Jay Shafer, proprietor of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I'd love to have one of his homes, somewhere in the 300 to 500 square foot range, and some woods. People raved about the article when it came out -- in Silicon Valley!

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Oh, very nifty, thanks for the link! Well, in Silicon Valley, I can see that housing prices there might just lead to subdividing into 500 sq ft lots ;>

But yes, smaller places are muuuch more efficient, with much lower resource use all around, short and long-term. That's one of the reasons I love building yurts/gers. Next year I'm hoping to put in a couple of yurts, plus my 4-season treehouse, and the year after that, a hobbit-hole just downhill from the treehouse, south-facing.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

*yearns for hobbit-hole*.

Before I knew anything about Tolkien, when I was very young, I wanted to grow up and live in a roundish home dug into the side of a hill. *sigh*

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Well, once we get it built, come on out and visit! South-facing direct gain and natural thermal mass (heck, I'd guess a row of big hairy feet could store a lot of heat ;>) are all the rage in Hobbiton, I hear.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

As long as it's got someplace to boil a kettle of tea, I'm in. :)

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, good tea is essential, if not compulsory ;>

[phryday.livejournal.com]

eventually, it may come crashing down but will it on their heads? and who knows, when the world ends some survivors will have found a nice shelter from the rain (it's the pnw.)

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

the NE is pretty nice, too, so long as you work out the heating situation with renewables :>

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

If basements were common in this region of the country, we'd probably have a temple. But they're not, so we don't, but I figure eventually I'll need to find out about extending the back of the garage into the back yard, and turning that into meditation/temple space. Still, that'd only top us into maybe 2100 sq feet or so. I simply can't imagine having a 5000 sq foot house, even having lived in one that was 3000 sq-ft while I was in high school. 1700 is plenty by my standards.

Okay, so that might not seem like a lot, but when you're cleaning, it is!

Fffft.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ah-yup. I think we've got something like 3800 sq ft all total now, not counting the porches and deck, or the outbuildings (garage, barn, etc), but that's 6 or more living full-time in that space, with guests often, and more (sometimes many more ;>) on weekends, etc. It still seems big to me, but I believe it's actually more efficient this way than if we all had our own wee cottage.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Oh, agreed. The space should be curtailed to meet the needs of those who use it. I can't see you having as many residents as you do (let alone so many guests) in a space only as big as our house. Then again, I look at our house and think, we need guests more often, because otherwise this place feels too big to me. There's a whole guest room that's not being used! Horrors.

[ravenedgewalker.livejournal.com]

oh my gods! this is insane!

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ain't it just? Humans just baffle me sometimes. I mean, size can be good...I really do want a castle, but I want to cram it chock full of all my friends :>

[alobar.livejournal.com]

hehe. I got me an apartment with less than 750 sq ft of space. No yard or outbuildings. I am up under the roof so 2 rooms have sloped ceiling which go lower than chest height. I sure could use more space. Maybe double what I got now. But not much more than that. If I actually owned my apartment as a condo, I would put in a loft over 1/4 of the aprtment because the central ceiling is over 16 ft high.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the top floor here slopes down to 4' at the walls, so it's not all usable space, at least for standing. And I hear ya -- we've got cathedral ceilings, too, and they always make me want to stick a loft up there on the beams to use all that "wasted" space. On the other hand, the high ceilings really help keep it cool during the summer, so we don't even have an air conditioner, nor need one.

Space

[(Anonymous)]

We ended up with 2000 sqft, or thereabouts, and it is weirdly huge. A bit more than twice the size of our old Boston place (which the new owners bull-dozed to drop a McMansion on the site of the old 2 bedroom cottage). We got our place for the land. If I ever won lotto, I would consider knocking this place down, not to make anything bigger, but to make a super-eco-friendly place. Hey, it's nice to dream.

Stephen in NZ

PS- you still owe me an email!

Re: Space

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

They bulldozed your old place? I liked that house! McMansions, bleah.

I hear you about the house and land. I fell in love with the land here. Claudia and Kelly loved the house, but I was never big on post-and-beam, always wanted an old Victorian. Well, I'm glad we've got what we got -- modern plumbing and electrical, and post and beam means none of the interior walls are load-bearing, so you can knock out and move whatever you want, nice. It's grown on me, anyway, though I still want a turret ;>

And yes, I *do* owe you an email, and I really want to chat more with you. There's so much to say, I haven't ever finished the email... I've got a couple of days of blessed relaxation coming up, I'll try to get a note to you soon.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Um, you're also in New Hampshire. Like you need A/C! *giggles*

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, okay, well there's *that* ;> There are actually a couple of days in the middle of summer when it gets too warm upstairs, but on the main floor, windows open, no worries.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

If I could stick in a vent fan at the peak, it would suck out the hot air. I got spoiled owning my own home for years. Now I can't fuck with the streucture because it isn't my building.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yes, double-edged sword there. I really love being able to knock out walls, or just paint or whatever, but on the other hand, every #$$% time something breaks, it's my job to fix it ;>

[eeedge.livejournal.com]

I read someplace that one person can't really keep more than 3000 sq feet clean by himself. I'd love to have about 2400 sq feet someday, but I can't wrap my brain around 12,000 sq ft for one family.

Of course, this article is from the area where one of my brother's best friend's parents kept a 6000 sq ft house for parties for their clients. No one *ever* lived there.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm not sure I could keep 300 sq ft clean by myself, but that's just me ;>

Heh.

[lylythe-strega.livejournal.com]

Speaking as one who would know for certain, I tend to agree... ;>

Re: Heh.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Hey...yer not supposed to *agree* with me!

....but it's a fair cop :>

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

This paragraph is really telling.

""We have a media room in the basement, a pool table and a moon bounce, so I don't have to take the kids out and fight traffic," said Skinner, 32, a former art director who lives there with her husband; their two children; and, at times, family and friends who come on weekends. "We enjoy it more when the kids come here and play. Specifically, I'm weird, but I'm supersensitive to the kids getting snatched. Like at Chuck E. Cheese, I have to constantly watch them." "

WTF??? She apparently never lets her kids out of her sight??? What are they going to do once they turn 18?

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yep, just another sign of the sickness that passes for "normal." And besides the paranoia (you don't feel like your kids are safe outside? MOVE!), how can keeping yer kids locked away from the world be a good thing? Bleah.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

And ironically, by keeping her little darlings smothered, the poor kids will not only grow up with no street smarts, but will probably be rebellious and want to try everything that Mommy said is "bad". That combination could be seriously harmful to them when they hit their teenage years.

[eeedge.livejournal.com]

I've been really pleased with our current neighborhood. I can let my 4 year old and my 7 year old out together by themselves, as long as I listen for the screams when one of them scrapes a knee or the like.

When we moved into the house, though, our landlord offered to have the dead (horizontal) tree removed from the woodsy section so that the children couldn't hurt themselves climbing on it. I had to refuse, as I think that a small element of peril is vital to a healthy child.

I cannot imagine trying to watch them/entertain them/protect them 100% of the time. Those sorts of children are the ones I see every day who never get to speak because their mummies are speaking for them.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

And those kids are the ones taken advantage of by the "bad kids" who have street smarts. Not to mention the fact that they are often YEARS behind in the self-reliance department once they are adults.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Horrifying. I too dream of a big house, and always dream of all the people we'd fit in it too. I loathe seeing rooms go unused.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean what's the point? It'd be like living in a museum. Kinda creepy, sez I. Homes were meant to be lived in, full of life, not full of nothing. And there's the whole conspicuous consumption bit, too -- rather than spending the money for unused space that you then just have to go out and heat/cool, and buy expensive furniture for so that you can have a *full* room you never use...how about either doing something charitible with that money, or even if yer more self-centered than that, invest it into a retirement fund or something?

But no. All Hail The Mighty God Capitalism, and the idiotic, unthinking slavery to consumerism for which it stands. Whatever. For better or worse, that era is rapidly drawing to a close. One of the problems with basing one's entire economy and world-view on consumerism is that whole piece on, well, consuming. Once you consume something, it's gone (or worse, gone except for poisonous waste by-products), and if the implicit norm is both endless consuming, and a necessarily high growth rate of that consumption, there's really, truly and totally obviously only one place that can end. Resource exhaustion, and collapse. I'd like to think we're more intelligent than, say, bacteria, and can escape this most obvious trap we set for ourselves, but I have my doubts.... ;>