Talking Tuesday: Building Community in Place

I find Gracy Olmstead to be a thoughtful, articulate writer, and I always find something interesting in her blog posts.  Last week, she posted a wonderful article about the ways in which community has broken down in America, and considers how communities are built and function together.  

She writes:

"It seems that oftentimes, we give up community out of a desire for greater space, greater financial stability, a better job situation. But, as Roberts puts it, “we are meant to have tribes, to be among people who know us and care about us.” As our jobs increasingly carry us away from the neighborhood, and our reliance upon the car grows steadily, it may be that a simple dedication to staying put can help community grow. Because while our rootlessness often results in greater space, it can also compromise or neglect our deeper need for place: for a sense of home, and community."

~Gracy Olmstead, Space or Place? American Conservative Blog, October 29, 2015

Any long time reader of this blog will know that I often struggle with the limitations of raising a large-ish family in a small Victorian row home in the middle of a large city.  How I sometimes long to be able to send the kids out the door into the back yard (we don't have one), or to be able to pull our car into the garage next to the house (we park on the street, often several blocks away from our home).  To have some distance between the general ick that is the city street.  These things would make our lives more comfortable, easier, but we would lose what Olmstead refers to as the "spontaneous encounter."  I can't count how often I run into a neighbor or a friend on the street and have a conversation.  Those encounters are very valuable, as they build up social capital, and strengthen the ties of our local community in largely intangible ways. 

We've been in this house for eight years now, and it is the longest I've ever lived anywhere, ever.  Rod Dreher has written at length about how difficult it is for us modern Americans to stay in place, to put our feet down and really plant into the ground where we are.  The transient nature of our lives is perhaps the defining characteristic of post modern society.  It doesn't make for easy community.

When I am tempted to see greener grass in the suburbs or the countryside, I am reminded that we have a good life here--one where I can walk the kids to school, and my husband can bike to work.  Our pediatrician is a seven minute walk from the house, and the children's hospital a 15 minute cab ride.  We have a good park less than three blocks away, and several more that are an easy walk.  We are walking distance to several grocery stores, and many other small bodegas in between.  We know almost all our neighbors, and relations on our block are generally cordial and helpful. For all that living in the city and raising a family is sometimes difficult, we are very blessed.  

There is a messiness to engaging with the seething masses of humanity, of building community amongst different sorts of people, but I think it is a good work in the end.  

Project 333: Fall

I posted my Project 333 Summer Wrap Up yesterday, and now I can move on to fall!  Swapping out my clothing for this next 3 months was actually really easy.  I've been keeping a little notebook for the project, and have a list for each 3 month time period, so all I had to do was pull everything out that was on the list and put everything else away.  I did try to put things away in a logical order--I tried to put garments that will be in the spring and summer pile in with the spring clothing, where I would logically look for them in April.

I also decided to put some of my belts and other accessories away--I have a subset of earrings and necklaces that really only go with my summer dresses, and some belts that really only go with one or two things from the spring or summer.  It helps to have the accessories pared down for the next two seasons as well.

I think I have a wide enough range of clothing to accommodate the current temps, as well as the colder temps that will come in a month or two.  These clothes will last me until the end of December.

I also have a couple of projects planned for the fall, and will blog about those later, but for now, my pics include stuff that is actually finished or nearly there (such as the green knitted cardigan).

Without further ado, here's the fall lineup:

Top right: 

1922 Linen Day Dress, Chambray Dress, Mesa Dress, Green Cookie Book dress (not blogged/worn yet)

Top middle:

Taupe wool skirt, Black skirt, Shetland flannel pencil skirt, Rust corduroy skirt

Top left:

Navy Breton shirt, Green knitted cardigan (nearly finished), Cream lightweight cotton cardigan

Bottom right:

Eshakti knit red dress, Ruby Mae dress, Eshakti knit navy dress, Union Station dress

Bottom middle: 

Fat Face blue cardigan, purple Ann Taylor elbow sleeve tshirt, green layering shirt, blue layering shirt

Left middle:

Navy cashmere/cotton cardigan, rust cotton cardigan, black cotton cardigan, brown wool/cotton cardigan

Left bottom:

Wool cream cardigan, gray ribbed turtleneck, black pullover sweater

(not pictured: Amanda jeans--see the summer photo collage)

There are 27 items on my list here, but I have two blouses and a skirt (and possibly another dress) to add as the fall progresses, plus I have another navy knit dress on order from eshakti, so I think this will be fine.

As for footwear, it tends to rain a lot here in the fall, so my primary footwear are my green wellies, but I also wear my brown lace up boots a lot, and have bought a pair of shorter boots to try out this season.  I'll probably wear my summer pairs for a few weeks yet, as it is still in the 90s, but as soon as the weather changes, I'm bringing on the boots!

Project 333

I've been reading Stephanie's blog for a long time now, and I really enjoy reading about her sewing ventures, as well as her efforts to create a vintage capsule wardrobe.  I'm ever in favor of a minimalist closet, and of being very intentional about my sewing efforts, so her latest blog post caught my attention.  I've heard of Project 333 before (possibly from Stephanie); the idea is that you choose 33 items for your closet for 3 months, and then rotate again in 3 months, according to the season.  I've sort of used it as a rough guide to my clothing for the past year or so, but I still felt like getting dressed in the morning was a lot of work.

I've been doing some reorganizing and sorting, as part of my ongoing effort to keep our family's clothing simple and pared down.  For a long time, I've stored off season/maternity clothing in soft Rubbermaid and Ziploc totes under my bed, as there is a scant 4" of head space under the running board, so hard-sided bins will not fit under my bed.  I use two XL 10 gallon Ziploc totes and two small 5 gallon Rubbermaid totes.  (I use the 15 and 30 gallon Rubbermaid totes for other soft storage needs throughout the house and like them very much).  

I ended up sorting out my own stuff yesterday, and ruthlessly piled items by season, fit, wearability, etc.  I pulled everything out, including off season stuff or clothes that don't fit well right now, and I realized then that my clothing was sorting nicely into seasonal piles.  A few months ago I put a bin in the basement for the few maternity items I'm keeping, plus some vintage stuff that is too small or fragile to wear regularly.  I added a few more things to it after my sort yesterday--mostly some hand mades that I like but am not wearing regularly for one reason or another. 

I decided to put all the spring-related items into one five gallon tote, all my winter skirts in another five gallon tote, all the fall stuff into one of the extra large Ziploc totes, and the winter stuff into the other. There is a bit of overlap with the seasons, obviously, particularly with cardigans and skirts, but for the most part, it is neat and organized. 

 I'm giving up on the idea of having a wardrobe that works for the whole year--it just isn't realistic when you live in a climate that swings from 100 degrees to 10 below throughout the year.  And while having a dress-heavy wardrobe is easy in some respects, I do like options with my cardigans to keep my dresses feeling fresh.  (I also struggle dreadfully with feeling cold in the winter, so sometimes I'm wearing many many layers just to be comfortable in my house).  I'm aware that a full drawer or bursting closet is stressful to me, but I have to balance that against my daily clothing needs and my laundry cycle (which is quite long in the summer time)

The end result is that I finally feel like my summer wardrobe is useful, and also that I have a logical place to go for the next season when it is time to switch things out.  I made a list of all my clothing, organized by season, and then started counting, and it turns out that I have between 26-30 garments per season, not counting shoes, accessories, and undergarments.  I have four pairs of shoes in the vestibule, which feels like enough for variety but not too much to clutter up the shoe shelf.  I may put the closed-toe navy sandals back in the basement as I wore them a lot this spring, but not as much since it got really hot and nasty (plus I'm hoping for a pair of red shoes for my birthday in a few weeks!)

So here is my Summer 30:

Separates:

Red 1940s twill skirt

Green linen-cotton Hollyburn skirt

Navy linen skirt (pictured at top of post)

White linen skirt

Feedsack blouse

Art Deco blouse

Bunny Blouse

Vintage floral lawn blouse

3 cardigans (one not pictured)

2 knit t-shirts (the other one pictured at the top of this post)

Dresses:

Green and blue seersucker dresses (blog post on the blue soon!)

Vintage medallion seersucker dress

Watermelon dress

White voile dress (eshakti)

1934 Seersucker dress

1922 One Hour Dress

Chambray dress

Pink linen dress

Mesa dress

Baby Got Quilt Back dress

Fa So La dress

Green Geometry dress

Spotty orange dress

Melody rayon challis dress (blog post coming soon!)

blue knit dress

Green cookie book dress (cut but not sewn yet)

I'm not counting things like belts and jewelry in my list, because I tend to rotate amongst a small set of items anyway, and I use my belts and jewelry for variety with my dresses, since I don't wear a lot of separates right now.  My waist measurement changes enough that I need options for belts/sashes, etc.  30 garments give me a little bit of leeway to buy or make something else this season (although, honestly, I'm ready to stop machine sewing for the season, given the heat; the Green cookie book dress might have to wait until fall).  There are a few dresses that I wore a ton in May and June, but am not reaching for now that the heat is really on, and might get reclassed in my spring wardrobe, as it is a little on the light side.  We'll see how the rest of the season shakes out.

I suppose if this is helpful to anyone besides me, I might revisit it again in the fall when I change over. (I might do so anyway, just for my own amusement).

Talking Tuesday: Restoring Mayberry

A few months ago I started reading this blog called Restoring Mayberry, written by an American living in Ireland.  Oddly enough, he is from Ferguson, MO (yes, that Ferguson) and is living a back-to-the-land sort of life with his daughter in Ireland.  He blogs about a wide range of topics, including survivalism, conservation, oral history, homeschooling, and local life.  His posts are usually brief, but always interesting.  Last week, he posted a brief post about a conversation with his local postman, and the last little bit of it really stood out to me.

"Why don’t you deliver the post by bicycle any more, I asked?

“Ah, they’re making me take a car,” he said. “And people get big deliveries these days, to a house full of stuff. Not the same as the old days. But the older people still greet me the same as always.”

Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry, 15 October, 2014, emphasis mine.

I'm reconsidering how much we "buy ahead" and store for a rainy day.  It isn't much, actually, as our city space is rather prohibitive in terms of storage, but I'm thinking a lot lately about how, historically, people lived much more hand to mouth, and paradoxically how the abundance of products has made us worry more about having enough.  Perhaps it is time to think about what "just enough" means in terms of food and household purchases.  I think Brian Kaller would say there's nothing wrong with being prepared (he advocates survivalist-style preparedness on his blog), but I do think there is something to be said for being prudent also.  Anyway.  Things to ponder.

Toy Storage

Reading books is one of favorite pastimes.

A friend recently asked me about our approach to toys, toy storage, etc., especially after the toy orgy of Christmas.  The short answer is that I don't have the answer.  Every family is different, and how we navigate the toys question with our respective families is probably going to be different than whatever your family does. 

When Piglet was born, we wanted him to have wooden toys, no electronic bells and whistles, no plastic toys, etc.  We (diplomatically) told both sides of the family what sort of things we thought were appropriate sorts of gifts for him, and pointed them in the direction of several wooden-toy companies with online sites.  We had a lot of high-minded ideals back then, and while many of them have flown out the window with time and additional children, we have tried to stick to a few toy principles over the years.  I've given up on the dream of having an all-wooden toy bin.  Frankly, my boys are very, erm, aggressive with their toys that it just isn't a good idea to have that many heavy wooden projectile objects lying around.  

Until Boo got into trains late last year, the duplos were the most fought-over thing in our house.  Now they fight over trains and duplos, but mostly trains. (This photo is also super unusual--they almost always dump all the duplos out on the floor and then play with them--it drives me bonkers)

We do have a good number of wooden toys however, and they do have a certain durability that most plastic toys lack.  We've also held fast on the electronic toy ban--this is getting trickier as the boys are getting older, and sometime people just give us things that the boys latch onto immediately that don't fit our toy ethos.  Usually what happens is that we immediately remove the battery of said toy and keep a sharp eye out for when the toy is no longer interesting (at which point it goes to the great toy heaven in the sky).  I try to steer relatives away from "big" toys like train tables, or basketball hoops, or large Little People-type set ups.  (We've had a terrible time with one side of the family giving toys that are hugely age inappropriate, and it has been difficult to steer that side toward toys that my boys are of an age to enjoy rather than be frustrated by, but that is another discussion).  They are difficult to store and I find that the kids don't use those sorts of things enough to make it worth keeping them out all the time.  I like to be able to put the toys away and have our living room look like an adult space instead of a playroom.  I also cull toys about every 4-6 months, and the ones that have an electronic component are usually the first ones to go.  We are also fortunate that most of our relatives don't come over "looking" for the gifts they've given.  

One instance of not being able to put off a well-meaning relative.  Outside of the day we set it up (and I took these pictures), the boys have been completely uninterested.

The point of this post is not to explain how to navigate the morass of (well-meaning) gift-giving relatives.  I wanted instead to address toy storage, and how many toys we try to keep around, given our space issues.  I find that the toys we have fall into a few categories: building toys, imagination station toys, stuffed animals/dolls, trains, books, and puzzles.  I'm sure this will change as the kids get older, but as of this writing my oldest is five and my youngest is 16 months, so that's where we are.  (I should also add that we don't have a television, so our kids aren't exposed to adverts for children, and they rarely go into stores with toys in them, so we haven't had to deal with them requesting "branded" stuff yet; I'm aware that is coming...)

Currently, we have toy storage in two places: the living room and the little pass through room next to the boys' bedroom.  I also keep a DVD storage box of little things under Birdie's bed for when she gets up early in the morning and needs entertainment before we are ready to get her up.  We have big built-in bookcases in the living room on either side of the couch, and each bookcase has a cabinet underneath.  The cabinet to the right of the couch is given over to the kids' toys.  The other cabinets have child locks on them and are used for storing other things.  We also divided the kids' books and put about half in a dedicated sling-style bookcase upstairs, and the other half on the shelf above the toy cabinet. 

I'm also a big fan of toy bins--I think toys should be binned by type, and that kids should learn to put toys away in their respective bins.  I'm also NOT a fan of toys with a million moving pieces (wooden train sets, duplos, small piece puzzles).  We have a few things that fall into this category, and they generally drive me nuts, but they are also the toys that the boys play with most frequently, so I can't really do anything about it.   I also like having a toy rotation system--I find that it is helpful to have a certain number of toys that are "not in circulation" and rotate things every few months.  The toys out of rotation currently fit in a 12x12x10 bin and are kept near the current toys--I dislike storing toys in the basement because I forget to rotate them up, and then I might as well donate them.   

The living room toy cabinet with the kids' bookshelf on top.  The boys' books are on the left and Birdie's books are on the right.

As for the overall number of toys, I don't have a magic number.  All I can say is that less is more. I read Simplicity Parenting and Organized Simplicity and they both informed my thinking about toys and kids.  I will say that there is a fine line between too many and not enough toys, especially when there are three kids who are competing for them.  We are probably a bit on the austere side as to how many total toys we have, but I find that if we have too many more, the kids don't actually play with them--they just pull out the components and scatter them on the floor.  If we have too little, they fight like rabid dogs over what is there.  (Even with what we do have, they fight terribly over the toys, but I think it is worse when there aren't enough to go around).  

The living room toy cabinet.  It is about 13 inches deep.

So here is what we have: a large bin of duplos, half full.  Two bins of train tracks and components, plus one bin of trains.  One bin of dress up clothes.  A bin of vintage Little People.  A bin containing a stacking wooden train.  Another bin containing a regular wood train.  A bin of assorted cars.  A Little People Zoo and Farm (in their own totes).  A bin of miscellaneous stuff that Birdie plays with (some older baby toys, measuring cups, old wallets, discarded cell phones, old keys, etc).  (I should add that most of my bins are shoebox size Rubbermaid totes although I do have a few that are 12x12x10 as you can see from the photos).  I have a few things that are not binned, but that is mostly a function of the fact that they are stand-alone toys: Mack the Truck from Cars, Roger the Airplane from Cars 2, a Wegman's wooden truck with barrels, and a Little People Tractor.  The trains, duplos, dress up clothes, and Birdie's toys are stored in the living room.  The rest is stored in a smallish toy box on the second floor that doubles as a changing table for Boo.  The sling-style bookcase upstairs also has two drawers, one of which holds puzzles, and other holds out of rotation toys (Mr. Potato Head, some dress up hats, play pots and pans, plus one or two little things).  

The toy box on the second floor.  I keep a changing pad on top for changing Boo.

A small word about books.  We are book people--my husband and I are both academics, with book collections to match, and we both read constantly.  When we moved into this house, we had 60 boxes of books.  We've since culled about 20 boxes worth, but we still have a rather significant book collection.  I have a rather visceral connection to books, and it is hard for me to get rid of them, but I've realized over the years that sometimes it just has to be done.  I try to cull books about once a quarter, both for us adults, and for the kids.  We are given a lot of kids books, plus I buy some throughout the year, so it can get out of hand pretty quickly.  Anything that is torn or ripped beyond repair gets recycled.  (I usually fix books with packing tape until they can't be fixed anymore)  Anything that the kids have shown no interest in, or is just plain annoying to read more than once (hello, Eric Carle!) is donated if in good shape.  Then I have to start making hard choices about what to keep.  I find certain books are in the "never to be donated" category for one reason or another, and some end up in the maybe pile.  I find it helpful to empty the bookcases when I do a cull, just to make sure I'm evaluating everything together and making a global decision about what to keep.  I put the "keep" books back, and then go through the maybe pile.  By the time I'm finished, I usually hope to have the bookcase half-full on the second floor and half full on the first.  

I don't love this book case--it doesn't hold very many books, and it is hard to keep neat, but the boys can reshelve their books without assistance from me (unlike on the first floor), so I guess that counts for something.

 A final note.  I've had lots of people come into my house at random times and exclaim how clean everything is.  I think they mean "neat," because my house isn't antiseptic.  There are plenty of times where toys are all over the living room floor and the place looks like a wreck.  But never for very long.  I make a point of cleaning up toys several times a day--usually before meals, and always before bed/nap times. I find it helps not only to keep the toys from spreading all over the place, but also to calm the house down and bring things back to baseline.  I'm still working on getting the boys to take more responsibility to clean up after themselves--they need a lot of direction and supervision to effectively clean up after themselves.  I make them help me pick up toys in the hopes that some day I can simply tell them to do it and they will clean up on their own.  Having fewer toys and easy-to-understand storage methods greatly increases the chance that they will be able to! 

Upstairs, Downstairs

Neil Simon's play Barefoot in the Park (adapted for the screen in 1967 and starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford), has a running gag about the stairs in a 5th floor walk-up in New York City. The characters interact with the stairs in various ways throughout the play and film; in a way, the stairs become a silent character in the unfolding story of newly-weds Paul and Corie Bratter.

I realized recently that my life is dominated by stairs.  Our house has a total of 47 stairs in it, and that fact defines our life here.  We do nothing in the house without climbing at least a few stairs.  There are four stairs from the sidewalk into the front door, and then the first flight up to the bathroom is about 12 steps (plus one step to get into the bathroom).  Another five or so steps to the second floor where my office, the prayer room, and the boys' room are situated, then 10 steps to the 3rd floor bathroom (plus one step into the bathroom).  Finally, another 8 or so steps up to the 3rd floor where our bedroom and the nursery are located.  Oh, plus 11 steps to the basement from the living room on the first floor.  So a lot of steps to get around the house.  I live in fear of having a broken leg or a major abdominal surgery that precludes any serious stair climbing (I had a stress fracture in my foot this past spring that was bad enough).

Having so many stairs leads to some bizarre behavior.  In this part of the country, houses were built with narrow winding staircases, so most queen box springs won't fit up them.  There is a niche market here for split queen box springs.  We actually have a king-size bed, so getting the two twin box springs up the stairs was okay, but the mattress had to be folded in half like a taco to make the corners and stay under the low ceilings.  We had to hoist two wooden wardrobes up the outside of the house on rubber straps up to the third floor because they couldn't make the corner at the top of the first floor landing.  (That was quite an ordeal--it is common to hire a crane to lift furniture up to the roof and then drop it down the backside to whatever level you need it.  We found some guys who did it with an assisted hoist up the back wall and over to the third floor landing and all I can say is that I'm glad I was at a meeting while they were doing it--my mother said it was terrifying to watch).  The dresser in our bedroom barely made it around the corners.  Those wardrobes will probably be staying with the house, should we ever decide to sell it.  The odd closet situation in the house means that winter coats are stored on the 2nd floor and extra shoes in the basement.  We have a vestibule with coat hooks and a shoe rack for storing in-use seasonal items and a few pairs of shoes per person, but the overflow has no where to go on the first floor.

 We have a complicated system of baby gates to prevent the youngest members of the family from trying out stair-climbing before they are ready and supervised.  Because it is a LOOOONG way down if they fall.  My other perennial fear related to stairs is of falling down them.  I have a mild phobia of heights, and honestly, three floors up is my limit.  We looked at houses with four or even six flights up, and I got a bit sick just above the third floor.  The stairs and gates also make it a bit tricky to figure out the best place to put the children at times.  Mostly they play in the living room, but sometimes it is better to separate the boys and put one in their bedroom (on the 2nd floor) and one in the living room (on the 1st floor).  It is hard to know where to be at those times because both areas need a bit of adult supervision even though they are child-proofed.  So I end up splitting the difference and sitting in my office (on the 2nd floor in the front of the house) and running up and down between the living room and 2nd floor as needed.  Or I'm trying to make dinner in the kitchen and listening for any odd noises from the boys' room above me and hoping that nothing terribly destructive is going on.  (I know these years when they require more or less constant supervision are fleeting and that someday very soon, many of these concerns will be non-issues, but for now, it is a conversation I must have with myself all day long).

Please sir, won't you let me out?

We own two hand vacs because I don't like trekking the kitchen one up to the 3rd floor bathroom and back down again on a regular basis.  (As an aside, if you are in the market for a good hand vac, this model has been fabuloso).  I have a decent upright vacuum that I rescued from our neighbor's curb that is languishing in the basement because of--you guessed it: the stairs.  It is difficult to clean well in a short amount of time and also keep the kids contained and safe with all the stairs.  I end up spending much of my cleaning time running up and down stairs to deal with crises with the kids.

We have a double stroller that I don't love because the model I really wanted would have to be stored in the basement.  Which means hauling it up 11 steps and down another four every time I want to use it.  The model we have can be stored at the top of the basement stairs, which means a tight corner every time I go to do laundry, but at least I'm not hauling 21 pounds of stroller up and down a flight of stairs all the time (and trying to keep the baby from following me down in the process).

I've bought albums on iTunes that I own because I can't bear to walk down 15 steps (and then back up again) to retrieve a CD from the living room.  We consolidate trips up and down by placing items to go up or down the stairs at strategic locations.  Items placed outside the second or third floor bathroom landing are meant to go down.  Items placed on the second step of the third floor stairs are meant to go up.  Anything on the landings in between is open to interpretation.  There is usually a pile of something on the fourth step of the first floor stairs, waiting to go up, and there is almost always something on the third floor bathroom landing waiting to go down.  There have been multiple occasions of dirty laundry going up and clean laundry going down several flights of stairs unnecessarily.  I'd benefit from a dumb waiter, I think, except I'm afraid the boys would use it for joy riding.  We tend to have duplicates of common analgesics because who wants to go up or down more flights of stairs than necessary when there is pain involved?  We have a diaper changing station on each floor--well, for obvious reasons.

It also means that when the doorbell rings, unless I'm in the living room (which isn't usually the case), I'm tearing down several flights of stairs, usually with a baby or toddler on my hip.  My favorite is when the UPS man rings and I'm changing the baby's diaper in the 3rd floor nursery, which is as far from the front door as one can possibly get and still be in the house.  At least the UPS guy is familiar with us and knows to wait a moment before giving up.  The postal service is another bird entirely--they often just drop a notice in the box without ringing the bell at all!  (The mail service in this city is notoriously bad--there are some neighborhoods where people will pay more to mail stuff via the postal service at Mailboxes Etc. instead of dealing with the ridiculousness of the local post office)  But I'm getting off track.

Having four steps to the sidewalk means bumping a stroller backward down four steps, and then bumping it back up again after an outing.  The double stroller is particularly troublesome in this way, being somewhat wide and unwieldy.  (Plus the fact that it weighs over 80 pounds once you put kids into it--I usually load and unload the kids on the sidewalk, but I still have to get the stroller in and out the door and up and down those steps!)  It means wet pants on rainy days for any children who aren't yet confident stair walkers and need to go up one knee at a time.

On the other hand, having so many stairs means the children learn how to climb up and down stairs fairly young, and are confident on the stairs much younger than children in houses with fewer stairs.  My two younger children both climbed up stairs confidently before age one, and the two older ones were going down stairs fairly well by 18 months.  (The baby is just turning one, so I can't say yet how well she will be going down as she just got good at going up).  I also get exercise every day going up and down all those stairs, usually hauling a load of something--laundry, toddler, baby, or sometimes all three!  What can I say?  I have talent.

On Personal Space

If there is one thing I took away from my experience of living abroad it is that the notion of personal space is a peculiarly modern (and post-modern) notion, and that Americans in particular have an overdeveloped sense of it. While I don’t want to parse out all the reasons why Americans have such a need for personal space, I do think that it is somewhat unhealthy, at least on a spiritual level, because it allows us to live in unconnected bubbles of our own making, even within our families.

One only need board a subway in Moscow, or a minibus in Central Asia to discover that personal space as we Americans think of it simply does not exist. People are crammed in cheek by jowl, and no one is much bothered by the closeness of strangers in public places. There is always room for one more person. (By way of example, I once spent a 45 minute bus ride with a man’s hand pressed intimately against my rear end not because he was getting fresh but because he had no where else to go with it on the crowded bus). I’ve not been to China or Japan, but have seen enough photos and read enough articles to know that the sense of personal space is even less an issue there. Scientists who study these things have found that Americans require an arm length in all directions around them in order to feel comfortable. I find that most of the rest of the world requires much less. The lack of personal space in the public arena also translates to less personal space for the private home as well. Children are placed all in one room together, or sometimes the whole family shares a common living space. The life of the family revolves around the kitchen, where much is discussed and the inner life is nurtured.

The average size of a family home in much of the rest of the world is much smaller than the average American home (currently 2400 square feet in most of the country, up from just under 1000 in 1950). This is to say that some homes in America are much smaller, and some are much bigger. Naturally, homes built in the earliest part of the 20^th century, or before tend to be smaller in size. Many homes on the East Coast date to the Revolution or the decades shortly after. Philadelphia is stocked with row homes, many of which are around 1000 square feet, and believe me, you pay for the privilege of owning one of the nicer ones. I won’t even begin to address the many space challenges of the rabbit hutches that many New Yorkers inhabit. While we would love to live in New York City some day, I can address only the space challenges I’ve faced thus far. When my husband was in seminary, we lived in a 500 square foot detached home with exactly one closet, and had to get creative with our stuff. (Being a dual academic family had necessitated a lot of books over the years). Yet, we were happy in that little house. It was cozy, and intelligently laid out. We lived with much less "stuff" and it was mentally liberating. We even managed to hold a few social gatherings in that house, cramming 15-20 people into our front room and kitchen for fellowship and games. No one seemed to mind, as the housing situation was the same for all seminarians—small, cramped, and in ill-repair.

After seminary, we moved to Philadelphia and bought a row home that needed a lot of TLC. Our house is 1656 square feet, with three floors, and an unfinished basement that is pretty tolerable by most Philly row home standards. We skim coated the walls and floor of the basement with cement to clean it up a bit. Our washer and dryer live down there, as does food pantry overflow, suitcases, children’s clothing that isn’t currently in use, Christmas decorations (currently in two bins), canning equipment, leftover lumber from the big renovation we did on the house when we bought it, plus all the things one keeps around for home repairs and the like. Our basement is approximately 400 square feet plus a 100 square foot crawl space that is unusable, so we use it to store the left over lumber. There are technically five bedrooms, but one room is a pass through room unsuitable for long term bedroom use and neither of the two full size closets in the house are in rooms currently used as bedrooms.

When we first decided how we wanted to allocate space in our new home, we chose to put our bedroom on the third floor in the front room, and the baby in the back room, making it into a nursery. There is a pass-through door between the master bedroom and nursery, so sometimes it feels like one oddly shaped room. Thus, for the first few years in the house, the third floor was reserved primarily for sleeping and the rest of the house for other things.

The second floor has three rooms that all connect to one another. The front room we made into a guest room (it is one of the rooms with a full size closet). The guest room is directly below the master, and there is no ceiling insulation between the two rooms, so we are learning to navigate the murky privacy arena. The back room was originally my office plus an extra playspace for the baby. The middle room we gave over to our family icon corner, plus my husband’s desk, so he would have a place to work at home as necessary. The middle room, which is entirely a pass-through room, being open to the back room entirely, and cut off from the front room by only a glass-panel door, is the other room with a full size closet. In short, my husband and I swelled our personal spaces to include nearly all the house. I had my office, the kitchen, and sometimes the living room as space to call my own. My husband had his office, the living room and the sometimes mancave of the basement to call his own, in addition to the spacious office he occupies while at work. We could put our arms out and turn around in a circle and never hit anything else. I am a person who craves lots of alone time and I loved having a whole room to myself in which to retreat and work.

There is a monastery that we love in northern California. Whenever we go there, I’m struck by how the monks live in small spaces, without modern conveniences, and yet are content. There are always people around, and the spaces are small, but it never feels cramped. The community functions around you, and there is always some quiet corner to go and recharge, but there is also much loving fellowship, communal work, and daily worship. There is much emulate there, and I want to somehow recreate that in my own home. While I know we fall very short in this regard, I hope that by re-envisioning the use of space in our home, we may begin to create our own family community that is unbothered by lack of personal space. I hope to further outgrow my own need for personal space. I miss the closeness of living in a culture without it, but have struggled to know how to recreate it here.

As our children have grown in number and size, we have had to compress the amount of space we each use. My original dream of having each space have a clearly defined purpose is gone, and I no longer think it necessary. That is a good thing, I think. The living room is now the primary play area for my sons, and the guest room also doubles as an office for my husband and me now. I do most of my creative work in a small corner of the room. I’ve given up the idea of having a whole room to myself, and have started to think that perhaps I shouldn’t have it in any case. Perhaps part of my journey of salvation is learning to live in community with people without needing to “recharge.”