Month: November 2020

I’ve never wanted a house or property, but this has diverged into I don’t want a house consisting of myriad small rooms designed from a template and built

eighty years ago on a small suburban property alongside hundreds of others.

So my frustration with the housing market has come to this: I’m going to study architecture. I’m going to understand the fundamentals of function and design. When I feel sufficiently capable, I’m going to design my space. When I’m sufficiently moneyed (perhaps at retirement at this rate, if retirement is still a thing in 2050), I’m going to buy land. This land is going to be some distance from a nearest neighbor. I like neighbors who are calm and chill, respectful of space and privacy. I don’t know how one can suss out neighbors’ personalities before moving into a place so I’ll keep pondering that point. Perhaps neighbors who buy land with space between others speaks to the nature of their personalities already.

I’ll admit to you here that I am lazy, but I have converted my guilt about laziness into disdain toward cleaning. Cleaning feels like the most meaningless usage of our limited time, especially the chemical- and liquid-ridden cleaning needs of an interior bathroom. Writing, drawing, biking, walking, hiking, driving, working, swimming, fishing, gardening, climbing are all clearly much better uses of time, but also reading, watching a movie, playing a video game. I dwell on time and how that is ultimately all we have.

We give our time to loved ones.

We exchange our time for a wage or salary. We receive goods and services from people whose time was spent designing, creating, and selling them. There are so many more worthwhile things to do than clean, and especially clean a bathroom. What a waste. And despite these intensely odious feelings, I will also not relent to the obvious out of hiring a person to clean my space. That is another way some people give their time in exchange for (not nearly enough) money to exchange for goods and services and shelter. But I am a capable adult and I feel there must be a better solution for myself.

These images carry the risk of painting my notions as whims driven by a cabin porn fervor. While I enjoy a small, rustic-feeling space as much as the next person, I sought them out to see if my ideas about the ideal space were realistic. This particular cabin in the woods was designed by an architecture firm and is decorated in such a way that it leans on the Instagram lifestyle aesthetic that creates dioramas for museums dedicated to twenty-first century life, versus feeling like a real space for a real human being. But the essential design, stripped of its decorative elements, is perfect. It is superb and so much of what I hope to achieve is represented here.

The toilet is an intensely personal space. I think anyone who is familiar with the worst real estate has to offer has seen a photo or two of a toilet that has been placed in a horrible place, whether next to a kitchen or in some tiny closet. But this separation of toilet from a dedicated bath space is critical to what I want. I live alone now, I lived alone for the past thirteen years, and I’ll likely live alone to the end. I cannot live with other people without the fragility of my stable nature giving way to anxiety and questionable coping mechanisms. Living alone, I can do this. It’s just me. A visitor will, of course, receive the courtesy of my stepping away if they’re in need of my facilities.

The outdoor shower is just all I want, really. Showers and their horrid humidity should be outside. Water should be free to escape (or gathered and stored for conservation’s sake), away from our interiors where humidity and water drops just about ruin everything. This example is rather exposed for my liking, but accordion-fold barriers of some kind would easily solve it. A shower outside is just about as close to free as it must get. Time beneath drops of water slows to an immeasurable crawl. The world and its time can do what they like, but in that open space there is the waiting interior, perhaps the sounds of life, pondering things that last only as long as the water is running, except for the time or two when a thought embeds itself in the center of being and won’t shake loose.

Photo source. 

I’ve never wanted a house or property, but this has diverged into I don’t want a house consisting of myriad small rooms designed from a template and built

eighty years ago on a small suburban property alongside hundreds of others.

So my frustration with the housing market has come to this: I’m going to study architecture. I’m going to understand the fundamentals of function and design. When I feel sufficiently capable, I’m going to design my space. When I’m sufficiently moneyed (perhaps at retirement at this rate, if retirement is still a thing in 2050), I’m going to buy land. This land is going to be some distance from a nearest neighbor. I like neighbors who are calm and chill, respectful of space and privacy. I don’t know how one can suss out neighbors’ personalities before moving into a place so I’ll keep pondering that point. Perhaps neighbors who buy land with space between others speaks to the nature of their personalities already.

I’ll admit to you here that I am lazy, but I have converted my guilt about laziness into disdain toward cleaning. Cleaning feels like the most meaningless usage of our limited time, especially the chemical- and liquid-ridden cleaning needs of an interior bathroom. Writing, drawing, biking, walking, hiking, driving, working, swimming, fishing, gardening, climbing are all clearly much better uses of time, but also reading, watching a movie, playing a video game. I dwell on time and how that is ultimately all we have.

We give our time to loved ones.

We exchange our time for a wage or salary. We receive goods and services from people whose time was spent designing, creating, and selling them. There are so many more worthwhile things to do than clean, and especially clean a bathroom. What a waste. And despite these intensely odious feelings, I will also not relent to the obvious out of hiring a person to clean my space. That is another way some people give their time in exchange for (not nearly enough) money to exchange for goods and services and shelter. But I am a capable adult and I feel there must be a better solution for myself.

These images carry the risk of painting my notions as whims driven by a cabin porn fervor. While I enjoy a small, rustic-feeling space as much as the next person, I sought them out to see if my ideas about the ideal space were realistic. This particular cabin in the woods was designed by an architecture firm and is decorated in such a way that it leans on the Instagram lifestyle aesthetic that creates dioramas for museums dedicated to twenty-first century life, versus feeling like a real space for a real human being. But the essential design, stripped of its decorative elements, is perfect. It is superb and so much of what I hope to achieve is represented here.

The toilet is an intensely personal space. I think anyone who is familiar with the worst real estate has to offer has seen a photo or two of a toilet that has been placed in a horrible place, whether next to a kitchen or in some tiny closet. But this separation of toilet from a dedicated bath space is critical to what I want. I live alone now, I lived alone for the past thirteen years, and I’ll likely live alone to the end. I cannot live with other people without the fragility of my stable nature giving way to anxiety and questionable coping mechanisms. Living alone, I can do this. It’s just me. A visitor will, of course, receive the courtesy of my stepping away if they’re in need of my facilities.

The outdoor shower is just all I want, really. Showers and their horrid humidity should be outside. Water should be free to escape (or gathered and stored for conservation’s sake), away from our interiors where humidity and water drops just about ruin everything. This example is rather exposed for my liking, but accordion-fold barriers of some kind would easily solve it. A shower outside is just about as close to free as it must get. Time beneath drops of water slows to an immeasurable crawl. The world and its time can do what they like, but in that open space there is the waiting interior, perhaps the sounds of life, pondering things that last only as long as the water is running, except for the time or two when a thought embeds itself in the center of being and won’t shake loose.

Photo source.