back in the saddle again
on home design, pt. 7
Thank you again to all who filled out my retreat survey, and congrats to Keller G. on winning the gift card. My only conclusion thus far is that y’all are up for almost anything chill and beautiful, so I’m looking forward to some lovely weekends later this year!
Here is what happened with the 2024 house design project: On January 6th, 2024, I declared I would spend the year contemplating and designing our forever home. On January 7th, or perhaps January 6th at approximately 8:03pm, my wonderful husband turned to me and said, “You know the big old house at ~? The owner might be interested in selling it to us.”
While we haven’t bought a house, we are not under contract to buy a house, and we will likely live in our current cozy rental for another year or more, the door of possibility was opened and took the wind right out of my design sails, which frankly were already a tad limp given work and toddler parenting.
In the new year’s cleaning of my office, I uncovered the mind map I made brainstorming ideas for last year’s writing project.
The itch is back again, but I make not a single suggestion as to a posting schedule. Just some of my current thoughts:
Today I’m much less concerned with floor plans and more interested in concepts and feelings. A new floor plan (a) won’t be in order if we do buy an existing home and (b) when it comes down to it, how much does a floor plan matter? It’s not something I want to agonize over (though a little agonizing is inevitable in a problem with nearly infinite available solutions).
Based on my mind map, I’ve made a potential list of questions I want to explore:
What aspects of a home support and bring life to different parts of my personality – particularly my introversion, Highly Sensitive Person-hood, and Enneagram 6 traits?
Same question for the other personalities in my family – my husband, a tactile Enneagram 8 with a strong 1-to-1 subtype, and my toddler with budding TBD personhood.
How can our home support our favored modes of gathering (1-on-1’s and smaller groups), but remain open to changes or bigger occasions?
What’s working in our current home? What is not? Break this question and next down by categories TBD.
What worked in previous homes? What did not?
In what ways can our home collect our family history & values in a visible & meaningful way (rather than in legal boxes and detritus)?
How can our home support our vision for a family that’s a team on mission together?
A couple of these are big questions that contain several more, but I look forward to getting into it – hopefully sometime before next January, but *shrug emoji*.
I can’t make it out of a post on homes and houses without saying it feels a little odd to be writing this when so many homes in LA are on fire or in danger of it. Laura Tremaine is a favorite online creator of mine who lives in LA (and so far, so safe, but they did evacuate over the weekend) and says gifts to Direct Relief, the LA Fire Department Foundation, or the Red Cross are helpful. Our family is making a donation to Caritas, our local organization supporting the homeless in Richmond.
Amy