House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live

Author: Winifred Gallagher
Date Finished: 3/3/06

I haven't been reading much lately and I have only one excuse: We've moved. Moving is a huge hassle, in case you didn't know. My books are packed, my booklight is still missing and I can barely sit still to read to the kids without looking longingly at the boxes in the family room that still need to be processed.

But, as I was leaving Barnes and Noble last week, this book on the front table caught my eye. Gallagher wrote a series of essays about different rooms of the house, discussing what functions they served historically and in current times and relating information from environmental psychology about how our rooms affect our quality of life. As I look at the mostly empty rooms in the house we've moved into, this book supported my sense that we need to think carefully about what we want to happen in this house before we fill it up with furniture and the always proliferating stuff of our lives.

I confess that I think about houses a lot. I look at the real estate ads and wonder if the houses in the pictures would be the perfect place to organize our lives. Our new house is a very happy place for me. It has enough room to separate the functions of our family, so that we aren't competing for the same space. But still, there is nagging doubt, because the linoleum is cracked, the grout in the tiled hallway is coming loose and there aren't wood floors or granite countertops anywhere to be seen. When I say nagging doubt, I guess I mean competition because I like the look of these things and I sometimes believe that these things affect your happiness. "If only we had a beautiful kitchen with stainless steel appliances, then I could be happy..." So I get anxious about choosing stuff, fearful that I might make a mistake. And on our current budget, mistakes won't be fixed for a very long time.

So as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I don't want to go down that road of equating a pretty house with a happy house. Rison noticed that our house doesn't have very much "fancy stuff" and he's right, it doesn't. I'm not sure if I want "fancy stuff" but I do want stuff that looks good and more importantly, serves a good purpose. I want a rocking chair in the kitchen alcove where I can sit in the sunshine with a fussy baby and look out into the backyard. I want curtains in the bedrooms with street facing windows that pull shut to give us privacy, and I want table lamps so that I'm not reading bedtime stories under the glare of the overhead light fixture. I want a house where brownies are baked regularly, books are read and talked about, kisses and hugs are the normal morning greeting and sunshine fills the rooms.

House Thinking opened my eyes a little more to the possibilities of making this house a home. I may not actually read it again, but I will think about it as I plan and execute and implement the furnishing of this home where I hope to live a calm and satisfying life.