Quality Not Quantity; Re-Thinking What Makes a Place Feel Like a Home

My old design partner used to joke that my design style was "less is more" while hers was "more is more!"  Apparently there is some truth to that remark.  Not that i lean heavily toward a minimalistic or contemporary home, but I definitely have a love of quality over quantity.  That, is not new.

I remember years ago when I first became acquainted with the concept of "the not-so-big-house."  I was selling window coverings and was invited into a doctor's new home for himself, his wife, and his young family.  I had seen his last house.  Big. Close to 5000 square feet of big. Spacious.  Borderline ridiculous, really.  This one:  closer to 2400 square feet - screaming of quality, craftsmanship, coziness, attention to details, and lots and lots of built-ins.  Built-in desks, built-in cabinetry, bookshelves, and custom-made bunkbeds.

Just a couple of years ago I attended a Green Building for Designers program where I downed 3 venti soy lattes a day to keep awake through seemingly endless HVAC details.  What I was alert for and intrigued with were the sections on  footprint - taking me back to the home I had walked into and the design concept I had been introduced to years ago.

Sarah Susanka publishes a few amazing books under the title of The Not So Big House.  The concepts resonate with how many of us really desire to live as families in our homes, but somehow got so far away from.  Most of us desire our houses to feel like homes rather than museums, yet in an effort to create a little buffer between parents and teenagers, we in actuality created a barricade.  Kids all the way downstairs with their own family rooms and bathrooms.  Did we purposely want to send the message that we no longer wanted to be involved in their lives?  Or did we really just want a little space where we could read a book in privacy for an hour or two?

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing posts on the different elements of the "not so big house" and highlighting some of my design favorites.  It is really a concept we can all adapt as Americans as a whole seem to finally be revisiting the wisdom of consumerism.  We can apply these principles as we re-visit our current spaces - how we use it, what we need; plan for a remodel; or consider building our next or second home.

Not all of us can afford quality AND quantity, but when given the choice, select quality.  Scale back, focus on details and craftsmanship and you just may end up feeling in the end that you didn't compromise one bit!