There's Nothing Wrong With Your House

I wrote this article after seeing the people in my life struggle with the image of their homes: whether or not they were ready for the judgement of company (both loved ones or strangers), or the peering eyes of social media. Folks who work in the worlds of architecture or design feel this need for personal curation particularly badly, because the ability to craft a space is tied to their profession. 

For all the joking on this blog about contractor errors and heinously tacky decor, part of the reason I only use houses that are for sale is because the majority of these houses are staged to sell, and (with the exception of maybe a few family photos) are relatively distanced from the lives of the individuals who live there. This makes them ripe for cultural or social criticism, because staged houses are an excellent presentation of what aspects of a home are explicitly culturally desirable, commodified, and consumed, across several decades. 

If anything, the McMansion is the ultimate form of the type of house-fussery I discuss in the article. They are houses designed to impress others, to serve as material, architectural signifiers of the American aesthetic ideal of financial security and social success. They accomplish this at the expense of creating architectures of isolation (every space is demarcated and communal spaces are for once-a-year “entertainment” rather than day-to-day familial existence), anti-social sentiments (distance from city/town centers/neighbors, gated communities, hostile HOAs), and waste (the power bill, suburban sprawl, interior space wasted on empty architectural gestures, e.g. the great room or the lawyer foyer). 

Really, the big question being asked here is this: what would our built environment look like in a culture where we felt free to build what we really wanted instead of what we are expected to want? Examining why we want something, why we like something is an edifying exercise. 

This is something I do on a regular basis, because I struggle with the same feelings of not living in a space that’s Instagrammable enough. Ultimately, so what if my book collection has outgrown my Ikea bookshelf? So what if my apartment has banged-up walls and black kitchen appliances? I have a roof over my head, and the items I own are reflections of what makes me happy. In today’s charged political and cultural atmosphere, the last thing we should be stressing about is whether or not some person on Instagram is going to judge you for having yellow LACK tables that don’t match the rest of your living room.