Cohousing-L Mailing List: space "needs" (was Involuntary Simplicity)

[Eris Weaver (eris]

I have been following with interest the different threads about house
size -- number of bedrooms, square footage, etc.  What is very interesting
to me, not just on this list, but in the greater world in general, is the
whole idea of how much space one indeed "needs."

My father, in a family of six people, grew up in a two-bedroom, one-bath
home.  The parents in one room, the two girls in the other, and the two boys
in the garage.  The kids not only shared rooms, but beds!  One of the things
I loved as a child was staying at Grandma's house, BECAUSE of the shared
beds -- my two aunts were still at home and I slept in the middle between
them.

I grew up, a family of four, in two-bedroom, two-bath home.  My sister and I
shared a room.  This was the case with most of my friends, that two or three
siblings shared a room.  We thought that having one's own room was the
epitome of luxury.

As an adult, my ex-wife and I lived in a 40-foot trailer with our infant son
for three years, later buying the two-bedroom, one-bath condo (~900 sq. ft.)
I now live in.  The number of people living in my current home has varied
from one to four; I had one neighbor who had a family of five in the same
size unit.  (Teenage boy and girl shared  a room, baby slept with mom &
dad.)

In my entire forty-one years, I've had "my own room" for about six years.

Now, it seems that so many of the people I know feel that they need not only
one bedroom for each individual but an additional room for an office,
whether they actually work at home or not.

There may be a unspoken class issue going on here, too.  I have definitely
"moved up" from my roots in the company I keep.

It is just interesting to me that we feel we "need" so much space, when in
many parts of the world an entire extended family might live in a house
smaller than mine!  Why do we feel we need it?  To house all our stuff?
What do we actually DO in each room?  Are our kids missing out on learning
how to share space and stuff, on how to hold on to a sense of inner self &
privacy surrounded by others?

My cohousing group is not anywhere near the design phase yet; I hope that
differing ideas about space "needs" do not become an issue.  With one
potential retrofit site we considered, it did; one family left the group,
over both that site's location, esthetics, and size.

Just some random thoughts, feel free to reply off-list.

*****************************************************
Eris Weaver                            eris [at] wco.com
SoCoHo                                http://www.wco.com/~eris/socoho.html

"Let the beauty we love be what we do."
                         ---Mevlana Jelaladin Rumi