As I sat down in my cozy new pajamas on December 26th and opened my favorite “Inside and Out” section in The Denver Post, I was eager to see what the trendwatchers would be forecasting for the year ahead. How will the economic and political climates of today translate into how we live and want our homes to function? Naturally, the Home for the new year: It’ll be sleeker, simpler headline caught my eye, and upon reading the article, I was reminded of how far we’ve come over the past decade.
Flashback to New Year’s Eve 2001. What we were expecting to be at least a one hour journey into downtown Chicago was a mere 20 minutes. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks that fall, apparently people wanted to stick close to home to celebrate the arrival of a more promising New Year. The nesting phenomenon had begun in earnest. Homes became our safe havens and included separate theater rooms, family rooms, play rooms, offices, and spa-like baths so that we could keep our families close-by, comfortable and protected. It made sense at the time.
In light of current economic conditions and the desire to live a greener, more earth-friendly lifestyle, it appears that the McMansion days are over. To that we say, Amen! And furthermore, our family is using the trend toward multi-purpose spaces where families can gather together for meals, entertainment, work, crafts, and homework to develop our list of home improvements for 2010. These projects blend how our family is evolving and our needs are changing with general upgrades we’d like to make to improve our home and quality of life here. You won’t find any theater rooms or spa baths on our list.
Reed Davis, Better Homes and Gardens Magazine
Project #1: First on our list is to develop a home office station in our living room that can accommodate a computer station and general command center. Of course, it still has to look good as it will be the first thing someone will see when they enter through the front door. I snapped this picture after taking down all the Christmas decorations, so bare bones.
Pared down for demo!
Project #2: Open our kitchen to the dining area to include a more fluid space for entertaining and give us more counter and prep space. We are planning to remove a portion of this wall.
Project #3: Winterize our porch to create a mudroom and casual family room. Currently we use the porch as a dumping ground, mud room, outdoor toy storage and the occasional site of large dinner parties. In the picture below, it housed the kids’ table for our Thanksgiving 2009 dinner.
But here’s what the porch looks like on most days. Lovely. Yeah, we LIVE here.
We’ll keep you posted as the projects progress throughout 2010. If we can complete all three we’ll have accomplished our goal of multi-purpose spaces just in time for the forecasters to predict a completely different trend for next year. But we won’t care, because when it comes to how you live in your home, what’s hip and trendy just isn’t that important. And to that we also say, Amen!
0 comments:
Post a Comment