Beautiful. I just moved with my second husband (I was widowed young with children) closer to his family. We picked a smaller home in an established neighborhood with mature trees. Originally, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. Our previous house was newer and bigger. We drive by these huge mega-mansions every day. I sometimes feel the envy. But then I get home and I love where we live. I love that our mortgage allows my family to prioritize ministry as a career for my husband. I am a stay at home mom with a toddler and two tweens. I think about the lifestyle required to have one of those homes and say NO WAY. God Bless.
I’m so glad that your home allows the career you want for your husband and for you to be home with your children! I think the envy will always be present, it is natural after all, but like you say here, we have to tap into that envy and ask what is behind the facade of the thing which we desire. Often, thinking about just that is enough to check our desires! My sister and I recently had a “sister date” in one of the more expensive “old money” parts of the city and we got ice cream and walked through the old gated neighborhoods and just gawked at the beautiful old brick and stone homes with the most gorgeous stained glass and beautiful landscaping. I felt that envy too. But then I just shifted that into simple appreciation for the architecture as I know that that sort of house can only be afforded by people with jobs I would never want to touch with a ten foot pole 😂 Also, yay for mature trees! Full grown trees in a neighborhood make it 1000% better, I’m convinced.
So much of this aligns deeply with my own feelings and values about home and life. The line about being upset by new homes the same visceral way that you'd be upset by florescent lighting had me practically yelling "amen" lol!
One of my favorite writers is Wendell Berry, and in reading both his fiction and his essays, I'm almost overwhelmed with longing for a more independent (of machines, of the government) and yet interdependent (more cooperation with family, neighbors, etc) existence.
We are not there yet. My husband and I both come from a small farming town in WI, but like many towns of its type, it's a dying place in many ways. Instead of many small independent farms, now there are mainly a few huge subsidized ones, interspersed with many abandoned properties (or more accurately, places where people may still live, but they no longer farm). Abused and discarded land with slowly crumbling buildings makes up much of the landscape.
It hurts me deeply, because there is something about both the land itself and the old, GOOD handiwork of bygone days going to seed that just seems nothing short of a tragic loss to me. I can't, on the spot for a sub stack comment, find the words for it.
My husband and I currently live in MD close to my parents so they can be close to their grandchild, but we hope to convince them to move back to WI with us in a couple of years, where we can actually afford land, where we (this is my dream, anyway) can put down roots and do a little bit of restoring and healing to one little patch of where we come from. One of my deepest longings is just to manage land well, to improve it rather than degrade it with our work, and to increasingly achieve the ability to feed ourselves almost entirely from our own land. I want that for my child(ren) as much as anything else I can imagine giving my child. If we could find a place not TOO far gone and actually manage to restore an original barn/outbuildings in the bargain, I could die happy, lol.
I just hate to see good things going to waste while crappy things are built instead. I don't mind the odd eccentric person with money building a new house in the old-fashioned way, i.e, with good materials made to last (perhaps even full on Pa Ingalls style!). But around here in MD, what I see everywhere is beautiful old farms falling down and then sold to developers who destroy the land and the good old buildings to fill them with cookie cutter McMansions all about 20ft from each other, with small perfectly manicured lawns, not a clothesline (and rarely a garden) in sight. Never a child playing outside, a few pampered neurotic dogs living in leashes. Named after the farm it destroyed or named something with "meadow" or "woods" to add insult to injury.
I marvel at the people with that kind of money, who could spend it on land and restoring a unique old house, spending 2, 3, 10? times as much for THAT.
Sorry, ranting. It's a subject dear to my heart if you can't tell. It's more relevant to the piece you wrote to just say I agree that there is a rich sort of family life that isn't achieved by seeking to (literally) structure the home for individual autonomy. I'm delighted, frankly, by your house. I'm delighted every single time one of them gets new life breathed into it by someone who respects the old life. It's heartening to find other people in the world also trying to live the way I believe humans are meant to live, the most meaningful way we can.
Currently getting distracted back to my real life with my own kiddo so I have to cut my ramble off without really wrapping it up neatly lol, but anyway, I love your house! So cool 😎
Oh Jes I love this comment! I’m from and still live in Missouri and there are very similar towns as the one you are from. I remember making the drive to visit my grandparents as a child and clover the years seeing all old farmhouses torn down slowly, and new giant neighborhoods in their place, interspersed amongst the mega-farms that, like you describe here, are absolutely just mining the land for everything it’s got without any meaningful tending. The creep of corporatized, poorly built, homogenized neighborhoods is so real.
That longing for independent interdependence that Berry inspires in you, along with the desire to return to your home state, will surely bring you and your family good things! I admire your desire and patience to bring your parents along too, as that is just as important for your children as living off of the land. I truly hope it manifests for you and your family one day sooner rather than later!
I was laughing at your description of the neurotic dogs and the stupid neighborhood names! My husband and I have always got a little kick out of announcing neighborhood names as we drive by them like obnoxious commercial voiceover people, because you are right! Those names are absolutely adding insult to injury and are very mocking in nature.
Thank you for the kind words about our home as well. It has a ways to go, as we only pay for what we can afford as we go along so the repairs are slow but steady. I love it though, and hope you find your own little home to mend and tend as well ♥️
My husband and I always have a laugh at the development names around us...Indian Meadows, Mystic Acres, Ehrman Farms. I try to be charitable that in their minds they are honoring the land they built on, but either way it's just sad.
My home is under 600 square foot, and no land. Teeny tiny for a family of four. I do love it, It is an old English cottage, very cosy. I also daydream of something slightly bigger, and one day we will get that, but for now we pour love into the space we have. It is like a little museum with all our trinkets we have collected around the world. I also cant deal with new builds....
Connect so deeply to this. We don’t live on an acreage but we do live in an older house in a neighborhood w mature trees and I love it! Our house has needed a lot of TLC but it’s been fun and interesting to do that work. And it has made the house “ours.”
Our neighbors behind us, a family with five kids, recently made the move to one of the neighborhoods in town w those big cookie-cutter houses, a bummer as our m neighborhood is just starting to turn over and get more kids. I think a lot of my time in Europe, the small places people live in and the lovely community spaces (sidewalks, small roads, town squares) they share. People don’t understand what they’re missing out on. America is depressing😂
Love Shannon Hayes. I should re-read Radical Homemakers!
Anyway lots of random thoughts but loved this share!💕
Oh Amber you are speaking to my soul because WHAT I WOULD GIVE FOR A TOWN SQUARE. I have very unfortunately never been to Europe (yet) but the images I have seen of all you describe here makes my heart truly ache. It also brings up questions about my love of country living as there is also a deep desire to have that more interconnected village-style life as well. I love being on acreage but I also wish there was more of a neighborhood aspect for my children. Having grown up in a fairly walkable town where I could ride my bike a block or two and see at least 5 friends, I do wish my kids had the same. It is a trade off and it requires a decent amount of effort on my part in terms of making sure they get more contact with other children at places like the park and story time at the library rather than having that contact just effortlessly built into our living situation the way it would be in a neighborhood or even better, a place with a town square 😅
I said this in reply to another person already, but I think mature trees in a neighborhood increase its charm and value by a lot, I’m so glad you all have that!
Thank you Christie, you have no idea how happy this comment makes me as I do have younger women very much in mind as I write. I hope my writing reaches some of them!
Lovely essay. I grew up as one of six kids in a small ramshackle farmhouse that was short on space inside but had plenty outside. It was a struggle sometimes but we made it work. I especially loved your reflections on how having less space necessitates interdependence and means you cannot have complete autonomy for each family member. As a teenager I often complained how I could never get any time alone (I used to go on a two hour walk most days just to get some quiet), but now I realise it was a gift to grow up that way. In the UK homes are generally a bit smaller than in the US, but we live in an expensive area and I keep seeing people tear down older homes to build American style mansions. Often the homes they destroy are quite large but not large enough, so they are demolished and replaced with identikat white and grey blobs.
Like you I am a lover of old homes and antique furniture and homewares. Most of our furniture is thrifted and I love nothing more than going to our local antiques warehouse and wandering around for a few hours. There are always treasures to be found, for us or as gifts for others. My uncle tore down my grandmothers house, which was large by 1920’s standards but small by modern standards, and rebuilt a gigantic modern home in its place. I don’t think I will ever get over it. I think the thing that I grieve the most are the loss of the climbing roses that covered her house, I remember the waking up as a child and seeing and smelling them out of my bedroom window.
We were fortunate to move into my husband's grandfather's old 1800s farmhouse when we got married. He bought it with a decent chunk of land in the 60s when the area was all farmland. Now it has been developed all around us.
I was so excited at first - I envisioned myself being the next Joanna Gaines. The reality of inheriting a very old house from a hoarder, a husband with not a lot of time to do renovations, and lots of emotional ties for my mother-in-law who grew up there, hit me hard and I needed a huge attitude adjustment.
It took me years to invite people over because I was embarrassed knowing that they live in (literally) neighborhoods full of million dollar homes. I realized it was getting in the way of my boys having friends, so a few years ago we had an old school slip and slide birthday party, and let everyone explore the woods and creek and ponds. None of the boys wanted to leave. Their mothers loved all of our hand me down furniture and antiques (I very much am into the eastern European vibes like the photo you showed.)
I still don't feel like we "fit in" here. Our land is valuable because the area is still being developed, so we could sell and go get even more land in a community that reflects our values. But the idea of our boys being fourth generation on the land means a lot to us, and we fear that no matter where we go (trying to still stay close to family) the developments will follow. At the end of the day, it's home, and there's nowhere else I would rather be surrounded with the ones I love trying our best to honor God.
Olivia, you have no idea how much this resonates with me. The part about the state of things getting in the way of your boys having friends especially. I am prone to this thinking as well and have found a lot of peace in letting that go little by little and it has helped a lot with my eldest and her friend situation as well.
I think you are right about the developments creeping in no matter what and there is a lot to be said for sticking it out on passed down land. If everyone did that, we would have so many other legacy farms and healthy land instead of those same developments.
The buyers are relentless...I can definitely sympathize with those who are worn down into selling.
My oldest is very introverted, but of course I believe all kids still crave/need friends. He was constantly asking us to move to a housing plan and at first I dismissed it as him being jealous of others, but like you said to Amber above there is an appeal to the easy access of a community in a plan. Like a tiny version of village life he is intuitively drawn to. Not sure what to make of it, but it's helped me see the nuance of it all!
We are just finishing building a huge house 🤦🏼♀️ and cleaning it is a struggle. The land and soils required us to build a walk out lower level where none was wanted or needed. I hope I have put it to good use, we use our land and home for a twice weekly homeschool program. We are also an intergenerational household, with my husbands Grandmother living in our home. She has her own suite of rooms to accommodate her 97 years of treasures and will hopefully allow us to keep her here in the home with the aid of nurses and other help.
My husband and I still joke that while we have three children we need to adopt three more in order to justify the size of our house. We are very blessed in so many ways, I just hope, like Sally Clarkson professes, that we can use our home and blessings to bless others.
It sounds like with running that homeschool program the space is probably necessary! Curious to hear more on that. But yes, the cleaning aspect, I just cannot imagine. I struggle enough with my little house! I also love that you have an inter generational home, and I’m sure those treasures and their keeper, your husband’s Grandmother, add so much value to your home!
Love that your husband pulled a Pa and built it himself! You must be so proud of that ♥️
I should also clarify, my husband actually built our home. Every square inch of it, plumbing, electrical, roofing, everything! He is even building our interior doors and all of the cabinetry!
I grew up in a small house, much like you describe. I’m afraid, however, that my dad put fluorescent lighting in every room (apart from that living room and dining room). I think he was being practical and it was cheaper. I grew up to loathe the fluorescent lights, and never used them after I became a teenager.
I feel much the same as you about suburbs. I especially detest the neighborhoods with huge houses and tiny lots: they give me claustrophobia. My husband and I bought a bungalow in a neighborhood closer to inner city. It’s a small house by most people’s standards. I think it was supposed to be our “starter home” but we have never moved out. Maybe we will one day but I don’t know if the kind of communities and houses I would like are affordable. Something I realized about our community this summer is that even though it’s undoubtedly an urban space, you see the trees first and the houses second. This makes a huge difference to my mental health I think. Certainly there are other communities with trees and green space but the houses are probably over a million.
For me my small house is a check on consumerism haha…..if I don’t want to drown in clutter, I need to stay organized and think a bit more about purchases.
It’s funny how so many of us just loathe fluorescents. There must be something really harmful about them, I’m convinced! Trees make all the difference, and your little community sounds lovely.
Also so much to be said for your point in consumerism!
I have met many people in the schools where I work who say fluorescent lighting gives them headaches. I haven’t personally experienced this but I find it just too unnaturally bright. In many classrooms, including mine the lights are covered with filters or turned off. Many teachers bring in their own lamps.
I bought my own small, crooked, old house with single glass windows and a wood stove in a village after I got an inheritance. I was privileged in this regard, but chose a house just within my means. The planets aligned and this wonderful lady, a vegetable farmer that used to provide us with weekly order when I was a kid, was selling her house right when I started looking. I knew it was for me. My parents freaked out cos I grew up in the big city 1h away. The house is cold in the winter, humid, but you get use to it. I love living amid the beauty of the village the river and the countryside around us
There is a lot of work to do around the house tbh more than we can handle. Some days I laugh thinking I used to want a big farm house with land, since my small house is already a big project. Will remember the value of patience in getting where we want with it
I am so happy for you that you were able to snatch up what sounds like a true treasure! I understand the overwhelm as well! That is a daily companion of mine, we just have to learn to work with it and not against it I think!
Re: little house books. Those tearing them down are the same who allow the longest standing monument to slaveholding, confederacy, and segregation to remain standing: the democrat party. See momanddadmatters.substack.com for more in this.
Sorry, go to the article that says "Eugenics Letter". Gives history of Democrat party and slavery (and also makes argument that our once and future president is a Democrat plant,)
I resonate with this so deeply. My family chooses to live in a 1 bd apt because the lower mortgage gives us freedom to do what we love most with our family.
I’m tired of a culture that always says more is more. It’s always refreshing finding others who are changing the narrative. Thank you for sharing!
It's not often that I get to read my own life choices, which have always been a haphazard mix of deliberate and intuitive moves, described back at me in far more eloquent terms than I could ever express. I feel as If you took the song I've been clumsily strumming out by ear all my life and transcribed it into sheet music for a symphony orchestra.
I was really hoping you would write on this topic when you mentioned it the other day. I love to read about families with multiple kids living in smaller homes. My husband and I have a toddler and a second baby on the way right now in an 1,800 sq ft house with an awkward layout and I’m just feeling the pressure to get a bigger house, more space, bigger cars. But what I want more than a bigger house, more space, and bigger cars is to be able to live comfortably on my husband’s income while I stay home and have as many babies as he will agree to!
This is the content I am craving right now but I also just want the nitty gritty details and logistics! I’m talking floor plans, sleeping arrangements, vehicles, how ya’ll make this work! I’m just so interested and inspired - I wish it was a more common practice and I had more (any??) families to reference in real life. Anyway — thank you for writing this 🤍
Wow - this was outstanding, Emily! Thank you! I anticipate a first-time home purchase next year and this provided so much food for thought. Your opposing values of autonomy vs interdependence were particularly helpful and thought-provoking for me. I'm saving this to come back to in the future. :)
Beautiful. I just moved with my second husband (I was widowed young with children) closer to his family. We picked a smaller home in an established neighborhood with mature trees. Originally, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. Our previous house was newer and bigger. We drive by these huge mega-mansions every day. I sometimes feel the envy. But then I get home and I love where we live. I love that our mortgage allows my family to prioritize ministry as a career for my husband. I am a stay at home mom with a toddler and two tweens. I think about the lifestyle required to have one of those homes and say NO WAY. God Bless.
I’m so glad that your home allows the career you want for your husband and for you to be home with your children! I think the envy will always be present, it is natural after all, but like you say here, we have to tap into that envy and ask what is behind the facade of the thing which we desire. Often, thinking about just that is enough to check our desires! My sister and I recently had a “sister date” in one of the more expensive “old money” parts of the city and we got ice cream and walked through the old gated neighborhoods and just gawked at the beautiful old brick and stone homes with the most gorgeous stained glass and beautiful landscaping. I felt that envy too. But then I just shifted that into simple appreciation for the architecture as I know that that sort of house can only be afforded by people with jobs I would never want to touch with a ten foot pole 😂 Also, yay for mature trees! Full grown trees in a neighborhood make it 1000% better, I’m convinced.
I dream of having a smaller house. Less to clean!!!!
Another benefit I didn’t even touch on! Although I still struggle to get it done since toys seem to be on every surface 😂
So much of this aligns deeply with my own feelings and values about home and life. The line about being upset by new homes the same visceral way that you'd be upset by florescent lighting had me practically yelling "amen" lol!
One of my favorite writers is Wendell Berry, and in reading both his fiction and his essays, I'm almost overwhelmed with longing for a more independent (of machines, of the government) and yet interdependent (more cooperation with family, neighbors, etc) existence.
We are not there yet. My husband and I both come from a small farming town in WI, but like many towns of its type, it's a dying place in many ways. Instead of many small independent farms, now there are mainly a few huge subsidized ones, interspersed with many abandoned properties (or more accurately, places where people may still live, but they no longer farm). Abused and discarded land with slowly crumbling buildings makes up much of the landscape.
It hurts me deeply, because there is something about both the land itself and the old, GOOD handiwork of bygone days going to seed that just seems nothing short of a tragic loss to me. I can't, on the spot for a sub stack comment, find the words for it.
My husband and I currently live in MD close to my parents so they can be close to their grandchild, but we hope to convince them to move back to WI with us in a couple of years, where we can actually afford land, where we (this is my dream, anyway) can put down roots and do a little bit of restoring and healing to one little patch of where we come from. One of my deepest longings is just to manage land well, to improve it rather than degrade it with our work, and to increasingly achieve the ability to feed ourselves almost entirely from our own land. I want that for my child(ren) as much as anything else I can imagine giving my child. If we could find a place not TOO far gone and actually manage to restore an original barn/outbuildings in the bargain, I could die happy, lol.
I just hate to see good things going to waste while crappy things are built instead. I don't mind the odd eccentric person with money building a new house in the old-fashioned way, i.e, with good materials made to last (perhaps even full on Pa Ingalls style!). But around here in MD, what I see everywhere is beautiful old farms falling down and then sold to developers who destroy the land and the good old buildings to fill them with cookie cutter McMansions all about 20ft from each other, with small perfectly manicured lawns, not a clothesline (and rarely a garden) in sight. Never a child playing outside, a few pampered neurotic dogs living in leashes. Named after the farm it destroyed or named something with "meadow" or "woods" to add insult to injury.
I marvel at the people with that kind of money, who could spend it on land and restoring a unique old house, spending 2, 3, 10? times as much for THAT.
Sorry, ranting. It's a subject dear to my heart if you can't tell. It's more relevant to the piece you wrote to just say I agree that there is a rich sort of family life that isn't achieved by seeking to (literally) structure the home for individual autonomy. I'm delighted, frankly, by your house. I'm delighted every single time one of them gets new life breathed into it by someone who respects the old life. It's heartening to find other people in the world also trying to live the way I believe humans are meant to live, the most meaningful way we can.
Currently getting distracted back to my real life with my own kiddo so I have to cut my ramble off without really wrapping it up neatly lol, but anyway, I love your house! So cool 😎
Oh Jes I love this comment! I’m from and still live in Missouri and there are very similar towns as the one you are from. I remember making the drive to visit my grandparents as a child and clover the years seeing all old farmhouses torn down slowly, and new giant neighborhoods in their place, interspersed amongst the mega-farms that, like you describe here, are absolutely just mining the land for everything it’s got without any meaningful tending. The creep of corporatized, poorly built, homogenized neighborhoods is so real.
That longing for independent interdependence that Berry inspires in you, along with the desire to return to your home state, will surely bring you and your family good things! I admire your desire and patience to bring your parents along too, as that is just as important for your children as living off of the land. I truly hope it manifests for you and your family one day sooner rather than later!
I was laughing at your description of the neurotic dogs and the stupid neighborhood names! My husband and I have always got a little kick out of announcing neighborhood names as we drive by them like obnoxious commercial voiceover people, because you are right! Those names are absolutely adding insult to injury and are very mocking in nature.
Thank you for the kind words about our home as well. It has a ways to go, as we only pay for what we can afford as we go along so the repairs are slow but steady. I love it though, and hope you find your own little home to mend and tend as well ♥️
My husband and I always have a laugh at the development names around us...Indian Meadows, Mystic Acres, Ehrman Farms. I try to be charitable that in their minds they are honoring the land they built on, but either way it's just sad.
My husband and I do the same! 😂
My home is under 600 square foot, and no land. Teeny tiny for a family of four. I do love it, It is an old English cottage, very cosy. I also daydream of something slightly bigger, and one day we will get that, but for now we pour love into the space we have. It is like a little museum with all our trinkets we have collected around the world. I also cant deal with new builds....
That sounds absolutely lovely ♥️
Connect so deeply to this. We don’t live on an acreage but we do live in an older house in a neighborhood w mature trees and I love it! Our house has needed a lot of TLC but it’s been fun and interesting to do that work. And it has made the house “ours.”
Our neighbors behind us, a family with five kids, recently made the move to one of the neighborhoods in town w those big cookie-cutter houses, a bummer as our m neighborhood is just starting to turn over and get more kids. I think a lot of my time in Europe, the small places people live in and the lovely community spaces (sidewalks, small roads, town squares) they share. People don’t understand what they’re missing out on. America is depressing😂
Love Shannon Hayes. I should re-read Radical Homemakers!
Anyway lots of random thoughts but loved this share!💕
Oh Amber you are speaking to my soul because WHAT I WOULD GIVE FOR A TOWN SQUARE. I have very unfortunately never been to Europe (yet) but the images I have seen of all you describe here makes my heart truly ache. It also brings up questions about my love of country living as there is also a deep desire to have that more interconnected village-style life as well. I love being on acreage but I also wish there was more of a neighborhood aspect for my children. Having grown up in a fairly walkable town where I could ride my bike a block or two and see at least 5 friends, I do wish my kids had the same. It is a trade off and it requires a decent amount of effort on my part in terms of making sure they get more contact with other children at places like the park and story time at the library rather than having that contact just effortlessly built into our living situation the way it would be in a neighborhood or even better, a place with a town square 😅
I said this in reply to another person already, but I think mature trees in a neighborhood increase its charm and value by a lot, I’m so glad you all have that!
If you ladies ever want to create an old Medieval town I am down!!
How I wish you would have been writing when I was young.
Thank you Christie, you have no idea how happy this comment makes me as I do have younger women very much in mind as I write. I hope my writing reaches some of them!
Lovely essay. I grew up as one of six kids in a small ramshackle farmhouse that was short on space inside but had plenty outside. It was a struggle sometimes but we made it work. I especially loved your reflections on how having less space necessitates interdependence and means you cannot have complete autonomy for each family member. As a teenager I often complained how I could never get any time alone (I used to go on a two hour walk most days just to get some quiet), but now I realise it was a gift to grow up that way. In the UK homes are generally a bit smaller than in the US, but we live in an expensive area and I keep seeing people tear down older homes to build American style mansions. Often the homes they destroy are quite large but not large enough, so they are demolished and replaced with identikat white and grey blobs.
Like you I am a lover of old homes and antique furniture and homewares. Most of our furniture is thrifted and I love nothing more than going to our local antiques warehouse and wandering around for a few hours. There are always treasures to be found, for us or as gifts for others. My uncle tore down my grandmothers house, which was large by 1920’s standards but small by modern standards, and rebuilt a gigantic modern home in its place. I don’t think I will ever get over it. I think the thing that I grieve the most are the loss of the climbing roses that covered her house, I remember the waking up as a child and seeing and smelling them out of my bedroom window.
Such wonderful thoughts, Emily!
We were fortunate to move into my husband's grandfather's old 1800s farmhouse when we got married. He bought it with a decent chunk of land in the 60s when the area was all farmland. Now it has been developed all around us.
I was so excited at first - I envisioned myself being the next Joanna Gaines. The reality of inheriting a very old house from a hoarder, a husband with not a lot of time to do renovations, and lots of emotional ties for my mother-in-law who grew up there, hit me hard and I needed a huge attitude adjustment.
It took me years to invite people over because I was embarrassed knowing that they live in (literally) neighborhoods full of million dollar homes. I realized it was getting in the way of my boys having friends, so a few years ago we had an old school slip and slide birthday party, and let everyone explore the woods and creek and ponds. None of the boys wanted to leave. Their mothers loved all of our hand me down furniture and antiques (I very much am into the eastern European vibes like the photo you showed.)
I still don't feel like we "fit in" here. Our land is valuable because the area is still being developed, so we could sell and go get even more land in a community that reflects our values. But the idea of our boys being fourth generation on the land means a lot to us, and we fear that no matter where we go (trying to still stay close to family) the developments will follow. At the end of the day, it's home, and there's nowhere else I would rather be surrounded with the ones I love trying our best to honor God.
Olivia, you have no idea how much this resonates with me. The part about the state of things getting in the way of your boys having friends especially. I am prone to this thinking as well and have found a lot of peace in letting that go little by little and it has helped a lot with my eldest and her friend situation as well.
I think you are right about the developments creeping in no matter what and there is a lot to be said for sticking it out on passed down land. If everyone did that, we would have so many other legacy farms and healthy land instead of those same developments.
The buyers are relentless...I can definitely sympathize with those who are worn down into selling.
My oldest is very introverted, but of course I believe all kids still crave/need friends. He was constantly asking us to move to a housing plan and at first I dismissed it as him being jealous of others, but like you said to Amber above there is an appeal to the easy access of a community in a plan. Like a tiny version of village life he is intuitively drawn to. Not sure what to make of it, but it's helped me see the nuance of it all!
We are just finishing building a huge house 🤦🏼♀️ and cleaning it is a struggle. The land and soils required us to build a walk out lower level where none was wanted or needed. I hope I have put it to good use, we use our land and home for a twice weekly homeschool program. We are also an intergenerational household, with my husbands Grandmother living in our home. She has her own suite of rooms to accommodate her 97 years of treasures and will hopefully allow us to keep her here in the home with the aid of nurses and other help.
My husband and I still joke that while we have three children we need to adopt three more in order to justify the size of our house. We are very blessed in so many ways, I just hope, like Sally Clarkson professes, that we can use our home and blessings to bless others.
It sounds like with running that homeschool program the space is probably necessary! Curious to hear more on that. But yes, the cleaning aspect, I just cannot imagine. I struggle enough with my little house! I also love that you have an inter generational home, and I’m sure those treasures and their keeper, your husband’s Grandmother, add so much value to your home!
Love that your husband pulled a Pa and built it himself! You must be so proud of that ♥️
I should also clarify, my husband actually built our home. Every square inch of it, plumbing, electrical, roofing, everything! He is even building our interior doors and all of the cabinetry!
Thanks, lovely essay.
I grew up in a small house, much like you describe. I’m afraid, however, that my dad put fluorescent lighting in every room (apart from that living room and dining room). I think he was being practical and it was cheaper. I grew up to loathe the fluorescent lights, and never used them after I became a teenager.
I feel much the same as you about suburbs. I especially detest the neighborhoods with huge houses and tiny lots: they give me claustrophobia. My husband and I bought a bungalow in a neighborhood closer to inner city. It’s a small house by most people’s standards. I think it was supposed to be our “starter home” but we have never moved out. Maybe we will one day but I don’t know if the kind of communities and houses I would like are affordable. Something I realized about our community this summer is that even though it’s undoubtedly an urban space, you see the trees first and the houses second. This makes a huge difference to my mental health I think. Certainly there are other communities with trees and green space but the houses are probably over a million.
For me my small house is a check on consumerism haha…..if I don’t want to drown in clutter, I need to stay organized and think a bit more about purchases.
It’s funny how so many of us just loathe fluorescents. There must be something really harmful about them, I’m convinced! Trees make all the difference, and your little community sounds lovely.
Also so much to be said for your point in consumerism!
I have met many people in the schools where I work who say fluorescent lighting gives them headaches. I haven’t personally experienced this but I find it just too unnaturally bright. In many classrooms, including mine the lights are covered with filters or turned off. Many teachers bring in their own lamps.
I love this one thank you so much !
I bought my own small, crooked, old house with single glass windows and a wood stove in a village after I got an inheritance. I was privileged in this regard, but chose a house just within my means. The planets aligned and this wonderful lady, a vegetable farmer that used to provide us with weekly order when I was a kid, was selling her house right when I started looking. I knew it was for me. My parents freaked out cos I grew up in the big city 1h away. The house is cold in the winter, humid, but you get use to it. I love living amid the beauty of the village the river and the countryside around us
There is a lot of work to do around the house tbh more than we can handle. Some days I laugh thinking I used to want a big farm house with land, since my small house is already a big project. Will remember the value of patience in getting where we want with it
I am so happy for you that you were able to snatch up what sounds like a true treasure! I understand the overwhelm as well! That is a daily companion of mine, we just have to learn to work with it and not against it I think!
Re: little house books. Those tearing them down are the same who allow the longest standing monument to slaveholding, confederacy, and segregation to remain standing: the democrat party. See momanddadmatters.substack.com for more in this.
I’m curious about this but couldn’t find what exactly you are referring to in your link?
Sorry, go to the article that says "Eugenics Letter". Gives history of Democrat party and slavery (and also makes argument that our once and future president is a Democrat plant,)
Thank you!
I resonate with this so deeply. My family chooses to live in a 1 bd apt because the lower mortgage gives us freedom to do what we love most with our family.
I’m tired of a culture that always says more is more. It’s always refreshing finding others who are changing the narrative. Thank you for sharing!
It's not often that I get to read my own life choices, which have always been a haphazard mix of deliberate and intuitive moves, described back at me in far more eloquent terms than I could ever express. I feel as If you took the song I've been clumsily strumming out by ear all my life and transcribed it into sheet music for a symphony orchestra.
What an absolutely lovely comment, thank you so much! I’m so glad ♥️
I was really hoping you would write on this topic when you mentioned it the other day. I love to read about families with multiple kids living in smaller homes. My husband and I have a toddler and a second baby on the way right now in an 1,800 sq ft house with an awkward layout and I’m just feeling the pressure to get a bigger house, more space, bigger cars. But what I want more than a bigger house, more space, and bigger cars is to be able to live comfortably on my husband’s income while I stay home and have as many babies as he will agree to!
This is the content I am craving right now but I also just want the nitty gritty details and logistics! I’m talking floor plans, sleeping arrangements, vehicles, how ya’ll make this work! I’m just so interested and inspired - I wish it was a more common practice and I had more (any??) families to reference in real life. Anyway — thank you for writing this 🤍
Wow - this was outstanding, Emily! Thank you! I anticipate a first-time home purchase next year and this provided so much food for thought. Your opposing values of autonomy vs interdependence were particularly helpful and thought-provoking for me. I'm saving this to come back to in the future. :)
Thank you Danielle! I appreciate the kind words and am so glad that this was helpful, wishing you luck on your search for your future home ❤️