MY ROOTS ARE SHOWING: Plenty Of Squares To Spare

Do Bigger Houses Mean Happiness Or More To Maintain?

A ray of sunshine streams through the window onto my bedroom floor, creating about 1 square foot of highly illuminated warmth irresistible to Floyd. The cat has managed to contort himself so that every part of him except an errant tip of the tail is in full glow. And while he has 3,065 other square feet in which to spread out, he chooses to curl tightly into a ball in that one spot, completely content until the sun shifts and he shifts accordingly. One square foot.

Now yes, he’s a cat, and not a good one at that. If he’d been the first cat ever seen by the Egyptians, they would have undoubtedly chosen a different animal to worship. But he makes a point whether he realizes it or not.

How much space does it take for one to be happy?

Last year, in the book “Little House on a Small Planet,” author Shay Salomon and photographer Nigel Valdez made a big impact on me with just three little photographs. Each picture shows a family standing in front of their home. The first captures an image of a teepee with four Native Americans representing three generations, plus the family dog. The second, a small 1950s tract house with a husband, wife and two small children. The third, an expansive, multilevel, multigaraged, modern day McMansion with two adults, one child and again, the family dog, along with a large gas-guzzling vehicle parked in the drive (apparently, all those garages couldn’t hold it?).

The photos, without narration, beautifully illustrate a major theme of the book: More people lived in smaller quarters years ago, and now fewer people spread out in huge spaces with more, more, more stuff, stuff, stuff than ever before and still manage to need multiple outbuildings and storage units to hold it all. While the dogs look equally as happy in their pictures, the people don’t look any happier with their fortresses than with their teepees.

Now, depending on whose numbers you go with (I’m using the National Association of Home Builders numbers here), the average size of a new single-family home built in 1950 was 983 square feet. No, darlin’, that’s not a typo. The whole house was 983 square feet, sans garage, which most folks didn’t have. If the family owned a car, they got to show that puppy off in the driveway.

In 1970, the typical home was roughly 1,500 square feet, and by 2005, it was 2,414 square feet. But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average household size was greater in 1950, coming in at 3.37 people per household, and dropped over the years to 2.59 people in 2005. So, the average American had about 292 square feet per person in 1950 and 932 square feet all to themselves in 2005 — more than three times as much.

And more than three times as much to mortgage, tax, clean, maintain and fill to the brim with all our loot while disassociating ourselves with the other inhabitants of the household, as we each began living more in our separate little worlds instead of communally with the rest of the tribe.

Are we three times as happy now? Or are we any happier at all?

The house that built me was just shy of 1,400 square feet and we had all the space we needed. Most of my time was spent outside anyway, dragging home any number of critters and petitioning my mother with pie charts and spreadsheets as to how I could keep them.

When Baxter and I go to the Buffalo River with our camping buddies Mike and Joyce, I always note how our little campsite holds everything we need and then some. (Do we really need a lumbar-supported lounge chair and a solar shower when we have a log and the river? Okay, maybe we do). Yet I’m just as guilty, living in a house with more than 10 times the space I would have had to myself in 1950. I bought into the “bigger, better, more” idea and I’m trying like crazy to be bought out.

Lately, the Doc and I have been flying in his little Piper Colt puddle-jumper when the weather is nice. A tiny aircraft, you nearly have to be buttered on both sides to slide into the cockpit. Nothing but essentials on board. Being cognizant of the plane’s maximum load, the Doc later told me he started to ask my weight, but decided he’d rather risk crashing at this point than venture down that line of questioning. He’s a smart man.

In the air, sunshine streams into the little two-seater cabin. A space just big enough to share with someone, yet from here, you can see everything. Where you’ve been. Where you’re headed. Completely content.

Floyd would have been proud.

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LISA KELLEY IS A WRITER, MASTER GARDENER, ANIMAL LOVER AND ALL-AROUND GOOD OL’ SOUTHERN GAL WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO PRACTICE LAW AND MEDIATE CASES IN DOWNTOWN BENTONVILLE.

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