How many rooms of one’s own?
How much housing does a family need? And what does that have to do with Monty Python?
Well, that depends on more things than you think, starting with …
… money. Income. Assets.
We think of housing as a fixed commodity, an essential, but in reality, housing demand is elastic – the amount one consumes for housing is directly related to how much one can afford to spend on it. Moreover, how we configure and use interior space changes over time, with demographic, technological, and societal shifts.
Consider thus the house. Should it have a man’s room? Among higher-end consumers, the answer seems to be yes:
Many [solidly married] men don’t want to part with their stuff. Instead, they’re setting up rooms of their own, where the wide-screen TV rules and stuffed fish on the wall are among those watching.
It can be the basement, the attic, an office, or a shed, but regardless of the room and its theme, in their own rooms, guys can do as they please.
Not only do technology and demography change the amount of space we expect to consume — houses today are much larger than they were forty years ago — so does what we use the space for. Homes built forty or fifty years ago become functionally obsolescent, as you immediately recognize when you walk into an old one and see:
· How tiny the bedrooms are.
· How large and seemingly empty the kitchen is. (And how few appliances!)
· What constitutes a minimally acceptable bathroom.
To say nothing of closets, carpeting, and so on.
This little exercise in fluff matters only because we all have a mental image of ‘house’ and ‘home’ and these are both entirely taken for granted locally and wildly different from place to place.
Which brings us back to our four Yorkshiremen, reminiscing:
‘E was right. I was happier then and I had nothin’. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
House? You were lucky to have a house! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling!
You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in corridor!
Ohhhh we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Woulda’ been a palace to us.
