Don'ts

One of the reasons I don't know how to write this site is because I don't REALLY know what I do want. 

It's an atrocious writing style and thinking style to say "NOT this, that or the other." It's vastly better to describe what you do want and I just don't know what that is.

I don't want a dishwasher.

I've actually talked about this on a couple of sites, like a health site:

...people don't want to hear that "Your modern conveniences are probably killing you."

For example: In addition to not using a microwave, I don't use a dishwasher and I don't use a vacuum cleaner. I gave them all up many years ago and have no plans to ever go back.

And on Project SRO:

No cabinets below so a wheelchair can fit beneath, probably shelving above with a built-in dish rack directly above the sink so you can stick wet dishes in it and don't need countertop space for such.

I saw an upscale kitchen profiled in one of many magazines I used to read that had a built-in dish rack above the sink so it drips directly into the sink. With just three people in my household currently, I think that would be a vastly better solution for us than a dishwasher.

We don't need a lot of dishes and cookware and currently still do disposable cups and a lot of takeout and I don't know what my future looks like, but it absolutely doesn't look like 1950s homemaker cooking all day for a large family.

I had a 1950s housewife lifestyle and was fortunate to live in a 1950s era house at one time and they aren't like the insanely large suburban McMansions that success story birthed as its Frankensteinian legacy.

Mid Century Modern furniture remains popular in Japan because of its small scale, and Americans have replaced it with wrap-around couches and giant TV's and imagine that's what people in the 1950s wanted.

No, they didn't. What was wonderful about the suburbs in the decade that birthed them was everyone HAVING a house after The Great Depression and World War II and nearly two decades of privation.

In the 1930s, a lot of families moved every thirteen months because if you paid rent in full and on time for twelve months in a row, they gave you that thirteenth month free. But it was a move-in special, so you qualified for your free month and then moved again.

Or you moved the family into the basement and rented out the house to be able to make the mortgage payment and keep the house at all.

The suburbs were created to resolve a national housing crisis. Unemployment during the Great Depression was up around thirty percent at times.

And we had climatic issues like The Dust Bowl ruining farm production. Modern people act like we invented climate crisis. No, we didn't.

Farms were failing so hard and so frequently, the John Deere company was made based on their decision to NOT repossess tractors. There was a glut of repossessed, pre-owned tractors and no market for them.

The original suburbs were filled with starter homes with a carport or driveway, not sprawling McMansions with a two-car garage and giant yard of grass and a riding mower.

They typically had a washing machine and a clothes line, not a dryer. They frequently had a vegetable garden in the backyard, not endless lawn for supposedly playing on.

They had a yard because most of these people grew up on a farm or worked on a farm before spending time as soldiers. A yard was like mini farm space and food security.

We still have houses actually built during the first decade or so after World War II. You can still go live in a house built during that time and if you have a 1950s lifestyle, you can experience firsthand design elements we forgot about as we put those rows of starter houses on steroids and thought "This would be PERFECT....if only it had more space and amenities and cost a zillion dollars so only rich people can afford housing!" and completely forgot the REASON we built the suburbs to begin with: 

To house THE PEOPLE affordably and comfortably with a full-time homemaker and a couple of kids.

 

I had a tiny kitchen and didn't care because I had a sideboard and a table and I grew up in a house with a combined kitchen and dining room where using the table for prep work was normal.

I had a parking space in a gravel lot convenient for bringing groceries into the kitchen directly via the back door.

It was only two bedrooms and my kids had to share a bedroom. I arranged play space in the basement and it was fine. 

So, cool, I can tell you what actually makes sense for designing family homes for the people like they did in the 1950s with a full-time wife and small kids. But I have no such template to look to for designing a home for my needs currently as:

1. A woman 

2. Who is head of household and wants a serious career 

3. With two adult sons who may or may not ever move out

4. Where no one in the house really serves as the homemaker or personal servant for everyone else

5. Low maintenance and extremely hygienic to accommodate significant medical issues so we can HAVE full lives and not spend all our time, cooking and cleaning and being too sick for anything else anyway no matter what we do.