Small Home Gazette, Fall 2024
Letter From the Editor: Morris Was Right—Homes Shape Us
Some say William Morris is one of the first architects to consider the effects of a home’s design on its occupants. While Morris was speaking more to how design can uplift and affect moods, I’ve noticed how my home has influenced my behaviors in other ways.
A mega roll, left, and a 1924-sized roll.
The quirkiest change I noticed was how I manage toilet paper in our house. Today’s mega TP rolls don’t fit in the porcelain holder embedded in the tiled wall of our home’s original bathroom. By contrast, the new, surface mount holder in the half bath we added upstairs easily can. When used and reduced to 1924 specifications, I move the downsized rolls downstairs for use in the main floor bathroom. My process makes less cardboard core and packaging waste and doesn’t place a mega roll on the shelf until it’s used up enough to fit.
When I acknowledged this quirk, I started observing my habits and jotted down a list of other behaviors shaped by my home.
Our bungalow has me manually simulating zone heating and cooling. The master bedroom which occupies the upstairs in our story-and-a-half home can get hot in the summer. When the AC runs, our forced air system makes the upstairs arctic cold before the main floor chills sufficiently. During the day when no one is upstairs, I block the supply air vents with towels to prevent overcooling the space. After work, I remove the towels to cool the bedroom before bedtime. If I ever get around to finishing the vent covers to match the woodwork and cut them to nestle inside the baseboards, I might be able to stop this seasonal routine.
Our front door’s original skeleton key lock, with no duplicate keys, prompts us to enter the house through the backdoor whenever we park out front. (You can tell our closest friends, as they come right around back when they visit.)
Our stairs to the second floor are steep, so I frequently ascend using my hands as well as my feet. I often descend with one hand on the railing and palm the top of the door frame as I pass the threshold, as if to break my speed of main floor entry.
When I walk through the main floor at night with the lights off, I navigate safe passage by staying on the hardwood floor, knowing that a rug’s edge warns of impending furniture collision. With our enclosed front porch, I only retrieve the mail after looking through the front door window to see if there’s anything other than junk mail.
I’ve shared in the Small Home Gazette how my husband Pete and I have changed our bungalow over the decades—remodeled the basement, upstairs, and kitchen, as well as removed aluminum soffits. I’m just now realizing how much our home has shaped me.
