Things We Should Do Better

My mother is always complaining about how her house doesn’t look good enough. She claims that one of her friends actually refused to stay at her house because it did not meet the friend’s standards for interior design. Here is the formula my mother believes about her house: Children + Pets + Too Many Books + Imagined Lack of Artistic and Organizational Skills = Embarrassing House.

In my opinion, my mother’s house is just fine, and she is perfectly justified in spending her time and money on more interesting things than making it look like a magazine.

All her worrying makes me not want to get a house at all. Of course, I will be lucky if I can ever afford a house instead of living in rented rooms where I pay $800 a month for a moldy basement that was bad enough until the landlord took away my double bed to give to a more worthy tenant (i.e., a tenant with an actual lease who was paying less money than I was) and replaced it with an ancient single bed so saggy it has convinced itself that it is a hammock, thus reducing me to sleeping on the floor for several months until I finally forked out for a cheap air mattress that deflates during the night.

Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that we should have beautifully-decorated houses. When we accept this, we set ourselves up for a lifelong battle with chaos.

Personally I would rather live in a cave. There are many places around the world where communities have moved into cave complexes for one reason or another. The advantage of living in a cave is that we will never be tempted to fight against damp, dirt, dust, leaks, insect infestation, animal visitors, smoke damage or roof collapse. Insulation will not be an issue.

I think we would be happier in caves. Life needs to be just that little bit more difficult. Just that little bit dirtier, that little bit less comfortable. I am never happier than when I’ve been on a miserable, cold, rainy camping trip for three days, and I finally come home to my moldy basement and take a shower and put on dry clothes and sleep on the floor. You start to appreciate the little things.

In our houses, we are always battling to keep the Outside out of the Inside, but I wonder if we could find a place for the Outside in the Inside. People like having pets and plants in their homes, but that misses the point because we still have to clean up the pet droppings and sweep the dead leaves.

When we have embraced the Outside in our Inside, our first step is to rip up the carpet and plant grass instead. That solves innumerable problems. First, dirt becomes a good thing! It isn’t dangerous anymore. It no longer pollutes the purity of the home; it helps the home grow. We are now free to throw away broom, mop and vacuum cleaner.

Next, we plant a hedge along the wall. It gives our children somewhere to play instead of rotting in front of the TV. We install a compost toilet and dig a well. We build our bedroom around a tree and sleep in the tree house. Perhaps, in some rooms, we open the roof so we can live with the sun and the stars.

Some people will call us hippies and other ugly names, but only we will know how much time we save on cleaning. More than that: now that we have welcomed chaos into our lives, there is no way to predict what magic will start to happen.

Tags: cave dwellers, chaos, hedges, hippies, inside/outside, moldy basement, pollution