WE COULD HAVE SEVEN MORE KIDS
Earlier today, I joined in on a discussion over at Discovering Urbanism concerning the amount of house the average American had in 1950 versus today. Over at 100K House, you can find the numbers: 983 square feet for 3.37 people in 1950 (or 292 square feet per person), and 2,349 square feet for 2.61 people in 2006 (or 900 square feet per person). In other words, we're consuming more than three times more house than before!
To better put this in perspective for myself, I considered how many people we could jam into our spacious twin in University City. Admittedly, we have an embarrassment of space, what with three full floors, as well as well over half our basement finished. (It is an equal embarrassment that we paid less than 100K for it just eight years ago.) If we lived at 1950 density, we could have a household size of 11! So, if we were OK with that kind of living space ratio, we could have seven more kids and not need to move out of our house. For now, I'll stick with the two kids we do have, and remind myself to quit grumbling about our living accommodations.
Earlier today, I joined in on a discussion over at Discovering Urbanism concerning the amount of house the average American had in 1950 versus today. Over at 100K House, you can find the numbers: 983 square feet for 3.37 people in 1950 (or 292 square feet per person), and 2,349 square feet for 2.61 people in 2006 (or 900 square feet per person). In other words, we're consuming more than three times more house than before!
To better put this in perspective for myself, I considered how many people we could jam into our spacious twin in University City. Admittedly, we have an embarrassment of space, what with three full floors, as well as well over half our basement finished. (It is an equal embarrassment that we paid less than 100K for it just eight years ago.) If we lived at 1950 density, we could have a household size of 11! So, if we were OK with that kind of living space ratio, we could have seven more kids and not need to move out of our house. For now, I'll stick with the two kids we do have, and remind myself to quit grumbling about our living accommodations.
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We joke about how when we lived in a two-story house, we automatically started accumulating stuff just to fill in the space. Now that we've grown accustomed to the smaller size, some things are even a little easier. At least until/if kids come around.