FROM THE SARA NATIONAL BOARD: Watch What You Wish For!

By Abby Schwartz, FARA

For many years now, I’ve dreamed about one thing: a tiny house. Yes, just like you see on HGTV - one of those 350 square-foot toy homes, fully equipped with a fold-down kitchen table, a sofa that converts to a bunkbed, and a bathroom so small that if you lift your bent arms, chicken style, your elbows brush the walls on both sides.

I can’t explain the appeal, especially since my day job is designing big fancy houses for clients who want only one thing: over-the-top enormous homes. The biggest, the best, the most. I can’t explain the appeal of that either!

My husband thought I was out of my mind when I first told him that I wanted to sell our lovely four-bedroom suburban home with its wooded backyard, huge walk-in pantry, space for the second (and third!) refrigerator/freezers, and the large never-ever-used living room. I remember when my husband and I were planning an addition to this home 20 years ago. My mom, trying to convince me that we didn’t need so much space, reminded me how her family of four functioned just fine in their two-bedroom apartment when she was growing up. On a typical weekend afternoon, her dad would be found  listening to the radio with his friends in the kitchen, her mom playing mah-jongg with her friends in the living room, her brother studying in their parents‘ bedroom, and she, reading in the bedroom that she shared with her brother, seven years her senior. I felt guilty and spoiled, but we did our addition anyway.

In the spring of 2019, our suburban home sold after just a few days of being on the market, and in the fall of 2019, our new townhouse was ready, and I finally got my tiny-ish house. Although not quite the tiny house I envisioned, our new vertical little home has been heaven. No lawn to mow, no snow to shovel, our utility bills are a fraction of what they were, and our taxes care cut in half. But as they say, “Watch what you wish for!”

Fast forward to April 2020. I am typing these words while sitting at my dining room table. My earphones are in because my college-age daughter is on a Zoom call for her anthropology class - at the same dining room table. From my makeshift office and her makeshift classroom, we can hear Dad from his upstairs office on a Skype call with his colleagues in India. And from our lower level, my elderly mom (who I brought here when Covid-19 threatened all elder care facilities), is ringing the call bell. 

Last night, we spent some time discussing where our son will sleep when he comes home this weekend from Brooklyn. Where will his office be since he is working from home as well? We have neither a basement nor an attic and no other bedrooms. Maybe he can set up a desk in our garage? Or maybe he can work from his car? 

Megan Garber, reporter and staff writer at The Atlantic, says in an article from last month, “Homes, too… are now serving not only as shelter and refuge, but also as workplace and school and gym and theater and restaurant and bar and laundry and town square.” She refers to the home as "the everything.” As Garber says, “Constant togetherness can be a great thing, right up until it isn’t.”

So, I finally have my tiny house, and I admit that with coronavirus this house is simply too tiny. I am not complaining. I am glad we moved. I am glad my kids are home, and I’m glad my mom is here. However, this experience has got me thinking: How big should a home really be? How big is too big? How small is too small? Perhaps I should take a lesson from Goldilocks and say, "Ahhh, this house is just right!"

Perhaps we should listen to Sarah Susanka, the author of Not So Big House, who advises us to simply communicate during this pandemic. If you need space of your own, let your housemates know. Create signals and rituals that let others that you are on a call. Shut doors. Make use of nooks and crannies. Be creative. Have family meetings. As Susanka says, “Try to give people space – even, and especially, when the space itself is in short supply.”

And stay well, safe and home!

Abby Schwartz is Principal of Abby Schwartz Associates, Integrated Architecture & Interiors, a nine person, all-female, architecture firm with offices in Berwyn and Philadelphia. She has been an adjunct professor at both Pratt Institute in NYC and Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. A Fellow of SARA, Abby has served as Past President of the PA Council, and she is currently the Vice President of SARA National. Despite the terrible pandemic we are all experiencing, Abby absolutely loves having her entire family all cozied up in her tiny-ish home, with her little dog, Max, at her side.