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Housesitting

Lately it seems that most of my time is spent at the computer: planning, writing, communicating, sketching, and even some entertainment courtesy of youtube and TED.
So when we took on a house-sit near Duncan the one main concern was: can I get online?
We’ve been here for a few days now and I am getting used to the sounds of the house, the vistas and the abundance of space. I notice that I move from kitchen to upstairs office to kitchen to bathroom to office to kitchen etc.- and I don’t spend much time in the other areas of the house.

Here’s an exercise I do with participants of my workshops: Draw a plan of your house and trace with a pencil your daily movements. You will notice which places are always visited and which only rarely. Some never get used! Try this for your place and let me know what you discover.

Of course, coming from a 300 squarefoot living space into this ? squarefoot home is triggering all sorts thoughts.
So far I really like:

  • This house is facing the sun!!!! (Sadly this is worth mentioning)
  • The kitchen cabinet hardware that prevents doors and drawers from slamming shut- it slows them down to a gentle stop.
  • The spacious shower- no elbow bumping!
  • Watching all the birds both at the bird feeder and farther away in the wetland by Quamichan Lake
  • Lots of uninterrupted work time (but that’s really not a design feature of this place just  opportunity and intention)
  • Reading some Wendell Berry (ditto)

So while this Sunday is rather stormy outside I will now return to other pages on my computer…..

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