M. Suzanne Terry

This week, I have early voting and Lenten services and some community events on my plate. I’m particularly overbooked on Sunday, which means part of my Saturday plans may have to fall by the wayside. There seems to be an urgency afoot – not just with me but with others in general – and it’s all good, but also I need to take a breath occasionally.

Fortunately, this is my cozy year, so I have built those breaths into my plans. Note for future self – don’t stop doing this just because the year ends. This is a good thing to learn and incorporate into your life.

This is the second post in the series I have planned to explore the theme of cozy for the year. I am starting with Montana Happy’s list of hygge journal prompts, but I will probably incorporate others as the year progresses.

Prompt #2 – What elements are the most important in designing your dream house?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. One of my favorite hobbies is sketching out floor plans to visualize what I want in a house (if ever the opportunity should arise). At this point, I could plan a whole neighborhood, which is not a bad idea. Anyone want to make our own mini-town with me?

A few disclaimers to begin:

• This is not a judgment of your home. Your home is lovely. 
• I don’t often entertain, at least with large guest lists. I used to entertain regularly. I might decide I like to entertain again someday, but I am also cool with that part of my personality fading into the background. My home is introvert-coded, and that has turned it into a place I can really be at peace. Again, if that’s not you, that’s not a judgment. It’s just what I prefer for my own living space.

While I could make just about any house work right now just to have the luxury of my own parking space and all my walls, floors, and ceilings to myself (i.e., not shared with neighboring apartments, along with their sounds and smells), here are some preferences I’ve discovered as I dream and draw:

• Garage – attached with the doors facing the side or back (i.e., not the street). Not only do I find this more aesthetically pleasing, but it also seems more secure. The fewer points of entry on the public-facing side of the home, the more effort it takes to breach. Safety measures are important in general, but especially for a woman living alone. As you enter from the garage…
• Large laundry room that I don’t have to walk through the kitchen to get to from the primary bedroom. I hate tracking my clean clothes through the kitchen, which is generally the most aromatic room in the house. In my ideal home, there is a straight line from the laundry room to my bedroom. Bonus points if there is a pocket door between them that opens directly into the primary closet.
• Primary bedroom – I don’t necessarily want this to be a large room. The larger it is, the more distractions I will be tempted to add to it, and the less conducive to sleep it will be. I don’t need anything that makes sleep harder for me. It just has to accommodate my bed, two side tables, a small bookshelf and chair, and a corner to put down a Pilates mat for night and morning stretches.
• Primary bathroom – Large bath and shower (separate – oh, to be done with the shower/bath combo that apartment living necessitates). My arrangement of elements varies, but the overall size and structure mimic most homes on the market these days.
• Private reading nook as part of the primary suite bedroom suite. One of several reading pockets tucked around the house. Generous shelving with all my self-soothing books – cozy mystery and fantasy, foodie fiction and memoir, etc. –  comfy chair(s), a side bar for tea/coffee-making, and a small fridge for cheese, fruit, and other snacks.
• Full library, of course. I flip between wanting separate areas for each genre and putting all fiction together and just separating nonfiction by genre (i.e., like in the public library). A mix of the two (to accommodate certain genres being in other rooms) is where I am currently sitting, but…I have thoughts that are beyond the scope of this post. Designing the library is a whole subsection of this hobby.
• Private office that you can only get to via a secret bookshelf/door in the library. Walls lined with shelves that hold all my writing books, journals, and research notes, with file drawers on the bottom of each bookcase. The nook also accommodates the appropriate tea/coffee-making paraphernalia and snack storage to fuel long bouts of writing and reading. 
• Large kitchen – I like an island with a large worktop, a huge farmhouse sink under a window, and a whole separate upright freezer in addition to the small one that comes with the fridge. I want the pantry to be its own separate room and for the door to it to actually open into the kitchen (not in the utility area with the rest of the storage). Speaking of storage, I want plenty of it, including bookshelves where all my cookbooks live. I also want seating around the island so people can hang out while I cook without having to stand.
• Dining area – A house with all this other stuff will likely have a whole dining room. I’ll probably have a table if it’s far enough away from the entry to keep it from accumulating a lot of stuff. But I’ll definitely line the walls with bookshelves and cozy the room up to use as another reading space. Maybe this is where I will host book club when it’s my turn to do so.
• Living room – pretty standard. Lots of comfortable seating. Console with a TV and stereo, including a turntable, and shelves for my records.
• Studio space – Room for a piano, organ, dance floor (and at least one mirrored wall with ballet bars), and craft area. I want designated spaces for all the arts I try to do. There will be lots of shelving for storing supplies and creativity/inspiration books.
• At least two guest rooms (that – let’s face it – will also be filled with books, likely my most recent acquisitions) with ensuite baths.
• Alright, you got me. The whole house is basically a library.
• There are also plants in every room. My ideal home also includes an ideal self who keeps multiple plants alive.
• Shared backyard with the whole block – indoor and outdoor pools, community garden, outdoor kitchen, brick pizza oven, firepit, community library shed, maybe a pickleball court if the neighbors like that sort of thing? Anyway, a large semi-private/semi-public outdoor area shared with the neighbors whose houses back up to mine in a large, quasi-commune situation – just with our own houses. This, of course, implies that I get to pick my neighbors. Otherwise, this is significantly less than ideal.

I know that I will probably never live in a house like this, but it’s fun to think about. And when I start looking for a house, I can keep these elements in mind.

What would your dream home look like?