ELEGANT SUFFICIENCY: Finding Enough in a World of Too Much

Toys, Toys Everywhere and Not a Place to Play
Many of our clients have young children and are dealing with the issue of where to keep all the toys that find their way into most rooms of the house. Where do you put toys in a dining room? Eventually we found ourselves wondering, "Is it possible for a child to have too many toys?" We are not experts, or even parents, and so we did some research. According to a number of childhood experts, children do not need many official playthings, especially single-purpose toys. In fact having lots of toys can be detrimental because they overwhelm children with options and short circuit their imaginations which can turn the simplest sticks, boxes and balls into a world of play.

We mentioned this to several of our clients, and one of them surreptitiously removed a big box of toys from her son's play room, a room she found too scary to go into most of the time because of its abundance of playthings. Not only did her son not miss the toys, he actually thanked her for cleaning up the room! It turns out that he was more grateful for the space and the improved sense of order than he was for the stuff. His reaction mirrors exactly that of our adult clients who have reduced the clutter in their homes in search of more space for living.

Just How Much Is Enough?
In our reading we found various guidelines for the optimal number of toys and compiled a list (see below). Based on similar guidelines, we read the story of one parent who eventually removed 90 percent of his child's toys, apparently to everyone's relief. 90 percent! What struck us is that in the sustainability literature, a 90 percent reduction in resource use is what is required for the average American if we are to create an environmentally viable and equitable world. Sound impossible to do? One of our readers (thank you Chris!) introduced us to a group of individuals trying to do exactly that within the additionally challenging timeframe of just one year. They have an excellent website which describes the metrics of measuring one's resource use as well as their experiences of trying to do this in urban, suburban and rural settings.

What we find useful about the 90 percent reduction goal is that it begins to convey the magnitude of change that may be necessary as we bump up against the environmental and economic challenges. However, from all accounts, a 90 percent reduction requires quite a concerted effort within the current framework of the U.S. Perhaps a more doable first step and goal may be a reduction by 50 percent which would put us on par with the resource use of most Europeans. (Doesn't 50 percent now sound downright easy compared to 90 percent?) In most instances you can not achieve this type of reduction by tweaking existing systems in your life. More often than not it requires rethinking what is important and how you do things. For example it becomes important to live within walking, biking or public transit distance of many services and where you work. And best of all, we have found in our own experience and in reading and talking to others who have voluntarily tried these types of reductions that a smaller footprint lifestyle tends to increase one's overall feeling of well-being and enjoyment in life. In other words, just like our client's son, most folks report that they are happier with less and that they have more time and energy to do what is important and meaningful to them. For a recent article on this topic see, "Why your happiness matters to the planet".

Some of the questions this raises within the context of green home design are how much home is enough and how does this compare with existing home sizes?

What's Enough Living Space?
Frequently we find that people have house size "set points" that give them the emotional sense that the dimensions of a house or room are too big, too small, or just right. It is complicated to pinpoint all the factors that go into determining someone's set point, but a common element appears to be positive and negative experiences associated with where they grew up. We find that someone's "cozy" can be another person's "claustrophobic", just as someone's "spacious" can be another person's "cavernous". Other factors seem to be those that are culturally defined and reflect status. Over the last 50 years our expectations have been influenced in the U.S. as "bigger" has been definitely equated with "better" in terms of house size. As the data indicates, today we live in approximately 3 times more space than the average American did before the 1950s.

U.S. house sizes measured in square feet (sf)
1950...................Average home is 1,000 sf and 3.37 people per household = 297 sf per person
1970...................Average home is 1,500 sf and 3.14 people per household = 478 sf per person
2000...................Average home is 2,200 sf and 2.62 people per household = 840 sf per person
Portland Today...Average home is 2,131 sf and 2.45 people per household = 869 sf per person

If we look at how much space we need from a purely functional perspective, there are room sizes that have been rules of thumb for a number of years, and these sizes are generally found to be acceptable by our clients, at least as minimums or "enough":

Bedrooms: 11' X 11' or 121 square feet
Children's bedrooms can be a foot smaller and/or the extra space can be the play space, such as in the phrase, "Play in your room." The closet space for a master bedroom is at least 2' X 6' and 2' X 3' for other bedrooms.

Dining Room: 10' X 12' or 120 square feet
The size allows for up to 4 by 6 foot table plus 3 feet all around for moving chairs in and out.

Living Room: 15' X 15' or 225 square feet
An optimal size for a conversation circle 10 feet across. This size living room allows for this plus media, some storage and additional seating.

Kitchen: 10' X 10' or 100 square feet
There are lots of shapes and configurations for kitchens, but 100 square feet offers good counter space, room for appliances and ensures everything is handy.

Bathroom: 5' X 8' or 40 square feet
This includes a tub/shower, toilet and sink.

Entry: 6' X 6' or 36 square feet This is a place for greeting people, dealing with outer clothing and shoes, and staging things to go in and out of the house. We would add a 2 by 3 foot closet for storage

Possible extras:
Laundry space: 3' X 5' or 15 square feet
Linen closet: 1.5' X 2.5' or 4 square feet

If you add the square footage for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house with one child's closet, one master closet, laundry space and a linen closet, the total square footage is 800. If you add another bedroom and child's closet and a bathroom you get a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house at 967 square feet. We then add 200 square feet to these figures to allow for walls and halls and arrive at:

"Enough" for 2 adults/1 child is 1,000 square feet = 333 sf per person
"Enough" for 2 adults/2 child is 1,200 square feet = 300 sf per person

Note that we haven't included the square footage of the basement, the garage, or attic. Figured this way, we see how the housing up until the 1950s was actually functionally enough with approximately 300 square feet a person. Moreover, 300 square feet is 65 percent of the current square footage per person, and well over our initial reduction goal of 50 percent.

By these definitions in the City of Portland only 18 percent of the housing is sized for "enough" (1,200 square feet or less) and 82 percent of the housing is bigger and more than enough. For this reason, as green building designers, we are hesitant to consider additions to most houses, and instead focus on finding ways to create the needed space within the footprint of the home.

We imagine that a lot of you may be saying, "My house is that size (or bigger) and it is not big enough! Why is this?" One reason is probably because of all the "toys" you have in every room. What if you eliminated 50 to 90 percent of your stuff, keeping only the things that are useful and really special? Would you have enough room then? In reality we tend not to see the things we have in a room over time and so one of the ways to create more interest and be surrounded by meaningful and beautiful things is to rotate them in and out of our lives. A stored box of our favorite things for periodic display is an easy solution to this clutter problem.

Another reason people feel like they don't have enough square footage is because of the way we have come to use space with separate spaces for each of the activities we now do at home.

Finding Enough Space
Frequently there is a need to readapt the spaces in older homes to modern lifestyles, especially in houses with lots of small rooms. We take out our fair share of walls in our work. In addition, we look for new ways to more effectively use rooms such that they are easily adapted to different activities. The fact is that you rarely use every area of your house all the time, which means that you may be able to find ways to overlap functions within a room using flexible furniture solutions.

Begin by mapping out how you use each space in your home and when. Daily activities should receive the most and best space in your home, followed by things you do less often. For activities you do weekly, you want to make the space conversion in a matter of minutes if possible. For example our yoga mats are stored out of sight in the living room, and all we need do is move the ottoman out of the way to create enough floor space for two people. Things you do once a month or less may require a bit more effort, including going to the basement or garage to retrieve something. It helps if you make transforming your space to a new use as accessible and light weight as possible. We work at home so our desk occupies the best place during the day in the house, the main dining space. But it can easily be converted to a formal dining table or into two smaller tables to accommodate the occasional seated groups of 10 people using the extra chairs we store in the basement.

Many cultures of the world have adapted to living in enough space by creating furniture components that can be combined in a number of ways depending on the situation. Perhaps most radically are traditional Japanese rooms which transform from bedrooms, to living and dining rooms, and back to bedrooms all in the course of 24 hours. Having right sized, easy-to-move, multiuse furniture and good closed storage is key to making a space easily convertible. Often we see our clients trying to make do with furniture that doesn't meet their needs and the arrangement feels awkward and provisional. We encourage them to invest in finding pieces that make their rooms work well and feel good throughout the various incarnations.

One area that people often forget about is vertical space. In looking around your rooms, does most of the furniture and active space end around waist height? Vertical cabinets and shelves which let you use the full height of the room are a great source of storage and can make a room feel more balanced and interesting. However, unless you really enjoy looking at things and are fairly tidy, you will want the majority of this upper storage to have doors, screens or curtains so that it doesn't become too distracting and dominant in a room.

Finally, moving your things around is a good way to improve the overall feel of your home. Spaces where nothing ever changes tend to have stagnant energy or "chi". By occasionally rearranging your things to meet different needs, you will not only find more space in your home, you may experience a renewed sense of energy in those areas, not unlike the feeling you get when you move furniture to deeply clean a room.

Just Enough for an Elegantly Sufficient and More Sustainable Life
Our observation is that most people in the US are dealing with an over abundance of stuff and not enough time. If you think about it, many of the things we acquire in our lives are things we thought would help us save time and enjoy it more, but it really hasn't worked out that way. Most of this stuff seems to just keep us busier, doing more, getting more, affording more, and keeping more in a house big enough to hold it all. However, meet someone who has just enough stuff and you will often find that they have enough time too. And it has been said that the key to becoming more sustainable is having the time to make sustainable choices. Walking and biking can take longer than driving, and a home cooked meal made with local food takes more time than eating prepared foods. As long as we are busy managing our excesses, there is little chance that we will have the time to create a more sustainable life. That is why we like the phrase "elegant sufficiency" to describe the state of having enough to be well and live more sustainably in the world. So with every uncluttered closet, every well designed room, and every home with just enough space we are moving toward making the world a more sustainable play and living space for ourselves and our children.

Toy Guidelines for Young Children
Below are links to give you some background, guidelines and ideas on how to go about creating a children's toy policy for your family. It may serve as a useful model for creating guidelines for your own toys too.

In moderate amounts:
--arts and crafts supplies
--household things children can use (blankets, bowls, etc.)
--dress up

In more limited amounts:
--books (10-15 + Library)
--DVDs (1-5)
--blocks
--soft and cuddly things (5)
--outdoor toys (5)

In very limited amounts:
--interest-specific things (1 dinosaur or 1 unicorn, etc.)

Other:
--toys can be traded, but one toy in means one toy out.
--there is an endless supply of toys that can be made (the appliance box play house, etc.)

After implementing something like this, parents report getting rid of as much as 90 percent of the toys their children have, just to give you a sense of the magnitude of the change that such a policy may lead to.

Resources on toy management:
--BabyZone article on too many toys. www.babyzone.com

--Chapter from a book on psychological dimensions of too many toys. Making the "Terrible" Twos Terrific

--Parents sound off: www.indymoms.com

--How to organize toys: www.organizedforever.com

--Sustainable Summertime fun with kids: grist.org


© Beth Meredith and Eric Storm, July 2008