We just had our apartment painted. The apartment that I moved into 22 years ago as a single punk rocker in Manhattan. It has gone though many permutations. Now we are four. Our entire living space is less than 300 square feet, and even double that space sounds like luxury living.
Sometimes I think, "oh God, we have so much stuff". For four people in a tiny space we are doing pretty well. We took out all of the furniture and now I don't want to move anything back. I fantasize about getting a HUGE 700 square foot apartment.
When we went to visit some of our New Yorker friends who moved to a large victorian in Raleigh/Durham, Todd would introduce several of the huge empty rooms by saying, 'we're not sure what to do with this room yet'. In my brother's house, they have a "bonus room" that is over 700 square feet. There are two dining rooms, a living room for adults and one for children.
My brother's family each have 1600 square feet to call their own if they divide their house up between the four of them. When his children came to visit, I had planned a hilarious routine in which I would open the door from the bedroom to the living room and say 'this is our den.', then open the door to the bedroom again and say, 'this is our other bedroom.', I would repeat this routine several times and thought I would get a big laugh out of them, needless to say they were unimpressed. In spite of the fact that they each have space which is equal to more than 5 of our apartments, his children didn't even notice or comment on our amazing ability to crowd into our tiny space.
I suppose the lesson isn't in the non-coveting of space, but rather the non-coveting of my attachment to our lack of space.
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