I like to have a self-contained house.
To me, a self-contained house means (in most cases) there is no direct view from one main living space to the next. The rooms are separated by a wall, a door or an archway. In our house, while having a view from the entrance dining room arrive living roomMost of our main living areas are separate from the others.
I am often asked about the downsides of living without a frontal view that often happens to homes built in the last twenty years. In my experience, there are more reasons to love life in a closed house than not to like it. Really, the only time I want to consider a layout with a slightly more open concept is when I’m at kitchen Cooking dinner. When we host, sometimes I get FOMO and don’t want to miss anything with our guests. To solve this problem, I invite people to chat with me while I cook.
In today’s post, I’m sharing my favorite things about our self-contained home.
4 reasons why I love our self-contained house
1. Messages are easier to contain.
A girlfriend recently reminded me of what happened the first time I asked her out for dinner. I let the dogs in the back door, which was full of mud and a quick mess ensued. I close the doors between the kitchen and the rest of the house to contain the mess, clean things up, and then get back to the party pretty quickly. It’s something I’ve become so used to, I haven’t thought about it again! It wasn’t until she told me about it that I realized how helpful the layout was to our family’s lifestyle.
When we had people passing by, it was also easier to do last-minute clean-ups and maintain a general sense of order as things didn’t spread from room to room.
2. It’s easier to have time alone.
Now that the kids are a little older, we can let them play independently more often and Joe and I can have alone time in separate spaces. The division of rooms helps facilitate this, and I cherish the alone time that can be had in an otherwise busy life.
It should be noted that we are living in a bigger house than we used to be. This means that naturally there will be more space to spend time alone. However, we tend to use about half of the house most often when it’s just our immediate family, so the self-contained floor plan certainly helps create some separation. separate.
3. I can design each room individually.
When you are designing in an open concept floor plan, you must first build the design around a cohesive plan. It takes a bit of skill to figure out how to do that. With our enclosed spaces, it feels like each room can have its own personality.
While I will consider the overall color scheme of the house when I design any room, I don’t feel the need to tie it too closely to it. This made experimenting with rooms in our main living area particularly enjoyable. You can see the individuality of different spaces in the rooms like library / green office and green family room.
4. It encourages our family to try different activities.
From experience, I know that when you have a large room with a TV, it is easier for you to carry out your processes. When it comes to downtime, this usually includes TV. In this house, with separate spaces without TV, we are attracted to do different activities. The kids will read while I work in the library/blue office, we’ll play games in the living room, and we’ll do crafts on the kitchen island.
Kate is currently learning to play the ukulele, leaving her husband, children and dogs desperate. Follow her on Instagram at @witanddelight_.
