Philosophy | Offbeat Home

This is Offbeat Home's archive of Philosophy posts.

Not everything on Offbeat Home centers around the physical. Sometimes being an Offbeat Homie is all about the mindset.

Most Recent Posts About Philosophy

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Anita Hill's reimagining of the American Dream through housing strategies in her book Reimagining Equality. This post furthers that discussion.

Photo courtesy Kevin Bauman.

I live in a Canadian border city. The population is about half a million, but the city is not urban. Rather it is a collection of suburbs with giant malls as the focal-points. Lots and houses are huge with one family per house; public transportation isn't efficient and people drive everywhere; big box chains are nearly the only options for groceries and other necessities. This is a scene that replicates throughout my country and throughout the United States, and one that a group of architects and designers at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC would like to change. Running now until August 13th is the exhibit "Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream."

Rockethaus is pretty public. I run two blogs dealing specifically with homes, I tweet pretty much all the time, and I am also a normal Young Professional living in America. A LOT of my life happens online, publicly, where other people have access to it, even people I don't know terribly well. We talk about parties, problems, events, and projects, and we do a lot of it completely in the open. My mom would argue that it's dangerous for people to know where I live and what my habits are, but I prefer to think it's part of community building.

Kill your darlings is one of the writing terms which has become a mantra to me over the last year of homemaking.

You'll hear in writing courses and author's workshops across the nation: Kill your darlings. Supposedly advice from Faulkner, "kill your darlings" means letting go of your work — even when it is beautiful, hard-won work — in order to make progress in a piece of writing. That beautiful landscape description your readers will simply skip? That character you spent months developing but turns out to be unimportant to the plot? Off with their heads. On with your work.

Fuck your frame cluster. Fuck your decorative typewriter. Fuck your Eames rocker, your vintage map, your rotary phone and your card catalog. Fuck every inch of your sterile, homogeneous,"curated" apartment. Also, where did you get that throw pillow? It's gorgeous!

My name is Ange and I have a serious addiction. It's time I joined a group of like minded addicts because I could use some help — should I get the turquoise toaster or the red one that matches my kettle?…

I have an addiction to kitchen gadets.

January always seems to be about making new starts. Quitting things, cutting down on things, doing more of other things…I, of course, thought I was above falling for the hype. I'm an Offbeat Homie, I don't need to buy your exercise video just because it's January! Obviously.

But, to be honest, 2012 looks like it's going to be a big year for me. My first PhD performance review, a life-changing research trip abroad to plan, several articles to finish up and get published, and the spectre of job applications looming somewhere in the late summer. Having mentally dismissed a lot of this stuff until "after Christmas," I wasn't surprised that New Year's was when I started to feel under a lot of pressure.

Our search began with houses the size of our friends', but ended abruptly when we decided babies were most likely not in our future. Then, we looked at town homes and condos, only to realize that sharing a wall again was not ideal. Then, we looked at smaller houses, all of which had something seriously wrong with them because they were much older, as no one seems to be building modest-sized houses anymore. Then, our realtor said to me, "Ashley, you're going to have to be the one to pick this house. You're the woman, and women are the ones that play house." Direct quote.