What Impressed You as a Kid?

[JaneV2.0]

It just occurred to me that my grandparents' house had a set of back stairs. They were quite steep, and led from the second floor to the kitchen. They did have live-in household help, but I'm pretty sure they used the regular staircase. It was a grand house, but they had a big family.

[Gregg]

My grandparents had a kind of sketchy propane heater built into the wall of the bathroom just below the window. It was amazing if you ever got to take a bath there (34 grandkids, 1 bathroom, space was limited). You could get all toasty drying off and looking out the window over the red dirt hills of NW Oklahoma. Guessing you could see +/- 20 miles, but it felt like a million. I'm still a little jealous of that 5' x 8' bathroom.

[Tiam]

I was reading Apartment Therapy and there's an interesting blog post and question on there: What impressed you about other's homes when you were a kid?

The blogger asserts that s/he felt that those families whose fridge's had ice dispensers "had arrived" and in my father's era, he said that having color TV was pretty darn special. For many of my friends, such as my husband, it was having atari gaming systems, and later the other ones that came down (nintendo and such).

I think i was an odd child. The people whom I envied lived with less. I remember a pair of seniors who lived on our block when I was 9-10 yrs old. They lived in one of the smallest houses on the block, and they had the most minimalist, mid-century modern furniture.

Everyone I knew at the time maligned their way of life -- it was so "spartan" which was said with a sort of distaste for it. Likewise, they were "just so poor" when they were young apparently, that they simply "never made enough to retire comfortably." As far as I could tell, this couple was quite comfortable indeed. But, they loved simple design.

I remember envying the architecture of my friend Laura Ashley's house. It was such a pretty house -- the only one in the neighborhood that was built in the craftsman style. It was very pretty and very efficient -- but I felt that it was so unfortunate at how cluttered the place was.

In fact, my overriding memories of other people's homes growing up is that they were cluttered and/or dirty. I always felt that people had "too much." I always felt sorry for them that they had to live with such clutter.

It sounds so funny, but it is so true. I still feel that way about many of my friends.

Looking back, I see my parents were very frugal, spartan and uncluttered. No style at all. I'm not saying that in negative sense. The outside was well groomed. Clean lawn, raked by hand, mowed by a push mower and edged with a hand clipper by us kids. perrenials in the beds. Everything was basic but tended.

[smellincoffee]

Basements and attics. I grew up living in a trailer and so did most of my friends, so houses that were actual buildings almost always impressed me (the older the better). Those were homes with actual dimension.

[puglogic]

A really big yard impressed me as a kid. All that space, with trees and a garden and grass, you could do anything you wanted there. Somersaults. Run at full tilt all the way across. Put in a killer slip-n-slide. Grow vegetables. Loved to have room to stretch out! I was a strange child.

[Rogar]

I think as a kid just about any common house was fine by me. Only in my later years did I become more discriminating. The houses that did impress me were the old turn of the century large two story homes in the older parts of town. This was probably on the beginning edge of the popularity of renovating these old homes and many were Adams family like and smelled of old wood and wet wool, some of which might have been haunted. Those did impress me. We also had a very poor neighborhood of almost shacks where a few friends lived. I definitely appreciated the small simple frame ranches that were in my neighborhood.

[larknm]

One day my grandfather and I were by ourselves in his house. He took me up to his library and it had a ceiling fan--fascinating! As was his big glass water jug in a wire thing on the kitchen floor that allowed him to tip the bottle to pour out of it. Fabulous. Otherwise, living in Texas, a lot of the houses I went into were very dark. I realize now it was to keep them cool, but to me it was frightening. I also remember my aunt-in-law's mother, from Germany, had two milk-glass chickens on her mantel that were like little boxes in that they opened and she could have put small things inside them. I think it was the big, dark houses that led me to preferring small, spare, light houses with lots of windows, open when possible. At our own house we had a dutch door--top and bottom could be opened separately. I loved opening the top and swinging on the bottom half. I've never seen a door like that since. When the wind blew a certain way, it whistled between the two halves when they were closed. We also had an ice box and a man came once a week or so and brought in a big block of ice with tongs and set it in the bottom or top half of the ice box (which wasn't very big). I loved watching him do that, but I think I was too young to realize this is how the food kept cool. The first time I visited friends in the country who had an outhouse I was freaked and only peed in the jar under the bed but didn't poop for almost the whole weekend until I told one of the kids that and her mother kindly had me brave it.

[HappyHiker]

I grew up in a rather small house--a row house in Phila. area. All my friends had virtually the same house. But I used to babysit for my parent's friends (honorary aunt and uncle). They had a quite large house in an upscale suburb--decorated by an interior designer. It was worlds apart from our little box. I was afraid to touch anything there...

But what impressed me was the woods behind our little row house. It was my playground/fairyland...a creek for hunting crayfish and minnows...big rocks to hide behind, birds to watch, mulberry trees to snack on, rabbits for my dog to chase, trees to climb, garter snakes to discover. I loved being back there with my dog...and to this day, I'm happiest in nature, being as wild and free as I can...