I’m finally going to do it. I am ordering Susan Susanka’s Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live. I will probably order all the other Not So Big books, too. I have to. I feel like every newspaper Home & Garden section and every shelter magazine I have picked up for months has praised the Not So Big series. Of course I am exaggerating, but the reviews have been great. Now I want to read them all for myself.
It’s not that I have resisted buying these books for any particular reason. I have simply had my reading dance card quite full. Even now, I have a book called Let Them Eat Cake: Marketing To The Masses—As Well As The Classes by Pamela N. Danziger, and The Number by Lee Eisenberg (see blog post from December 28, 2005) sitting at my bedside waiting for my attention.
The Not So Big House and its companion books will end up in our extensive trend library at Marketing Directions, but before they get there I am going to read them with my own house in mind. Our suburban home isn’t really small but it is far from McMansion sized. Now that our place is nearly 13 years old we have begun to refresh and remodel, working projects around my travel schedule as much as our budget. In the past 18 months we have already remodeled the main floor powder bath, painted and re-carpeted the master bedroom and bath, pulled the master closet apart and fit it with custom organization components, painted the stairway from the main floor to the second floor, retiled the kitchen/laundry room/entry and replaced the washer, dryer, dishwasher and microwave.
As we rethink each room, both Steve and I are taking care to include more of the details that make any home feel richer. I hope that Susanka’s books will introduce me to possibilities I have not already considered so I can add them into my plans.
Of course, nothing will happen in the next 45 or 60 days while I travel and write. In fact, that is about all I will have time to do. I have already started the Trend Album™: Heimtextil 2006 and hope to release it in about a week. I head back to Europe again on the 24th for Christmas World and Maison & Objet. Those two Trend Albums will be out in February, but first I will head to Las Vegas to give a talk at the Mandalay Bay Hotel on February 1. On the 8th I will fly back to Europe again for Ambiente.
When all of the Trend Albums are done (you can pre-order any of them from Cathy DeBono), I can start thinking about our house again. I hope I will have finished first Not So Big House book by then.