When I drive down a city street at night, I confess that I often peek into the windows of other peoples’ houses just because.\u00a0 I do the same thing when I walk home at night from the bus.\u00a0 Oh\u00a0I don’t stop the car, I don’t run up to windows but as I walk past I often give a sideways glance and\u00a0look in. \u00a0Its not that I’m hoping to see nekkid people doing heaven knows what, its just that looking into other peoples lives sparks my imagination.\u00a0 Some times, I walk by a house and\u00a0its all cozy and nice and I practically want to knock on the door and make friends. Some times, I drive by a house and look up through the window and are awed to find a second floor chandeler or even a ballroom.\u00a0 Its possible that the habit originated in the words of the Peter, Paul and Mary song, “Christmas Dinner.”\u00a0 Whatever the motivator, I’ve been doing it all my life. I like to see the colors\u00a0people paint their living rooms, their choices in sofas and the stuff they hang on\u00a0the walls, the curious way they take down walls so that houses nearly identical on the outside are made completely different on the inside.\u00a0 I like to imagine that I too live in a neat tidy organized well decorated sort of place.<\/p>\n
In my second Cleveland apartment, there was a dancer living across the alley.\u00a0\u00a0 She had a\u00a0dancer body and she walked\u00a0like a dancer floating around her\u00a0apartment and while my apartment was a messy student dwelling with mismatched everything, the apartment across the way came straight from a magazine.\u00a0 One weekend, she\u00a0painted her entire 5 room apartment different charming pastel colors in a single day and then had a big party to celebrate —from paint and rollers and drop cloths to full bore party with interesting people drinking things in\u00a0glasses\u00a0(and not just the cheapest beer in cans)\u00a0in less than a day.\u00a0 The line-up of our windows across the alleyway later led to discovering, that despite a reticience to hang curtains,\u00a0she and her\u00a0boyfriend preferred to wander their pastel apartment in the nude which eventually led to male students sitting on the stoop across the street from her apartment hoping to get an eyeful.<\/p>\n
One never knows what one will see in that instant of peeking.\u00a0 And really, when someone doesn’t put curtains on their windows, should they not expect passersby to peek just a bit?\u00a0 Haven’t the curtainless\u00a0waived the right to object?\u00a0 and is it really that different from perusing a copy of “Natural Home” or “Architectural Digest”?\u00a0 I think not.<\/p>\n
But now I have discovered\u00a0the lovely photos on airbnb.\u00a0 Not only can I peruse the living spaces of Other Peoples\u00a0 in my own city\u00a0but I can peek into apartments all over the world!\u00a0 I can compare decorating style in Stockholm to style in Seattle to style in Portland or even Tokyo.\u00a0 I can evaluate kitchen layout and rate the fold away sofa.\u00a0 I can see what colors (or lack of) are popular in which country. Without airbnb would I have ever really known that people in Stockholm really do decorate houses in\u00a0yellow and black, that the combination is not simply an IKEA creation?\u00a0 Or would I have ever guessed that significant numbers of people in Paris really do have apartments that are spare and neutral except for splashes of red.\u00a0\u00a0Would I have ever realized what amazing space hogs we Americans are or how amazingly efficient a small place can be?<\/p>\n
Thanks to airbnb, I realize I have been looking at retiring in a foreign country completely the wrong way. In fact, it might actually be possible to afford a flat for two or even three in London once I pare down the Stuff.\u00a0 The excitement is debilitating–I can hardly focus on anything else.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0the right-now momment,\u00a0 however, there’s the terrible downside of realizing that our residence looks, well, dreadful.\u00a0\u00a0I now want desperately to redecorate our whole house or at least the parts that can be seen from the street.\u00a0 Okay well maybe “decorate” is a more honest word to use since if I’m being perfectly honest, all we really did was throw all our belongings in and start living our lives in a new location.\u00a0 Unfortunately life seems to eat up all the spare time that might be devoted to decorating.\u00a0 So I shall continue to peek and surf and dream.<\/p>\n
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When I drive down a city street at night, I confess that I often peek into the windows of other peoples’ houses just because.\u00a0 I do the same thing when I walk home at night from the bus.\u00a0 Oh\u00a0I don’t … Continue reading