We’ve made thousands of strategic decisions in the design of our home. And while I’ve outlined many of them in the posts by room and subject, let’s look at an example of how much time just one simple change saves you over time.
Let’s look at something as simple as the placement of a doorway. (We’re currently living in a European home where their doorways are not in the most optimal positions, so I’ve experienced five days of dealing with that, and have several more weeks to go, and so it’s top of mind! 🙂 )
HOME DESIGN STRATEGY
Example #1: How to Waste 2 Years of Life with 1 Doorway!
Let’s say Doorway A between Room 1 and Room 2 isn’t placed with the proper flow in mind, and traffic has to shift even ever-so-slightly to walk through it.
If you’re walking between Rooms 1 and Room 2 multiple times per day (let’s say eight times to allow for 4 there-and-back movements, which is less than the most-used rooms but more than the least-used rooms on average so it’s a very conservative number)…
…and you have to shift your trajectory slightly to allow for this not-optimal doorway placement…
…and that shift costs you 5 seconds of total walk time…
…that equals 40 seconds of your life lost per day. (8 times x 5 seconds)
Doesn’t sound terrible, right? We can deal with that if it means we don’t have to deal with shifting a doorway, right?
Well, let’s now multiply that 40 seconds by 365 days per year and that’s 14,600 seconds, or 243.33 minutes.
A.K.A. 4+ hours per year!
Now, let’s say you live in this place for 11 years, which is the currently average amount of time people stay in their homes.
Now we’re looking at almost
2 days of your life wasted
in just shifting your walk between Room 1 and 2!
“2 days? That’s not so bad!”
OK, well if losing 2 days of your life to simply walking doesn’t bother you, let me share with you what blows my mind (and incentivizes me to do so much of what I do to help people!) =
that’s just 1 movement!
ONE! Uno!
Multiply that by the 1,000s of movements you do every day (if not tens of thousands!), and the results are mind-boggling!
HOME DESIGN STRATEGY
“So how do we get back the years?!”
To me, spending a few extra hours at the start of a project, analyzing your life goals and priorities and the design strategy (like we do for you HERE!), is something I am so happily willing to do if it saves me thousands of days…nay,
years of my life
to just get it right the first time!
And yes, I’m going to write in all caps because it’s THAT important! 🙂
We only get one life here and I for one don’t want to spend big chunks of it taking too much time doing mundane tasks poorly, such as
- Walking from room to room
- Cleaning something I could have avoided having
- Doing daily maintenance tasks inefficiently
…just to name three!
I mean, I’m cool with “wiling time away” but I’d like to do it staying to watch the sunset unexpectedly at the beach, or cuddling my daughters for an extra-long time. Not walking from my kitchen to the living room, for land sakes!
(Note to self: Ask Google where the term “land sakes” originated from. It needs a comeback!)
This is just one insight into why we create what we create for you so passionately!
Lecture by Jess adjourned. Have a great weekend, you lovely people.
PS: To do this for your whole home, grab THIS where we’ll walk you through exactly what you need! (Talk about saving hours of your time trying to figure it out yourself! 🙂 )
