Every home is a compromise

What are your top priorities for your home?

Earlier this week my friend Alison Mazurek posted a single line of text on Instagram with a link to this blog post. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially, she wrote, “Ask yourself this question before re-designing your small space.” I love Alison’s take on small-space living, so I clicked right through anticipating to find some sage design advice. What I found wasn’t what I expected, but it hit home–hard.

Alison was talking about the compromises you have to make in a small space. When Alison consults with other people on their homes, she asks her clients to choose their top three priorities for their space–because a small home can’t do everything well. “There are trade-offs in small spaces,” she writes. “Really aren’t there trade-offs in any decision we make in life? But with a small space you can be confronted with what you don’t have regularly and if you don’t make space for what really matters, daily life can feel like a struggle.”

This is so true: Every home is a series of compromises. In my apartment, we’ve traded additional space for more financial freedom. We traded extra sunlight (which higher floor apartments have) for a view of the building’s shared garden. We traded additional privacy for more community. We traded the headache of co-op management for sharing the costs of capital improvements. But those are the conscious compromises. We’ve also compromised in tons of ways that we may not realize and might want to reexamine. This is why it’s key to name your priorities for your home.

When I think about top three priorities for our home, I would choose: