The Symbolism of the Spiral

Almost all primitive cultures seem to create spirals --- pecked into rock, painted on to cave walls. They appear in nature --- the fiddleheads of ferns, the snail shells. 

I’ve always liked spirals and enjoyed drawing them as doodles. They imply multiple things to me…perhaps one of the reasons I find them so attractive. 

1. Continuum of time… past - present - future
2. Perspective looking from now…is it backward (history) or forward (future)…it is good to consider both positibilities
3. Curves seem a more natural shape to life…not right angles and straight lines that humans seems to love creating. Curves are comfortable.

What does the spiral symbolize to you?

Quote of the Day - 2/19/2012

No one can observe and analyze beautiful things in nature or works of art without increasing his capacity to appreciate and therefore enjoy the best. - Henry Turner Bailey in Photography and fine art

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The quote today is from a book published in 1918 - just as photography was gaining wider popularity. It seems logical to me that having the discipline to notice beautiful things in our everyday activities does indeed increase our ‘capacity to appreciate and enjoy the best.’ I was given a new camera for Christmas 2010 and used it as a springboard to dramatically increase my forays into botanical photography (and photography in general). Now I find that I ‘see’ more than I did a year ago….and enjoy the challenge of capturing what I find.

Henry Turner Bailey was Dean of the Cleveland School of Art when he wrote the book. My favorite images are of things I recognize like the Jack-in-the-Pulpit on page 30 (small version at left) and the dogwoods on page 31.

Note: I’ve provided links to the hardcopy version of this book on Amazon but it is freely available on the Internet Archive to enjoy on line: Photography and Fine Art.

Personal Rhythms - Annual

This blog item is the fourth in a series about the rhythms we choose for our lives. Today the topic is annual rhythms.

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What activities do you do every year? I find that putting these on a calendar (either electronic or paper) is very worthwhile - so that I don’t forget. I’ve listed some examples below.

• Birthdays/anniversaries/other yearly celebrations. I set up a re-occurring item on my electronic calendar for these.
• Vacation. Taking at least a week off to do something completely different than the other weeks of the year helps sustain your focus on what is truly important in your life. Generally I reserve the days on my calendar well before I know for certain what I am going to do.
• Physical/medical checkup. Most medical plans encourage some kind of annual checkup. Use the data to make appropriate life style changes (and minimize medication over the long term).
• Thorough house cleaning. Many people still do ‘spring cleaning’ because it works to keep the home in great shape. Some elements of thorough house cleaning (that aren’t part of weekly or monthly cleanings) might be:
  • Cleaning windows inside and out
  • Taking everything out of a storage area, cleaning it, putting back only what is still needed, donating/trashing the rest
  • Getting all the spiderwebs and debris from the garage floor and ceiling
  • Cleaning under furniture (may involve moving the furniture)
  • Checking the pantry for old/forgotten/expired cans or boxes of food
  • Emptying the refrigerator, cleaning the shelves (hopefully not finding any long lost items that should have been eaten or thrown away long ago)
• Resolutions. Most people do this at the beginning of the year but it can be done any time. The idea is to set some longer term goals…and the ways you will measure them for the next 12 months.

 Are there other things that should be added to this list for annual consideration?

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Previous posts in this series about personal rhythms can be found here: monthly, weekly, daily.

Quote of the Day - 2/18/2012

She awoke from long childhood in which she had always been protected and surrounded by attention and comforts, and not responsibilities. - Isabel Allende in The House of the Spirits: A Novel

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Two thoughts on today’s quote: 

1. It is interesting that we associate childhood as a time without responsibility. Our laws embed the concept in our formal legal system. But having or not having responsibility is not a binary thing. It is more accurate if we think of a child’s growth as a continual path of increasing levels of responsibility. At some point a child becomes responsible for dressing themselves, putting food in their own mouth, completing a household chore, completing homework without prompting, getting their first job, etc. At what age do they cross a threshold that says they are no longer a child? Certainly when they are financially independent…but probably before and the use of age is a simplifying criteria for our legal system which may work on average but not for all individuals.
2. In the past, the optimum in our culture was for women to continue in a child-like state (i.e. without acknowledged responsibilities) for most of their lives. The things that they did were important to their families but were not appreciated by society as responsibilities. The quote reminds us of the awakening that happened for many women as that ideal began to crumble.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 18, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Which countries grew the most GM crops in 2011? - US, Brazil, Argentina, India, Canada…the post includes a nice graphic

A 3-D Printed Jawbone - For an 83 year old woman. Made from 1000s of layers of titanium dust melded with a laser

Zebrafish May Hold Key to Repairing Serious Eye Conditions - Lots of research on approaches to help people with macular degeneration and glaucoma. This is one.

Motherhood 'Detrimental' to Women's Scientific Careers, Study Concludes - It’s not biased hiring or evaluation…it is outdated policies that are the key stumbling block now. How much progress can really be made as long as there is an underlying assumption that an academic has a stay-at-home spouse?

Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel Gardiner Hubbard’s Love Story in Photos - posted by National Geographic for Valentine’s Day

Raining rainbows - a messy but pretty project

Crock Pot Ideas - Does everyone have a crockpot? This site will encourage you to use it more. Applesauce Chicken sounds good to me. (My crockpot (see photo at the right) is almost 40 years old and still turning out great meals!)

Obama Hikes Royalties on Oil Industry by 50% - Bringing the fees for oil drilling on public land up to those for offshore drilling and for renewable energy generation on public lands. The royalties paid to the government had not increased since the 1920s!

NASA Map Sees Earth’s Trees in New Light - a map that show the height of the world’s forests

Nanoparticles in Food, Vitamins Could Harm Human Health - Think exposure to nanoparticles is something that may be a future problem? Maybe it is already happening

The Edge of Spring?

There seem to be a lot of signs of spring already. The winter has been very mild here in Maryland so far and there seemed to be a lot of birds singing as I made my way around the yard this morning.

The hyacinths are up and one is blooming.

The maple buds are just about ready to burst (all the buds on the lower branches have already been eaten by the deer).

Tulips are peeking through the mulch. Even the lilies are sprouting (the ones in the photograph have not been discovered by the deer yet…a clump a few feet away have been nibbled to the ground).

Are their signs of spring in your neighborhood?

Quote of the Day - 2/17/2012

The stream of time often doubles on its course, but always it makes for itself a new channel. - Frederick Lewis Allen in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's (Wiley Investment Classics)

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When we hear an news item comparing what is happening today with some earlier time - we should always be aware that while the situation may look the same, it is ‘a new channel’ and the next event may, or may not, be similar to what happened in the past.

This is true in our personal lives as well. The passage of time alone guarantees that the situation is different. That wonderful vacation or birthday party from 10 years ago cannot be duplicated. The elements that made them stand out for you could even seem repetitive and not at all special the second time around.

As we navigate our ‘stream of time’ - let’s rejoice in the prospect of discoveries in our own ‘channel.’

Quote of the Day - 2/16/2012

Many of us would just as soon have our choices made for us but the heroine, when at a juncture, makes her own choice. - Joan Anderson in A Year by the Sea

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When there is a choice that is truly important to us - either for right now or for our future - we should make our own choice. The challenge is recognizing when a choice is truly important. Maybe it isn’t too hard to make the determination if the impact of the choice will happen right away or in the near term. It’s the choices that are more strategic - have an impact months or years away - that are hard to always recognize. The best approach may be to always participate in choices (rather than abdicating) so that the results are still our own too. Only children are allowed to not be fully responsible for their selves.

Remember the old notion of a ‘grown up?’ The implication was that a ‘grown up’ was someone that was not growing/changing in contrast to children that were doing both. While I do know a lot of people that are trying hard not to grow larger, I don’t know anyone that is not changing. Change happens to us all even if we do nothing. Many people have discovered that change and continued learning is just the way they want to live. And that brings us back to the idea of the quote “when at a juncture, makes her own choice.”

Lessons About Work/Life Issues I Learned from My Grandmother

In honor of a grandmother than would have been 105 years old this month….. 

My grandmother ran the family mill/feed store while I was growing up in the 60s. She had assumed the role after the last of her 9 children started school. The feed store office where she worked accommodated young visitors and I enjoyed at least one day with her every time we visited my grandparents. She was probably the only professional woman that I observed both while she worked and at home during that time period. Here are some things I learned from her: 

• Blend (rather than balance) activities as often as you can. She enjoyed having a grandchild with her at work. The scales for trucks and bags of feed were opportunities for practical learning. There always seemed to be something going on. Sometimes it was just being together and quiet: I read and she continued writing her letter to a faraway daughter. She would get an extra case or two of ‘soda pop’ when the truck came to deliver to the vending machine…and take it home for a family gathering. She brought seeds for vegetables home and delighted in my grandfather’s garden experiments.
• Let people know you have high expectations of them. For grandmother - ‘people’ included children as well as adults. It didn’t take being around her very long to understand the boundaries of acceptable behavior and a very strong desire to live up to her expectations.
• Speak with confidence – reflect the authority you have. She very seldom raised her voice. She assumed that people would do what she told them to do; it worked for children and the people that worked for her. In retrospect, she was a very good ‘situational’ leader; there were times she gave very detailed instructions and other times minimal information - she honed her requests for the individual and her judgment of their abilities was very finely tuned.
• Use the best tool for the task. She actually articulated this axiom in the context of food preparation but she applied it everywhere….and she was constantly looking for new and better tools. If she were alive today, she would be using email rather than snail mail and maybe she’d have created a family social network online.
• Ask for assistance. She knew when to ask for help although most of the time she received assistance before she even asked. She never lifted the sacks of feed herself - sometimes she had to ask one of the men to come from the mill to load up for a customer but most of the time they just appeared to do the job. She told a story on herself about an experience in an airport on the way to Alaska. Evidently she didn’t know exactly where her next gate was and, being unfamiliar with the airport, stopped to read a sign more carefully. Within seconds, someone stopped and asked her if she needed assistance. They probably saw this small lady (just over 5 feet) with white hair staring at the sign…and concluded she needed help. She probably smiled at them and accepted their assistance gratefully even though she was seconds away from figuring it out herself.
• Wear comfortable shoes/clothes. Look professional. The mill/feedstore was not air conditioned and it gets pretty hot in the Oklahoma summer. Grandmother wore light weight, pastel shirtwaist dresses she made for herself (so they fit perfectly) with sandals. She always looked comfortable; she also looked like she owned the place --- which was true.
• Eat wisely. She always took her lunch to the mill - mostly ‘rabbit food’ - and stored the part that needed to be kept cool in a cubby hole in the ‘soda pop’ vending machine that she had discovered. At home, when there were large family gatherings and lots of food, she was always the one that was most choosy about what she ate. She liked a wide variety of food but she was very conscious of the way she needed to eat to feel satisfied and stay about the same weight.

Sometimes we think of our world changing so rapidly that nothing stays relevant for very long. When I make a list like this it helps me realize that my fundamental approach to life may not need to change; it’s the things around the edges that are changing. It’s OK for those edges to be volatile…in fact - I enjoy that kind of challenge.

Note: The dogwood picture reminds me of when my grandmother visited me after I moved to the east coast in the mid-80s. We sat on the patio for a picnic lunch while the dogwood petals wafted down around us.  

Personal Rhythms - Monthly

This blog item is the third in a series about the rhythms we choose for our lives. Today the topic is monthly rhythms.

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There are activities that are generally done on a monthly basis. For me, monthly activities clump into two main areas: keeping the household running smoothly and personal metrics. I’ve listed some examples in each area below.

Keeping the household running smoothly

• Bill paying. Usually credit card, utility, and mortgage payment are a monthly rhythm. It is one that causes a lot of fuss and flurry if not done consistently on time.
• Non-perishable household items. Making one major shopping trip a month for non-perishable household items can save money and make the other shopping trips easier. For me, this has taken some getting used to; it took me awhile to realize how much cat food was needed to sustain 2 cats for a month!

Personal metrics - These are tightly linked to personal goals. For me, most metrics are collected daily (things like: weight, blood pressure, books read, blog items posted, time spent in whatever area I’m trying to improve, etc.) and analyzed weekly. On a monthly basis, I look at the overall goals I have for the year and decide if the metrics are still the right things to be measuring…and does the data tell me that I am on track to achieving the 2012 goal I set for myself.

Think about the monthly rhythms most important to enable your life to move along the way you want. Are they firmly in place or ad hoc? Could they be honed to better meet your needs?

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Previous posts in this series about personal rhythms can be found here: weekly, daily.

Quote of the Day - 2/15/2012

Colette once remarked that she always wanted to see her rooms crowded with flowers and her kitchen table set with whatever seasonal delights the farmers’ stalls had to offer: baskets of spotted quail eggs, yellow, noisy skinned onions, tied bunches of perfect leeks, succulent red berries. She wanted to smell the reassuring odors of good food cooking. And she always wanted her windows, their sills filled with pots of herbs and sweet geranium, to open out into the embrace of tree branches. These things gave her a sense of peacefulness. - Lee Bailey in Lee Bailey's Country Weekends  

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Recently - I seem to be focused on reducing clutter. The quote for today reminds me that some kinds of clutter are an element of a comfortable home. Today, let’s focus on positive clutter.

Colette’s flowers…seasonal delights…pots of herbs - those all are appealing.

For me, positive clutter is functional (and used often) or changes frequently. Here are some examples of positive clutter I have around me:

• Handy containers for colored paperclips anywhere I may sit down with a book. I use the them to mark interesting passages and my place in books.

• Little pieces of paper around my PC with numbers or reminders. They last for a day or two then are replaced by others. I like to use different colors and sizes. It makes the work area seem more personalized.

• A wire basket with banana rack with onions, potatoes, garlic, bananas….any fruit or veggie that does not need refrigeration.

• The variety of small canisters of tea on the shelf over the sink. We make a pot of tea every day so the contents of the canisters are always being depleted….refilled.

• A deep red metal bowl filled with small containers of daily vitamins/supplements. It holds 3-5 days so sometimes it is piled high and other times it is down to one small container.

• A stack of magazines/catalogs on the table - ready to be thumbed through and then recycled.

• A pile of books to glean for quotes (taking out the paper clips as I glean) and return to the library (for library books) or donate to a used book charity…unless I am keeping them for reference.

• A 40+ year old sewing basket next to one of my reading chairs. I do my mending there - but mending is not needed all that often. I’ve recently decided it is the best place to leave my Kindle to charge. So the sewing basket was always a positive clutter…but it recently increased its positive value.

Quote of the Day - 2/14/2012

The important thing is to do something, even if it’s as simple as making a pile of pile of pebbles. For it is always the doing that leads to the becoming, and before you know it you’re on the next stage of life. - Joan Anderson in A Walk on the Beach (2004)

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Just thinking about something is not enough even if the change you are making is mostly a mental one. While there is a concept of continuous learning - in reality, we learn in spurts. Getting to a next stage of life generally prompts a learning spurt; sometimes we experience a spurt when we discover something new and pursue it with intensity. I find it more descriptive to think about life as a series of transitions. These transitions can vary in length and importance; they can overlap. The idea is to recognize our situation (the ‘as is’) and what we want (the ‘to be’) so that we can take the actions to make it happen.

Finding a way to ‘do something’ is an accelerant to transition. Realizing this should influence how you plan ….making sure that you focus on tangible actions. In reality there are almost always multiple transitions going on concurrently at various stages of maturity; think about your plan as something that will continue as your life moves forward; some transitions will complete but others will start…it’s the nature of life.

Here are my rules of thumb for developing a personal transition (life?) plan:

• Plan a ‘something’ for every day that moves you toward a goal. It is easiest to have it be something that is part of a daily rhythm rather than a totally unique action. My current example: this blog.
• Identify a larger project that will take several months and add the time phased actions it will take to make it happen. My current example: get the interior of the house painted.
• Write it down. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I like to use a task list that includes dates and categories unless a project gets complicated enough that I need to identify relationships between the tasks (then I use something like Microsoft Project). My current example: task list in Microsoft Outlook with categories of blog, house, etc.
• Check off actions as you complete them. My current example: I look at the list every morning and, most days, mark everything complete by the evening.
• Every week/month assess how well you are moving toward your goal and make adjustments to your plan. My current example: I pretty much know how I am doing every day but I find adjustments or additions to the plan are made either weekly or monthly, depending on how quick the series of actions are.

A great periodic self-assessment is to ask yourself what you are doing differently from the way you were 3-6 months ago. The focus should be on how you have translated something you learned into how you live. It’s looking at the results of your plan from a different perspective and may help you answer the really important question - Did you move yourself toward your ‘to be’ objective?

Recipe of the Week: Kiwi Coconut Muffins

2 kiwis peeled and pulse processed in a food processor
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)
1 teaspoons powdered egg whites
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1/2 cup agave nectar or 3/4 cup honey
1/2 cup +2 tablespoons tea or water
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray muffin tins to prevent sticking.

Whisk dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, soda, chia seeds, and coconut) in a large bowl.

In a large measuring cup, whisk agave nectar, tea, oil, vanilla, and egg.

Combine together in large bowl (i.e. add wet ingredients, and kiwi to the dry ingredients) until all ingredients are moistened.

Fill tins 3/4 full.

Bake until the muffins are browned and/or inserted toothpick is clean when removed.

Remove from muffin pans to cool.

Note: Adding 1 tablespoon chia seeds makes for a moister muffin. This addition can be made to just about any muffin recipe - adding a nutritional boost.

Quote of the Day - 2/13/2012

In Western cultures adults, regardless of gender, prefer cooler tones of color: the most popular color preference is blue and the second is green. Small children, by contrast, prefer red followed by yellow of white. Around the age of 8, children begin to shift to adult preferences. - Melanie and John Aves in Comfort Colors: Palettes for Liveable Rooms

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This quote caught my eye because my color preference is different than the ‘most popular.’ I am not a ‘cool tone’ person at all. I like wearing red. If I wear blue - it is turquoise which is more bright than ‘cool.’ In my home I like warm colors - rusts or deep burgundies and very dark greens for accent colors. I like whites and beiges as the backdrop for the accent colors. We do have one room with Copenhagen blue carpet and the room always seems cool…good in summer but not as nice on cold days.

Are you color preferences aligned with the ‘most popular’ --- or different?

Teams of Two

On the eve of Valentine’s Day - consider teams of two. They are the smallest team of all and yet are often the primary drivers in just about every aspect of our lives. Why might this be true? 

• It is easier for two people to communicate well than for a larger number of people.
• It may be biologically driven…to create and care for children.
• We each need a partner to fill in our weaknesses…and we need to fill theirs.
• The logistics of sustaining a team of two are easier than for a larger team.
• Our culture supports and encourages teams of two.

Maybe it doesn’t matter ‘why’ when it is so easy to observe teams of two every day. Some of them have existed for a very long time, morphing to continue their effectiveness and compatibility over the course of their relationship. It is unusual for larger teams to grow old together…but no so for teams of two.

What are the most important teams of two in your life?

Remember that not all of them are Valentine’s material; it turns out that teams of two are very effective in the business world too. Walt and Roy Disney are an example that is often cited.

Favorite Smells of Winter

What are your favorite smells of winter?

Mine are indoor smells that I associate with home…cozy and warm even when the outdoors if very cold.

Vanilla. It’s often combined with other scents, perhaps because it is a ‘comfort’ smell. There are artificial forms now but I always try to buy the natural form. It pleases me to know that it comes from an orchid that requires special care to produce the seed pods that contain the scent. It took quite a long time to figure out how to grow the plants in tropical places where they were not native! The scent can waft from cooking or tea or a candle or hand lotion. 

Baking bread. I am not a bread baker but I enjoy the smell when I am drying bread crumbs (bread going stale processed in the food processor then dried in a 200 degree F oven for a couple or hours). It makes the whole house smell like baking bread. Somehow that smell is the one I associate most with warmth. 

Cinnamon - cloves - nutmeg (i.e. the pumpkin pie spices). The smell of these spices are such a favorite that I make pumpkin custard (who needs the crust!) almost once a month and the candles I buy are most likely to be this scent.

So - are these smells among your favorites…or do you have completely different favorite smells of winter?

Quote of the Day - 2/12/2012

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. - Albert Einstein

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The glorious complexity of natural systems…balanced…resilient to change (up to a point)…sustained. There are so many perspectives from which to ‘look deep’ and, in doing so, understand even more than the area of focus. Why does that happen?

For me, it happens in several ways.

• Nature is a system of elements so closely linked that a change in one has a ripple effect in another. For example - once I start looking closely at my garden, I notice not only the plants but the insects and frogs and (argh!!) the deer. There are so many threads to follow and explore….to understand.
• Looking deep into nature also encourages me to think more deeply in other areas as well. Being outdoors - having a ‘green hour’ - is stimulating and calming at the same time. It is like a clearing of cobwebs. Understanding grows when we give ourselves time to think!

Quote of the Day - 2/11/2012

The fundamental point is not the appearance of new ideas, but the appearance of conditions that make such ideas relevant – Maurice Agulhon (as quoted in Joseph A. Amato in Dust: A History of the Small and Invisible (2000))

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It is always true that for new ideas to become accepted - they have to be relevant. This quote emphasizes the linkage to conditions. What are some examples where this is true?

What about the idea to ‘bring you own bag’ when shopping? My usage of my own bags started a few years ago but has accelerated in frequency over the past 18 months and I notice more people using their own bags now. The conditions that made the idea increasingly relevant include: 

• Noticing the number of plastic bags going to landfills or escaping as litter (we see them along roadsides, tangled in tree branches, soggy in streams). Yuck!
• Many jurisdictions are requiring stores implement some charging or credit scheme to discourage the use of plastic bags.
• My grocery store has started giving a $0.05 credit for each bag I use of my own even though there is not yet a requirement in our county/state.

 Can you think of some other examples?

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 11, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Song of a Jurassic cricket - Scientists at the University of Bristol made a recording of how these extinct crickets probably sounded based on fossil evidence and what is known about crickets that survive today

All the food you eat is why you’re fat - very graphical presentation from Fast Company. The big 5 reasons: diet soda, driving, your mom, your job, your fork!

Hans Christian Andersen collection - The Zvi Har’El site that provides background material and the H.P. Paull 1872 translation of Andersen’s fairy tales.

Timeline of Ancient Origins of Plastic Surgery

In Depth: Weather on Steroids - Article on the UCAR site discussing “when greenhouse gases enter the climate system, what kind of weather comes out?”

The Open University - a site with free online courses in many topic areas

Pearl Guide - A large site containing information about pearls

Jack Horner: Shape-shifting dinosaurs (TED talk video) - Where are the baby dinosaurs?

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation books on Internet Archive - Lots of recent postings - many with color images of 20th Century art that can be easily viewed online.

The Architecture of Home - Part II

Yesterday I began this post about visualizing your ideal home.  The previous post is here.

Room configuration that supports lifestyle 

Main living area: Kitchen-den open floor plan or country kitchen…separate formal dining room…island work area or stove top or sink…window over the sink? My ideal is an open kitchen-breakfast area-den as one large continuous room. An island in the kitchen provides plenty of work area and I’d prefer to have enough room for some bar stools to turn it into an eating area too. I don’t need a formal dining room at all; if the house has one, I’ll use it for something besides a dining room.

Bedrooms: Master bedroom with bathroom…or do all the bedrooms need it. My ideal would be to have all bedrooms have their own bathroom. My second choice would be for two bedrooms that shared a bathroom between them.

Stairs or no stairs - I prefer houses without stairs…primarily because I am thinking about not wanting to deal with stairs 20 years from now. I’ve never liked to carry groceries or laundry up or down stairs.

Garage - How many cars? Easy to get groceries carried from car to kitchen? My ideal is probably 2…with garage door opener; I don’t want more than a step up or down (preferably no step) to get into the house from the garage.

Laundry room/space - Space to hang clothes as they come from the washer or dryer? How easily can the dirty clothes get to the laundry room?

Electrical outlets - Are they conveniently located and are there enough of them?

Connectivity - Is internet connectivity/internal network easy to achieve?

Storage - Unfinished area of basement for storage or is it somewhere else in the house?

Light 

Windows 

• Number, Size, and Type - My ideal home includes lots of windows. I particularly like transom windows over French doors. In the late 1800s, small conservatories were popular. Now, garden rooms are more common. Either one or both would be part of my ideal home. I also like skylights.
• Direction (will the sun shine directly in?) - My ideal house has at least some windows where the sun shines in - for me and the cats to enjoy on a cold sunny day.
• Double paned? - This is a resounding 'yes' for my ideal house since just about every place has very hot or very cold weather for part of the year.
• Clear or colored or etched glass - My ideal house would have mostly clear glass windows but I like bevelled and etched front doors - perhaps stained glass for the transom windows.
• Easily opened and types of screens - A house needs to be aired out on breezy spring and fall days...and other days that the temperature and air outside is pleasant.

Overhead lights or outlet on switch - My ideal house would have lights on ceiling fans in almost every room.

Task lighting (particularly in kitchen) - If the overhead cabinents shade the countertop in the kitchen, there needs to be lighting under them. 

Bathroom - The round clear bulbs mounted on a bar above a mirror are my favorites for bathroom lighting.

Features for the home of the future 

Water - There are a few houses that have gray water systems now but as water becomes scarcer, there will be even more. In the interim, catching water from wasing veggies to water plants is a start (supported by your effort rather than the architecture of your home). There may also be a trend to add filtration/purification of drinking water into homes; this is something that can be added after the home as built as well.

Power generation - It is becoming increasingly possible to generate power from just about all external surfaces of the home. As energy costs increase and the production costs of the materials comes down, they will gain rapidly in popularity. They are included in my vision of my ideal home 10 years from now.

Appliances  

• Appliances should take 0 power when not in use. I don't need clocks on my microwave, oven, and coffee maker! The only appliance that should be using power all the time in the kitchen is the refrigerator.
• Heating and cooling systems should make use of underground temperature gradients whenever possible to reduce the power required for that purpose.

 Materials 

• Locally produced
• Non-toxic (both in the way they are produced, the outgassing when they are first installed, and recyclable)
• Appropriate durability - Maybe the durability of granite countertops is out of step with the other materials used for the house.

 Flexible 

• Rooms that can change functionality are a plus. Changing a dining room to a 'cave' or a bedroom should be anticipated and even supported by the architecture.
• Different kinds of walls or even screens should be used to subdivide larger areas - making it easy to reconfigure as the needs of the household change over time.

 Back to the beginning - 

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like? 

It's a wonderful vision. Right? Now - what tweak can you make to where you are right now to implement a piece of your ideal home architecture.