88: Are Modern Homes Designed to Keep You Dependent?

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Old farmhouses were built to solve problems that new homes can’t handle… Is it a coincidence?

I live in a 75-year-old farmhouse with a root cellar, a giant pantry off the kitchen, and an old walk-in meat locker in the basement with all of its equipment still there. The more I learn about how older homes were designed, the more I realize how much the house itself used to do the work for the people inside.

Before central air, deep porches shaded exterior walls before heat ever entered the home. Windows sat opposite each other so air could actually move. Deciduous trees shaded the house in summer and dropped their leaves in winter to let sunlight back in. Sleeping porches caught the evening breeze. Root cellars held food without electricity, and summer kitchens kept cooking heat out of the main house.

Modern subdivisions skip most of that. Homes get jammed together for speed and resale, without much thought for the position of the sun or the seasons. Then some owners move into brand-new homes and discover water intrusion, HVAC problems, and finishes failing much earlier than expected.

There's also a tangent about millennial gray, personality-free interiors, and why I'm going to paint a mural of my farm in the laundry room regardless of what a future buyer thinks.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[2:37] What the layout of an old home reveals about its people

[5:14] Wraparound porches shielded the house from heat

[6:52] Sleeping porches and catching the cooler evening breeze

[9:16] The millennial gray pandemic and losing a home's personality