There are many things we love about living here - both the house and the neighbourhood. We're close to both the town centre and the countryside. There's a frequent bus route close by, some lovely local shops, our street is quiet and our neighbours are pretty nice. But there are things that frustrate me - the garden is overlooked, there's no room for chickens, and the neighbouring house is rented, so we never really build a relationship with those who live there. Also Peter is a full time musician, and I play flute, and I constantly worry about bothering the people next door.
Back in July last year, I used Looby Macnamara's design web as a tool to start thinking about this as a design for my portfolio. She writes about the design web in her People and Permaculture book, and there's a quick online explanation from another diploma apprentice here.
I started by setting out my vision.
Vision
I want a spacious home, easy to keep clean and tidy, easy to find things, no glaring decorating or maintenance jobs, easy to dance from one room to another, welcoming, easy to have friends around, comfortable, glamourous, where we don't have to shift stuff to find things all the time. I want it to feel private but welcoming. I want to be able to craft and cook and preserve and experiment without having to do a million tidying jobs first. I don't want it to feel grubby, like there's corners I can't go into.
Helps
We have a cheerful house! We have plenty of wood, paint and tools. Peter is competent and creative with DIY. We have savings to pay for maintenance jobs and materials. I am pretty determined!
Limits
It feels like there's a lot of emotion tied up in this. I feel reluctant to change things. Sometimes I think we both feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start. Sometimes I feel I need permission and I don't have it because there's only me engaging. Sometimes I feel like this place isn't mine to change. We need to work on communication and a shared goal and sense of purpose.
Patterns
We both want the house to be a palace, to be able to dance from room to room without falling over piles of stuff. We talk about this often but frequently fall into squabbling when we talk about practical details. Both of us feel overwhelmed by the mess and amounts of stuff to do. We frequently declare we'll do something about it and then don't. We feel overwhelmed by feeling like everything needs moving before we can do anything, so we never know where to start.
Struggle to separate maintenance, decorating, decluttering. What is the priority? Sometimes I feel I'm best starting and finishing a whole room, but then I get stuck feeling like I need permission or help and then we get dragged into a cycle of emotions again, a spiral of apathy.
Not much got done...
I feel uncomfortable and overlooked in our garden, and I'd quite like to keep chickens, which I can't do here as there is not enough space and the pavement runs right alongside our garden. Therefore, I'd like to consider moving house. However, our house is rather full, there are several decorating jobs that need doing, and some outdoor maintenance work to be done. We would need to complete this work before we could have the house valued, and until we had the house valued we would not be able to consider looking for a new one as we would not know our financial position and what we could afford. Having just paid off our mortgage, we would like to not have to take on another one.
Those stressful few weeks proved to be the catalyst we needed. Instead of assuming we couldn't know our financial position until we'd had the house valued, we set about exploring houses similar to ours on RightMove and got a good idea of the local market. I made an appointment at the bank to ask about a mortgage, which gave us a good idea of how much we could borrow, and how much we'd have to pay back each month. I pored over the money saving expert website and learned what it would cost us to move house.
Slowly, as we realised that we were actually in a position of power, or enthusiasm grew, and we started to do things.
But slowly, we're imposing order.
So this is a long process, but by keeping our vision in mind we're staying sane amidst a house full of chaos. We spent a day last week trekking around Lincolnshire to look at some of the houses we'd seen on the internet, eating in local pubs, talking to dog walkers, getting a feel for places. We're planning to do the same in West Yorkshire sometime soon - all the time refining what we're looking for, what compromises we're willing to accept, rethinking our lives over and over.
After all that, I'm still not entirely sure the house project will make it into my diploma portfolio. In some ways it doesn't feel very 'permaculturey' - but what does that even mean? I've gone through a design process, and will continue to weave my way around the design web for both sorting out this house and finding a new one. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this from me soon.