Serial Game Movie

2)Living Room
Writing about the statistics of our use of each of the rooms, I created a home usability spreadsheet that can be downloaded here. Studying it, made me realize that our living room was vastly underused. We were barely spending 6 hours per week in it, that is 2.5% of our total home-spent awake time. Why didnt we use the new reading couches and bookshelves we recently purchased? Mainly because the light in the room was never strong enough for the evening reading. Last month we installed four cute little spotlights that are strong enough for late night winter reading or a family game. We put a few games, books and magazines on the table and encourage kids to cuddle with a soft warm blanket on the sofas to read, chat or play.

5)Bathroom
Ever since we moved to the East Coast from LA, we were wondering why toilets and vanities seem to be much lower here. The standard 30" height of the bathroom cabinets apparently came from the old days when water bowls were just put atop a dresser. Such a low height may work well for kids of certain age and height, but little kids still need a stool and teenagers are the height of their parents. Therefore, unless you are running a home-school, you can be much more comfortable with a higher vanity that does not require so much bending. Especially, if you have a bad back. To test this, we tried hand washing and teeth brushing in a kitchen sink, as kitchen counter height is usually 36". We liked it and when redoing our bathroom after an occidental flooding, we knew that we wanted to fit our home to our "tall" needs.

6)Mirrors
When turning our utilities room into my husbands office and contemplating the style of the bi-fold doors that should cover the washing and drying machines, I recollected my own advice: "Mirrors make room appear larger and brighter by reflecting the light instead of absorbing it as walls do." Now, we cant believe that we got so much visible space out of the junkyard of utilities and storage.