The Too-Big House


by Katherine Morris - Date: 2006-12-29 - Word Count: 539 Share This!

How can a house be too big? We have oodles of things that need a home, a desire for space so we can move about without tripping over one another, and perhaps a feeling of pride in owning a big home.

A house is too big when the ratio of people and animals to the square footage of the house falls out of balance. What that ratio is can be felt by being in a home that is too big, and it will have some degree of variation in accord with ones personality.

However, it is safe to say that a home which houses a couple and a dog, for example, and exceeds 3,000 square feet is touching the edge of a person-space imbalance.

The imbalance is energetic: a house is inanimate, or in human terms dead. The furniture, clothing, artwork, carpet, and mechanical systems of a house are also inanimate. We are animate, or alive, and equally important, we are social animals.

When we are in a setting in which there are more dead things than live things, as in the too big house, we lose energy to the house... When we are in a setting in which there are more dead things than live things, as in the too big house, we lose energy to the house. We can feel its emptiness, a loneliness, a sense that something is missing, and often compensate for that by animating it with things that make us feel good. The effect of the adding inanimate things is to feel an initial enchantment making us feel we are getting energy, e.g., the happiness one feels at the addition of a beautiful new table. However, that excitement dissipates rather quickly, and we are left with another energy deficit.

Relationship Dangers

Aside from feeling an emptiness and a lack of containment from being in a too large house, there are serious negative consequences for an intimate relationship. Unless such a home is used regularly to entertain or otherwise host large numbers of people, the deadness and the vastness of the space becomes a metaphors for the state of the relationship. The house will often end up requiring either or both much time/money to maintain, taking time/money away from the relationship; the house comes between the couple. Energetically, as mentioned above, each person is being drained by the deadness of the house and has less energy for the partner.

Solutions

What do to if you have a too big house? Well, moving is the best solution, but in the interim, add live things such as animals or plants to it. Let the outside in by keeping the windows unblocked and open views to of the outside, especially if one sees nature. If the temperature permits, open the windows to invite the sounds and smells of the animated world of the outdoors in. Use photos or artwork that speaks that features images of live things--preferably in motion, e.g., someone skiing, walking, etc.

We instinctively know how to add life to a dead space and that is the reason we have so many TV's and music sources in one house. The TV or music is constantly adding live action to the space. But there is no substitute for the real thing: live people, animals, and plants.


Related Tags: house, space, feeling, intimate, lonely, nature, volume, emptiness, instinctively, energetic

Katherine Grace Morris, Ph.D. is the Founder and President of Psychology of Setting Associates and is the "Environmental Therapist." She has a doctorate in depth psychology, and is the pioneer of a new field of psychology, called the "psychology of setting." She uses a client's setting -- home, business, etc. to solve clients' problems with themselves or with their employees. Change is easier when the body leads. Changing the setting leads the body and the head follows. http://www.psychologyofsetting.com

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