The traditional house plans haven’t changed much since the time of George Washington. Very little change was made over time and it seems we made it worse. The Mount Vernon, his house, has a large office and large workshops while we changed the office into a dysfunctional study, which I call “The Trophyroom,” If it is a larger and separated from the living space, I could actually have a functional office and I don’t have to pay rent for my small office in downtown. But the house plans doesn’t give you that space or a separation between living and working spaces.
A home is where you should just do home stuff and work is where you should do your work stuff and you are obligated to make your landlord richer. Why on earth, did we separate the two spaces and made us pay up to 33% of our income to the home mortgage, and another big portion of our income to the office/warehouse landlords when we can do both in same space? If they must separate the residential and commercial spaces, don’t they must regulate monopolized landlords and allowing us to buy a small space within a big commercial building? In Korea, Japan and most other countries thats how they do it, why can’t we?
We all know that so many successful entrepreneurs start-up their companies from their garage. But our zoning regulation or building code doesn’t allow that. We renamed our barn and workshop into a garage and according to a building inspector, “A garage is a space to park your vehicles.”
He says I am violating the code by storing my wife’s beauty store seasonal decorations and winter hats and other things. In his word, “What is the zoning of your house? It is R, right? It means your garage should have residential stuff and your business stuff should be stored in a commercial zone.” Am I crazy or is regulation stupid? I am lost here.
Renaming our barns and workshop to the garage, planted the seed in our brain to think a garage is just a space to park your car. It made us believe doing anything else other than parking the car in the garage is abnormal. Matter of fact, if you do anything other than park your cars in the garage, your neighbors may call the police. Am I abnormal or is our system gone wrong?
Residential Zone Should Provide Peaceful Living Environment
Yes, I agree. We should not have disco clubs in the residential zone, although my neighbors have lots of parties with huge speakers in their back yard. We should minimize unnecessary traffic in the residential zone, although my Hispanic neighbor runs a church at his house and cars jammed our streets every Sunday.
Because of the residential zoning regulations that cannot be abided by everyone in every circumstance, not many neighbors are close to each other. Instead, many of us are enemies of each other.
One of the things that I miss about my life in Korea as a child was the street walk. I walked to the store near my house, I walked to the library, I walked to the swimming lake. If it’s far, I had a bicycle to ride. Our home was the residential and commercial all mixed. Our neighbors never, in my memories, had problems with how they lived and use their houses when we had no zoning regulations.
Here in America, there is a diverse population with different cultures and I can understand the need to regulate a little. Yes, a little. Not too much as is now.
What I Think is “My Ideal” in My Case.
Eliminate unused spaces in our house
- None of us stepped into our living room for over a year. Just in case we will have many guests, my wife furnished our living room with a set of Italian sofas that were expensive enough to pay for a motorcycle that I still don’t have. It is a complete waste of space and money. Yes, I am still paying for cooling and heating the living room that we never use.
- We ended up throwing away a monster-size dining table set that I could pay for the ATV that I still don’t have. After years of collecting dust, we get rid of the table and chairs. We still have a china cabinet full of European china sets that we used only twice over twenty years of our lives. What a waste of money and space.
- Our family room had turned into a library. All sides of the wall are full of books which we read some and never read them again and the books we had no time yet to read. It is just to show our guests how educated and sophisticated we are while none of our guests are strangers who don’t know how funny and crazy I am. What a waste of space and wood for all that paper.
[To be Continue]