Thou shalt covet that other house

This summer our kitchen was featured in Dwell Magazine - the Your Rooms We Love edition. Dwell put a call out for photos from their readers' own homes and I answered that call by submitting some of our best photos. The 3 features that evoke the most envy from friends and visitors are our kitchen, the floating staircase and my bathtub. Dwell chose to feature a two-page spread of our kitchen. It was completely flattering and a bit embarrassing to see it in print, next to some other more lust-worthy homes and rooms than ours. 

And that was the moment that I realized I would always be afflicted with house envy. It was a disease I thought (and my husband hoped) would be cured once we built this house but seeing our house on those pages next to the others, I realized that I loved everyone else's rooms more than my own. That the stuff they chose to fill their spaces with was much more interesting and artistic than my stuff. 

If you've ever read and immediately related to the the New York Times series, Coveting Thy Friend's House, you know exactly what I mean. The other houses and spaces that we covet are   true expressions of ourselves, of who we would be and how we would live if we weren't constrained by those little annoyances of money and time. And while coveting can sometimes tear apart your soul (oh the drama!), what if instead we looked at it as motivation and inspiration? I don't really want to ever be done designing or decorating my home or even my next home and so that 'other house' that is so much better than mine pushes me to continually reinvent my space.

So whether it's an affliction or inspiration - in my books, house envy is what got me out of a dark choppy bungalow and into this bright open modern house that has changed the way my family and I live. Long live coveting!