At ATLOSCon 2011 (yes, all the way last year), Miranda gave a class about the concepts in The Not So Big House. Basically, the book says that you should set up your house for the way you actually use it and want to use it, not the way people set up houses traditionally. We brainstormed the way we used the rooms in our house, and I realized that the living room (the largest room in our tiny house) was hardly ever used.
This got me thinking about what kinds of things I would like to change about the way we use our house. See, Aaron uses his office A LOT. Basically, he is holed up in there a lot of the time doing mystical things with computers and routers and printers and black pop-up boxes on the computer screen.
Livy also uses her room A LOT. Basically, she is holed up in there a lot of the time watching TV, organizing her things, doing art, making projects, and playing with her toys.
It can be hard for a person like me, who is very extroverted, to live with these two extreme introverts, and I would love for them to come out of their rooms more often and do their introverty things next to me. I don't even want to bother them (well, I want to, but I can stop myself from doing it); I just want to have them in the room with me while I do school work, write on my blog, do household chores, etc.
So, since I am the kind of person who chooses not to manipulate the introverts in her life, I told them both about how I wanted us to parallel play more. They were both open to this idea, and we decided to rearrange the furniture to make that easier.
Last weekend, we finally got around to doing it. We moved the dining room table out into the living room and moved both the couch and the loveseat into the dining room. They are pretty squished in there, but we use them very rarely and almost always when hanging out drinking wine with Miranda. We don't mind squishing in with her.
We also set up a big sturdy folding table and new bookshelf in the living room to serve as a desk for me, and we set up a computer for Livy at one end of my desk. So, the plan is for her to play minecraft and do her computery things near me while I work on school stuff.
We also now have this great big table out in the room, where we can all do our projects. That part, at least, is already going according to plan. This afternoon, we all sat around the table--Aaron cleaning his guns, Livy cutting out and assembling zoo animals, and I reading aloud from an archaeology magazine. It was great fun, and not just for me! So the introverts like the set-up too!
We are also getting a TV for that room, so that I can do yoga videos in the new big open space and Livy can play Wii games (we'll all probably do that a little bit).
I'll let you know how the schoolwork/Minecraft part of the plan goes, but I wanted to let you all know that doing some strategic planning and rearranging of the house can help the isolated extroverts get the parallel play they want from the introverts in their lives. Miranda, your class changed our whole dynamic!
1/29/12
