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b9
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11 Jan 2010, 9:29 am

my home is not like the home of a spartan because it is more modern, but i researched what the word means in this context and now i can say in a relevant way that my home has no pictures on any of the beige walls and no ornaments standing on any surface.

my home looks like i moved in one week ago and there are many things i never bothered to situate. i have owned this house for 4 years now, and i still have 3 coffee tables stacked up on a large chair in the hallway that i never dealt with after the removalists left.
i have not defined any real compartments in my mind as to where things should go yet.

i really can not be bothered to sort out things which i have no concern about.

so my house is devoid of style, and it is not well arranged (as far as furniture is concerned) and there are no pictures or ornaments. there are also no scents.
my place is rather sterile.



dddhgg
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19 Jan 2010, 10:14 am

Mine used to be spartan, with only my books and a few essential (and cheap) pieces of furniture. This was mainly due to a lack of money and a more serious lack of interest in decoration stuff. This has changed considerably, however, over the past few months. Since getting a decent place of my own, instead of just a one-room student apartment, I've been reading all the home decoration books I could lay my hands on.

I now particularly admire some of the more austere, mid-19th Century furniture styles, especially the one called Biedermeier. My apartment is cosy, warm, and richly decorated at the moment, if I may say so myself, especially the "parlor", which I've almost entirely decorated in 1850s style. But it's not so full as to cause sensory overload (to me at least).]

As for temperature, I tend to find most people's homes way too hot. I definitely prefer to keep my parlor in the 16-18 C (60 - 65 F) range, and my bedroom even cooler.


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RhettOracle
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19 Jan 2010, 6:02 pm

Our home is laid out in such a way that there is nowhere to put ornaments. This is fine, because neither my wife nor I are interested in them. There is one picture on the living room wall, of a piano. It was a wedding gift from someone. None of the other walls have anything on them, unless you want to count the thermostat! Neither of us knows nor cares anything about art or decorations. We marvel that people go into stores like Bombay Company and come out with things to clutter up their home, like a four-foot-high brass giraffe or an ebony snake-head umbrella stand, or a fake African hand drum (they're not even real instruments), that cost hundreds of dollars each!

All there is room for in the living room is the sofa, two chairs, one end table, three bookshelves, my wife's computer desk, and the entertainment center. Only the sofa and one chair match. The ottoman that came with them can't go in the living room, there isn't enough space to have it there.

My wife is a book collector. In the bedroom, there are two bookcases full, and I just put floor-to-ceiling shelves on one wall to hold more of them.

One of the other bedrooms is my room. It has my CD collection on three walls, my record collection and computer desk on the fourth, with a professional turntable in its own cabinet sitting at an angle to the right side of the computer desk, and my keyboard workstation on the left side. Don't have room for anything else in there! We generally know where everything is. If it's not in the first place we look, it is sure to be in one of only a handful of others.

So while it isn't exactly spartan, it isn't cluttered, and occasionally people have remarked how comfortable it feels to be there. We are in Florida, where it gets mighty hot for much of the year. We don't mind paying the extra for air conditioning. We keep it around 70-72 in summer. We've just gone through the coldest January in the history of recordkeeping for this area, and we used the furnace to keep the house at about 74, or a bit more on the nights when it was in the teens outside.

It feels like home.



DarrylZero
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29 Jan 2010, 6:31 pm

My dream is to one day own furniture that doesn't fold.



MoonRa
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29 Jan 2010, 10:25 pm

I've got a lot of green plants; would love to have some more colour, but coloured plants show their beauty for such a short time:/



mgran
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29 Jan 2010, 10:46 pm

Keeno wrote:
Whenever I visit someone else's - anyone else's - house I notice how much visually richer an environment it always is. I also notice it is always cosier, and warmer. Compare that with my home which is a bare, undecorated environment in comparison. I feel like I'm missing out on something when in other people's richer home environments, however I'm very happy with my home the way it is. My home's also not usually as cosy or as heated, again I don't need that to be comfortable, for sensory reasons.

Does anyone else find their home is spartan, compared to almost everyone else's?
Yes... my house is definitely spartan compared with others. The main focal point is heaps of books, sheet music, computers (in various states of disassemblage) and... well... that's it. Oh, and I do have a telly, and chairs to sit on, and plates to eat off... but I don't invite people back anymore, because people really do comment. "When are you going to finish unpacking, "are you in the middle of decorating."



Frosty
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15 Feb 2010, 3:35 am

Everyone is different but I totally hate stuff.

The older I get the less I want of everything - except - well nevermind that.

I really really dig the minimalist interior design concepts and can't wait to decorate my own place soon! With hardly anything!


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Tim_Tex
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20 Feb 2010, 1:49 pm

I don't think my ideal place would be "spartan". I have already chosen a motif:

Black and white furniture from Ikea, white walls, wooden floors, movie posters or art on the walls, and a big screen LCD TV on a contemporary-looking TV stand--shows art/cinema appreciation with class.


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memesplice
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22 Feb 2010, 9:09 am

Married to an NT . House is full of clutter. I explain I can not see the point of building containment areas for clutter or making shelves to put it on. Of course I generally loose arguments of this nature.

There is a rule here ( I think) If you create the space for them to clutter they will fill it with functionless objects and then demand more space once full .It is like a gas expanding against atmospheric pressure.

Objects in themselves can be quite attractive to look at and they place high value on them so cluttering should be tolerated.

I would like a white space with a comfortable chair and a computer table . I would make art for walls. I want draws that go "click" ( not too loudly- almost sub audial ) to put necessary stuff in in organizational order.



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22 Feb 2010, 9:18 am

That sounds like a great idea.


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memesplice
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22 Feb 2010, 10:30 am

Every so often I encourage a clutter reduction pogrom . I usually get NT partner to relinquish one estate car-full of less wanted/non functional beyond economic repair items. This happens once every two years in January. It is SO satisfying dropping it all over the side of the dumpster at the local recycling point and knowing you have helped NT partner overcome a small part of their NT clutter issues. If we can get them to reduce and deal with clutter issues it will be better for the environment too.

Try to keep NT's away from Garage Sales- we call them Car Boot's . This is an input point for clutter which is generally other people's refuse which should go to the recycling point . Nt's have an impulse to buy it and generally use only 35-40% of what they buy and that is usually for a short period of time.

The rest remains wherever they first choose to store it. When small NT children return with armfuls of dirty plastic play-items , half of which will not function ,they will expect you to mend items and spend hours searching for parts which you knew ,on sight, were not present in toy . The present small plastic items hurt when trodden on in bare feet , and break. This is frustrating,
and you might wish you had Aspi children in such moments.



Last edited by memesplice on 22 Feb 2010, 10:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

ToughDiamond
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22 Feb 2010, 10:38 am

memesplice wrote:
There is a rule here ( I think) If you create the space for them to clutter they will fill it with functionless objects and then demand more space once full. It is like a gas expanding against atmospheric pressure.

That's exactly what happens to my shelves.......they definitely allow me to get stuff off the floor, but in the long run they just allow me to bring in more stuff that I hardly ever use. The whole house is like a giant "in" tray, loads of items waiting to be allocated a proper space. Shelves don't cure executive disfunction, they just alleviate the symptoms for a while. And they create more surfaces to collect dust.



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22 Feb 2010, 11:08 am

I'm not sure clutter vs non clutter is either an AS or NT issue. I think it's more emotional. I am cluttered but I function better uncluttered. Why do I accumulate clutter? Probably emotional. Why can't I unclutter? Executive dysfunction. I'm trying to change my evil ways though. :)



Rijn
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01 Mar 2010, 8:56 am

I'm guilty of being Spartan in my habitations. All I have in my bedroom is a futon mattress, a small bedside lamp on the floor, and a pile of library books between the lamp and mattress. The rest of my possessions are clothes, sporting goods (love my guns and kayaks), computer gear, and cooking and art supplies. No decorations aside from colored CFL bulbs to make the hallways shine with interesting colors.



Tim_Tex
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02 Mar 2010, 3:32 am

Home design is one of my special interests.


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auntblabby
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02 Mar 2010, 10:11 pm

i don't know that "spartan" applies. i live in a trailer out in the woods, and the inside is an unholy disorganized mess. i am an incurable slob. there is a narrow path between piles of old newspapers and sacks of prescription meds. i have a rudimentary audio system whose wires rest atop furniture [that never gets used] crisscrossing the room like so many telephone pole power cables. i would vacuum but there is no visible floor to vacuum. i sleep on the floor because my bed platform [the kind with storage beneath] is covered in boxes of stuff from my last move that i cannot summon the wherwithal to unpack, sort and apportion to other storage bins. my cookstove is used for another horizontal surface to put stuff on, so i eat mostly cold food out of the can. at least this keeps me skinny, no obesity worries for me. i use old paper sheeting for window covering, few real curtains. the only non-cluttered [relatively speaking] room is the bathroom which is too small to be cluttered anyways. but the outside is barren other than 2 garbage bins and my car. no garden, no flowers or shrubs, just surrounded by tall evergreen trees. the inside of my car is also an unholy mess. i just can't be neat. i have heard about "executive function" and i can tell you i have next to none.