Home Sweet Home Analysis

5.5 Home Sweet Home

He has happiness, be he king or peasant, who finds peace at home. – Goethe (1749–1832), the German writer and polymath

Home is our little heaven on earth. The home that archives us is a quite private place where we are at ease in a natural environment. It shelters our body, our comforts, and our souls. With due importance to all the elements of a happy life, home is the most important one. Therefore, to make the home homely, comfort and lovely is of prime importance. It is our place where we are comfortable, where living is a pleasure. It is where every person retreats and retires. Home is the place where they take you in. It is where you are greeted back – by your parents, by your wife, by your kids. They are waiting

It rose steadily during post-war boom along with the growth of suburbs. A record 70% of families owned their homes before the credit bubble burst. The concept of mass ownership had been a part of ‘American Dream’ mythology. Buying a house were like a shopping; strolling through an ‘open house’ was so casual. Buying house was no more than buying a car. But it was not -- and is not the case in most of the world. House rather home is where people are born and brought up, and spends most of the life and perhaps dies. It is their identity. They won it, they value it. It is one very big deal. Specially, when selling, moving out or, in extreme case of war, famine and conflict loosing house, people tend to regret that they could have had it. It is one trait, known as the endowment effect, which has its biological roots and is likely handed down to us by evolution. It is significantly visible -- cross-culturally in human and in non-human

Modern home accommodates different lifestyles of the members of the family under the same roof. With increasing levels of education, changing concepts of individual freedom, there is a great variation in peoples’ lifestyle which may be reflected in different food habits, preferences in sports and other pursuits. Naturally all these varied tastes must find their satisfaction levels within the home. These are all causing the design of modern homes to be utilitarian, pluralistic in ends.

Despite nation’s reputation as a rootless society, only 1 in 10 Americans moved in any recent year; whereas, roughly half the proportion that changed residences as recently as four decades ago. Census data indicate that 63% of Americans said they had moved to another community at least once in their lives, while 37% said they lived in the community where they were