"The first step in figuring out your inner architecture is to draw your emotional house (or you can print out the sketch we've provided here). You can do this in your head, or with a pen and paper. We’ve always loved markers and sketch pads, so we encourage you to commit to a piece of paper for this project. (We promise it’ll be fun.) One note: over time, you may need to re-draw the walls, since as you evolve so will your house.
The most useful model may be a cross-section where all the rooms are exposed at once. We like to draw a three-story house with nine rooms. The basement and attic lie below and above the other rooms and on the first floor, you’ll find the family room, living room, kitchen and office since those are the most public spaces. Upstairs, lies the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the kid’s room, since those are more intimately connected.
Neither Catherine nor I live in houses with many stories and nine rooms. We live in New York City apartments, and you know how cramped those are! But trust us, you need a room for every area of your emotional life, and this drawing doesn’t reflect your actual abode.
Now make a list of all the rooms that will be in your house—include the basics, and your specifics, each corresponding to an area of your life. You may add or subtract a room, depending on your stage right now. So if you know you don’t want kids, the second bedroom could be a guest room or a place you sew, paint or write. Once you decide you are including a room, the relevant question is, how big should it be? And that is directly correlated to how much time and emotional energy you invest there, and how important that topic is to your overall happiness.
For me the bathroom was always large because I was preoccupied with weight, fitness and health in a way that took my attention from other thoughts, and even when I wasn’t in the bathroom these thoughts followed me into every other room. I would walk into a party and think, Do I look fat? Instead of, Oh, there is so-n-so I want to talk to!
Many women’s bathrooms are the largest in their house, since it’s where we scrutinize the number on the scale, the bags under our eyes, and all nature of self-criticism. It’s also where we need to love ourselves, and take care of ourselves (doing a mole check, indulging in a bubble bath, or remembering to floss). The bathroom connects to the bedroom, since feeling fat can torpedo libido faster than you can say, Not tonight honey! It connects to the kitchen, if you are dieting, and your kids’ room if you don’t like the way your tummy sags after popping out a couple of babies.
Meanwhile, you might think that my kitchen was tiny because I don’t cook much. (No domestic goddess here!) But most women’s kitchens are fairly large, whether they cook or not, because the kitchen isn’t just about meal prep or eating or dishes, it’s about all the household chores, responsibilities and upkeep, and we all have to divide up who does what, and if we are married and have families, there is usually a conversation about who will pick up the child at soccer, or take her to the dentist after or any number of other little details that you deal with in the course of a normal day. This is why the kitchen is a multi-purpose room, a place where you cook and clean, yes, but also discuss all the household matters at the kitchen table. It is literally the hub of the house.
For each room, think about the big issues you struggle with there, as well as the little ones. If you are constantly aggravated in one room, it has to be larger than the others because you will spend more time cleaning it up. A room can also be oversized if it brings you an enormous amount of joy, like that newborn in your kid’s room, or that career change you can’t stop thinking about --so your office is bigger than most. "
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