Writing Prompt 73: House
We've been having some interior work done in our house over the past few weeks. We’re fortunate to live in a very lovely house but its very open plan space made it difficult to organise it into rooms. And my husband, who works from home twice a week, has spent the past three years working in a small basement room only coming up for light and air for something to eat and the occasional cup of tea.
Now have two new doors creating two new office spaces — one for me and one for my husband.
Chatting the other day with the contractor, he told me about the Modern Home program that Sears provided back in the day — customers were able to select a home from the catalogue choosing from a variety of exterior styles and interior designs to suit most tastes and budgets. Some of these homes still stand in the US and Canada.
Obviously, this sent me on a search online (commonly known as a rabbit-hole) to find searsarchives.com where a plethora of information exists about all things Modern Home.
I do have a soft spot for Sears — it's where I bought a box of saucepans when we first moved to Canada, and since the store’s closure, where I now volunteer for a charitable organisation for families on Vancouver’s North Shore. The organisation operates on the first floor of the building and an indoor bike park has been built in the large space on the ground level.
But what was a Sears Modern Home?
"From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 70,000 - 75,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Over that time Sears designed 447 different housing styles, from the elaborate multistory Ivanhoe, with its elegant French doors and art glass windows, to the simpler Goldenrod, which served as a quaint, three-room and no-bath cottage for summer vacationers. (An outhouse could be purchased separately for Goldenrod and similar cottage dwellers.) Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets."
Houses have enormous potential for stories — births, marriages, deaths, ghosts & hauntings, children, no children, pets, no pets, family home, single person apartment, rented, mortgaged — you get the idea.
I've lived in so many houses I can't begin to count them.
As an adult, I've lived behind a graveyard, above a shop, a bar and a doctor's surgery, in spooky Scottish tenement buildings and in several damp Victorian terraced houses. We've renovated properties, restored historical features and I've even tiled a bathroom. With each move, I learn a little more about what makes a house a home.
For this week's writing, let's write about houses. What stories do you have about a house? Is it a house you know or a house you don't?
If you're a bit stuck, use the photograph above, the house used for Hitchcock's film Psycho. Think about what you want this writing to be — a blog post, a short story, a poem, a letter, a film or a song. It's good to write with intention. You can read more about that here.
Have fun and do share how you get on :)