Well Homes - Mary Hostetter

Dear Friends-

I have started the Well Homes blog to be a resource for people in making their home space shine with creativity and health. I have spent a good part of my adult life creating home spaces for my family and myself. This was not so much a passionate life pursuit in the beginning, as it was a basic life skill in designing a home that supported me and my family to function well in the world. As I moved from home to home (twelve total so far) and expanded my family to include a husband, three kids, and dog, I picked up more intelligence along the way for what were essentials to have in any home, whether it be a 500 sq. ft. apartment or a 3,000 sq. ft. house. These essentials taken from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while part of the assumed right and privilege for most anyone who reads this, will read like a dream that is off in the distant future to any citizen of Syria, Haiti and other countries having life emergencies right now.

Essential No.1 : Home has to allow for basic physiological functions to happen (breathing, sleeping, eating, cleansing).

Essential No. 2 : Home has to be safe and provide for the security of the people who live there (health, financial, family, property).

Essential No. 3 : Home has to allow love, belonging and relational needs to be met (friendship, socialization, sexual intimacy, parenting).

Essential No. 4 : Home has to support respect of oneself and others’ expression in the world, (self-esteem, confidence, responsibility, commitment).

Essential No. 5 : Home has to provide a meaning making system in which to navigate the world and create a life a person wants to live (creativity, morality, spirituality, problem solving, community participation, leadership).

That’s about it. Of course within each of these Essentials are many details that we work out and build a huge set of muscles for over a lifetime. The sobering fact that a large percentage of the world’s population doesn’t even have the first two of these five Essentials as part of their basic home structure is cause for concern. Supporting projects like Habitat for Humanity, NewStoryCharity.org and Kiva.org are ways I like to help.

By seeing more clearly the context in which our homes are created and the myriad systems that affect a home, we can create new understandings of how to design our homes, both inside and out. When we come home to the goodness that is already inside us, we can build a better world. The Wells Homes Blog is an effort to bring awareness to the intelligence and creativity that sits in us and around us ready to be used. I welcome you – wherever you are in creating a home space – to be part of our tribe. Together we can make a difference in the world.

To our healthy homes,

Mary