It seems each year the camping vacay and the homelife-upon-return blend more and more. We live simpler in camp, and we keep many of the efficiencies learned once we get back.

The camper is about the same amount of living space, if you add the shade canopies, as the space in a nursing home billet. Ooops I mean assisted living. I have a theory that empty-nest/retirement downsizing is but the inevitable return to the one-room cabin (or one-cave) concept. In modern design: great rooms, kitchens with home offices, master bedrooms-- all these are also one-room cabin adaptations. The size a hoomin/bing can actually manage not to terminally clutter.

Each vacay the camper is more and more prepped for immediate use and simpler to use/maintain. At the Goodwill we find improved items that solve many camper "needs" and donate the items they replace. And the camper is increasingly "enough" space. By the time we retire we will be longing for a very small indoor space with very large outdoor space, so we are starting to plan the ideal retirement home.

It will be based on the fishing/summer camp my family owned. It had grown from a tiny rough cabin (about the size you now see as cute sheds) to a series of small buildings that were eventually connected by a roofed screen structure that sat in the middle of all the smaller spaces. The result was an interior screen-porch running from front to back of the housing area, with comfy chairs in front set back into the rain-free permashade area facing lovely scenery and active flora and fauna, and another area in the back portion catching light all day and a visiting (and entertaining) raccoon contingent. I think it was about 20 feet wide (including low storage under one roof-join section) and ran about 30 feet front to back.

WHY NOT BUILD JUST THAT, it hit me one day during this year's vacay. Why build a house and add a porch. START WITH THE PORCH. Actually, buy a tiny grandma house and live in it while building a same-size NEW house right next door. Do all the work we can, ourselves. Put all the R-value, great wiring, and plumbing into the new section, which will get heat and AC. Then connect the two structures with a screen section-- and not a tiny breezeway either-- with an integrated roofline tying it all together. Move into the new construction to rehab/retrofit the old section. With the porch always the heart of the house. In cold or torrid months the new section becomes the main "home." In nicer weather the bedrooms in the old section are opened back up for guests or whatever.

At Camp, the middle of that porch also contained the dining table: seating for 12+ as well as ample workspace for any project you could put away before the next meal. A bench and a collection of mismatched nice chairs. (If you found a good chair mid-year, why, you'd just bring it along to Camp and add it, and that would be Your Chair.)

The old original cabin and later-added kitchen became the plumbing section-- small kitchen with brekky-for-two table, and bath-- and the newer cabins that had been sleeping cabins became the small, heated LR and bedrooms. They all opened onto the interior porch. It slept 7-8 easily, for a week or so, then went back to "ample" dwelling space for 2 couples and a kid.

There was plenteous room for people and what they needed, but no room for clutter. No knickknacks either-- mementoes of summer hikes that, as they accumulated, were given away to visitors to be replaced with new items. If you wanted to see a chipmunk you didn't buy a plaster one or a picture-- you sat on the porch and LOOKED, and engraved the image in your heart.

No porch on the front or even wrapping around for me. Right up the middle of the house, with the front door right on it. Not a house with a porch. A porch with rooms added.

~S~