A Hearth is a Home
We all live somewhere. That’s not a particularly enlightening statement, but when we consider the myriad places we call “home,” this is an interesting idea. Where we live and whether that place optimizes our quality of life is a privileged question to ask ourselves, but it’s a question anyone should have the right to consider. My entire childhood was spent in dozens of rental properties across four states. According to Drew DeSilver, a senior writer for the Pew Research Center, in 2019, 36% of households were occupied by renters. 38% of those renters lived in apartments (DeSilver). Most people experience being a renter with a landlord and limited freedom to redesign their surroundings at different points in their lives. This conversation is about what we should consider when we do have that freedom. Not necessarily what would be your dream home? Or where is your dream home? But a more practical question involving your current home and budget that will lead towards improved health and a better quality of life.
As a young child, my family and I experienced houselessness for a short time, living out of our car and a tent, camping in different national forests in Northern California. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in 2024, approximately 771,480 people experienced homelessness in the US. Being homeless can be a choice, and it can be a result of poverty, mental illness, addiction, lack of resources and supports, and the list goes on. Some people prefer being unhoused and have carefully considered the question of their quality of life within a house vs. without. Freedom, adventure, mobility, and feeling untethered to the constant demands of society are appealing motivations to do our best Jack Reacher impressions and hit the open road, but that is not very practical for most of us. Most of us will live our lives within the confines of a house or apartment. What we prioritize in a homesearch that suits our lifestyle reveals what we value as much as what we can afford.
For a short time in high school, my family and I rented a trailer along the Texas-Oklahoma border, a mile or two from the Red River. The trailer was on a 2-acre lot I had to mow with a push mower in the Texas summer heat. Another house we rented received electricity from solar panels and a generator, and our water came from a catchment tank in the yard. That house was at the end of a long road in the Maui jungle, a short walk from a pathway to a rocky beach. We rented another house (with electricity and water) way up in the mountains in Maui that overlooked the ocean for miles and miles. This house had a big front yard on a slope, surrounded by pastureland and avocado orchards that we explored as our own private Idaho. When I was 6 on Maui, our first house was a big open room with a kitchen and a loft bedroom above. Behind the house was an overgrown gulch filled with fruit trees. Beyond that was a canal that ran between sugarcane plantations in the area. We also lived in a stucco house in the desert outside of Joshua Tree National Park for a bit. The temperatures hovered around 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime, but dropped into the 60s at night. I especially loved the “Penn Station” of activity from all of the desert creatures during our evening walks into the hills, a few miles from the house. We could all wax nostalgic about our childhood home(s) and glean bits and pieces of what made those places special to us. If I combined the best of everything I experienced in all of the many homes I lived in as a kid, I would have a Frankenstein’s monster of a home. My question for all of us is: how do we discern what to carry over from those spaces of our childhood into our homes today that will best provide us with the quality of life we are after?
Texas has plenty to offer, but it’s not going to be confused with Hawai’i or the California coast anytime soon. I would like to keep my mountain view of the Pacific Ocean, the orchards and pastures in my backyard, the desert animals and cool evenings, the solar panels and water catchment, and the pathway to the rocky beach. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. I can consider what each of these features tells me about what I want in my home, though. And since picking up our lives and moving to more beautiful places is difficult and expensive, it’s worth considering what kind of home we want to build around us that taps into the nostalgia of our childhoods as well as the values we’ve cultivated as adults, and the lifestyle we’re after in our only trip around the sun. This is where the question of a custom sauna and cold plunge becomes crucial in our pursuit of a home that reflects who we are and how we desire to live.
A custom sauna and cold plunge connect us to centuries of health traditions across countless cultures. It provides us with a space to meditate free from distractions and to push past discomfort into a place of relaxation, endorphins, and eventually euphoria. It also provides us with a place for community and connection with our friends and family. The depth of conversation and camaraderie found in the sauna is difficult to replicate. People’s walls inevitably come down as they grow to embrace the heat and cold that move their body through deeper and deeper stages of healthy stress and relaxation. And, perhaps most importantly, the sauna and cold plunge provide a break from the many demands of the world. We can spend countless hours researching what bed is best for sleep, what couch is the most comfortable, and what TV has the most pixels, but we hardly ever consider what made our childhood home(s) special to us, and how to merge those feelings with our current values and desires for our lives. Adding a garden bed, planting trees, building a pool or a pond, raising chickens, turning the office into an art room, going on family walks, and, yes, having a custom sauna built are ideas worthy of consideration as we strive to optimize our home to reach a quality of life that also leads to longevity.
Otha Graham
DeSilver, Drew. “As National Eviction Ban Expires, a Look at Who Rents and Who Owns in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2 Aug. 2021, www.pewresearch. org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/.
