She’s just fantasizing about a new house, she doesn’t really plan on leaving where they are now. She’s not bound by “scale” or real world considerations. He’s the wet blanket bringing physics into her fantasy.
They talk about downsizing (or possibly even a tiny house?) as a “what if”. Arlo sees that Janis’ dream house isn’t actually any smaller, she argues that it’s all pretend anyhow, because were they really going to go to all the bother of moving?
I think Janis does actually want to move. It’s the ‘small’ part that she is less excited about.
off tangent: I’ve never understood why anyone would fantasize or desire living in a *small* house. I mean, yes, I get the practicality of it, and the fantasy of not having the upkeep. But if we are talking *dreaming* this is like dreaming about the carefree days of retirement and fantasizing about the fixed budget you will be on.
I’m apparently in the minority about this because most people I know do fantasize about small houses and don’t get why I simply look on in horror. (I, myself, fantasize about having at least three extra bedrooms to dedicate to bookshelves and two acres to walk my 5 dogs, but… it’s a fantasy. It ain’t going to happen.)
Now if I *understood* how on earth a couple can dream (rather than dread and fear) a small house, I’d probably be able to understand this strip. But I don’t and that is probably why I can not.
I sympathize with Arlo. 30 years ago, my wife and I were living in a townhouse. We were out for a walk one day and the end-unit in the next block of townhouses was for sale, having an open house. “I’ve always wanted to see one of the end units!” she said as she led me inside.
Two months later, I’m moving boxes down the street to our new townhouse…
We’ve been in this house for 28 years; I hope to be buried in it. Well, not IN it. But FROM it.
P.S. “This house” is not a townhouse any more, FWIW. And it’s too big for the two of us. But I’m still not interested in moving!
My wife and I fantasize about moving to smaller living quarters which translates into the kids not moving back home. Ahhhhhhhh, heaven.
Bucking the current ‘downsizing’ trend, we moved to a house double the size of the one we’ve lived in for 30 years, and then another small one for two years . . . plus a pool, lanai, etc. I figured I’d FINALLY have the house I want. NOT just the house we could afford at the time, or the one we bought off my BIL to get him out from under debt (and got us into the Florida real estate market). Now, downsizing all our stuff – THAT is another issue.
We lived in a ‘small-ish’ house for two years – me permanently, hubby intermittently. I couldn’t stand it. Especially without a basement, there was no place to hide stuff away, we were always in each other’s way . . . I couldn’t imagine living in what is considered a ‘small’ house – isn’t it 800 square feet? And then there is the ‘tiny house’ movement . . . I get claustrophobic just looking at pictures of them! http://www.tinyhouseproject.nl/the-tiny-house-movement/
I think our old apartment was about 800 square feet. It was a bit small with kids, and we needed to be better about saying “no” to the family trying to downsize to us. But if we hadn’t needed to store so many kids’ clothes, and it was just the two of us, it wouldn’t have been bad. The kitchen was too small, but that was actually a design problem, not an apartment size problem. However, we had a little locker in the laundry room, and that made a huge difference. Having a garage/storage shed/basement is incredibly useful, not so much for the extra space as for it being a different space.
This sold for $500,000? SOMEone has more $$$ than sense, IYAM.
I only have a kitchen ’cause it came with the house.
Tiny houses are cute, like doll houses for adults. I wish I could live simply enough to live in one, but I’d miss my sewing room. When my husband and I retired, we, similar to Andréa, moved into a house half again the size of the one our kids grew up in. My idea was to have enough room so that if necessary, my parents could move in with us. They never needed to, though. So now the extra space is nice for visiting kids and grandkids.
“This sold for $500,000? SOMEone has more $$$ than sense, IYAM.”
Or they live on the west coast.
I might be willing to *live* in a small house, as long as it was next door to my current (quite big) house, so I could continue to fill said big house with books.
YES!! A library bigger than your house . . .
Andréa: Apparently whoever bought it just resold it this March for $630K, so their sense is probably fine. (Actually, Redfin currently estimates that the house is worth more than that, at $692K, although their prediction algorithms may break down for a weird house like this.)
Seattle real estate is crazy expensive, and the spite house is in a particularly desirable neighborhood (Montlake), so at $500K, this was probably by far the cheapest house available in Montlake.
Also, when you retire the thought of cleaning and upkeep on a big house is less than desirable. Small house, less work.
Andrea — my wife’s attitude toward downsizing is, first, no, we won’t, but second, if we DID, we COULD get rid of a lot of our books IF WE LIVED NEXT DOOR TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Sure, we couldn’t get stuff at two in the morning, but she figures that, between a public library with a good collection and a strong interlibrary loan network and a couple of terabytes of ebooks, she would be fine.
The local public library’s selection of e-books has expanded tremendously of late. I haven’t checked out a paper book in some time. The e-books are so easy, I can have them on the iPad in minutes.
I have never encountered a comic with more CIDUs (for me) than Arlo & Janis, and yet I’m fascinated at the large amount of people who get every one of these A&J strips immediately and intuitively. I definitely am not in the demographic for it, I guess. (Gen X, not married)?
That is to say.. I’m Gen X, not married.
“I have never encountered a comic with more CIDUs (for me) than Arlo & Janis”
Ditto. Although I’m older than you. By a little.
The funny thing is, I can glance at an A&J and find it mildly amusing. But if I actually think about it (if it appears here, mostly), I have no idea why it’s funny (c.f. the wildcat joke a day or so ago).
I lived very comfortably and happily in a 500 s.f. studio apartment – with more closets/cabinets/storage space than my current 701 s.f. one-bedroom. Note that I live alone (aside from the cats), so can fit comfortably into a smaller space than two+ people would need – but it’s the storage space that makes a difference. The studio was literally lined with cabinets, in a room with a 10-foot ceiling (and they went all the way up). A narrow hallway was also lined with cabinets, and so was the kitchen. It was amazing. A “gentleman’s apartment” from 1910 or so.
It should be noted that Janis’s doodles explicitly weren’t to any sort of consistent scale (see panel 2), so it’s only ‘30% larger than what we have now’ because of the scale that Arlo chose.
I think the joke about the scale is that she was trying to hide the fact that a bigger space would be required. Arlo, on the other hand, notices how much of their furniture she is fitting into the space, and does the math.
Our house is about 1800 sq feet – 1/3 of that is the basement. It does not have normal rooms due to our lives. One of the things that attracted us to this house was that it had a family room off the kitchen – I can work on crafts for our business or personal in what is our general studio and cook at the same time. Pre flat screen TV I could even turn the TV around to watch same in the studio. The garage (1.5 car – not included in the sq footage) is where the wood shop is. The large power tools, except for the lathe, are on wheels so that they can be pulled into the small open middle area to work. The finished part of the basement has bolts of fabric on a rack he made (in the garage), a cutting table for fabric and mat board, mat board, leather hides, batting on a roll and the tools to work with all of this,plus two metal door cabinets with inventory in one and games in the other. Oh, the electric trains, movie posters on the walls, and such are also in this room. The unfinished part of the basement has house tools (as opposed to garage tools) as well as a Tormek – a wonderful sharpening tool,which due to its use of water cannot be stored in the garage. (Although the garage has heat to turn on when he is working in same, and also an AC unit.) The “office” aka the middle size bedroom has inventory stored in one of the closets and office supplies in the other and is my accounting office, the craft business office, Robert’s online mental health counseling office, and our home office. (The small bedroom is occupied by too many bears and some dolls to describe.) About 3 years ago I lost the living room – it is now the loom room except during Christmas time, when I get it back. The dining room has our reenacting stuff in large wooden boxes which also serve as benches for us at events and is used to martial what we need for reenactments so we don’t forget things, and in the RV season whatever RV stuff I had stored in the RV for the winter, but we don’t want to schlep with us.
On the other hand, the RV is not one of the lovely big expensive things one sees on TV shows. It is a Chevy Express Van converted to an RV. It is,inside, approximately 6 feet across and maybe 18 feet long. making it about 108 sq ft and it is maybe 6ft high in the taller spots. (I am 5’1″ and there are places I bang my head.) It has an aisle approximately 2′ wide by just under 5′ long (I can’t lie flat on the floor in the aisle,which I need to do to reach the storage space under the bed) and the aisle doubles as the shower area. The bed runs across wall to wall 6′ and is 6′ long on one side and 6’3″ on the other running from the headboard at the back to the “kitchen” at the foot of the longer side and toilet closet (one opens the door and sits with feet in the same aisle) on the shorter side – the aisle falling between the two. One has to be in the bed to make up the bed. What amazes us people full time in these with large dogs.
Comics I Don't Understand 
She’s just fantasizing about a new house, she doesn’t really plan on leaving where they are now. She’s not bound by “scale” or real world considerations. He’s the wet blanket bringing physics into her fantasy.
They talk about downsizing (or possibly even a tiny house?) as a “what if”. Arlo sees that Janis’ dream house isn’t actually any smaller, she argues that it’s all pretend anyhow, because were they really going to go to all the bother of moving?
I think Janis does actually want to move. It’s the ‘small’ part that she is less excited about.
off tangent: I’ve never understood why anyone would fantasize or desire living in a *small* house. I mean, yes, I get the practicality of it, and the fantasy of not having the upkeep. But if we are talking *dreaming* this is like dreaming about the carefree days of retirement and fantasizing about the fixed budget you will be on.
I’m apparently in the minority about this because most people I know do fantasize about small houses and don’t get why I simply look on in horror. (I, myself, fantasize about having at least three extra bedrooms to dedicate to bookshelves and two acres to walk my 5 dogs, but… it’s a fantasy. It ain’t going to happen.)
Now if I *understood* how on earth a couple can dream (rather than dread and fear) a small house, I’d probably be able to understand this strip. But I don’t and that is probably why I can not.
I sympathize with Arlo. 30 years ago, my wife and I were living in a townhouse. We were out for a walk one day and the end-unit in the next block of townhouses was for sale, having an open house. “I’ve always wanted to see one of the end units!” she said as she led me inside.
Two months later, I’m moving boxes down the street to our new townhouse…
We’ve been in this house for 28 years; I hope to be buried in it. Well, not IN it. But FROM it.
P.S. “This house” is not a townhouse any more, FWIW. And it’s too big for the two of us. But I’m still not interested in moving!
My wife and I fantasize about moving to smaller living quarters which translates into the kids not moving back home. Ahhhhhhhh, heaven.
Bucking the current ‘downsizing’ trend, we moved to a house double the size of the one we’ve lived in for 30 years, and then another small one for two years . . . plus a pool, lanai, etc. I figured I’d FINALLY have the house I want. NOT just the house we could afford at the time, or the one we bought off my BIL to get him out from under debt (and got us into the Florida real estate market). Now, downsizing all our stuff – THAT is another issue.
We lived in a ‘small-ish’ house for two years – me permanently, hubby intermittently. I couldn’t stand it. Especially without a basement, there was no place to hide stuff away, we were always in each other’s way . . . I couldn’t imagine living in what is considered a ‘small’ house – isn’t it 800 square feet? And then there is the ‘tiny house’ movement . . . I get claustrophobic just looking at pictures of them! http://www.tinyhouseproject.nl/the-tiny-house-movement/
Andréa: I think very few “normal” houses are as small as 800 square feet, tiny house movement notwithstanding. Even Seattle’s “spite house” is 860 square feet. https://komonews.com/news/local/seattles-iconic-pie-shaped-spite-house-is-back-on-the-market
I think our old apartment was about 800 square feet. It was a bit small with kids, and we needed to be better about saying “no” to the family trying to downsize to us. But if we hadn’t needed to store so many kids’ clothes, and it was just the two of us, it wouldn’t have been bad. The kitchen was too small, but that was actually a design problem, not an apartment size problem. However, we had a little locker in the laundry room, and that made a huge difference. Having a garage/storage shed/basement is incredibly useful, not so much for the extra space as for it being a different space.
This sold for $500,000? SOMEone has more $$$ than sense, IYAM.
I only have a kitchen ’cause it came with the house.
Tiny houses are cute, like doll houses for adults. I wish I could live simply enough to live in one, but I’d miss my sewing room. When my husband and I retired, we, similar to Andréa, moved into a house half again the size of the one our kids grew up in. My idea was to have enough room so that if necessary, my parents could move in with us. They never needed to, though. So now the extra space is nice for visiting kids and grandkids.
“This sold for $500,000? SOMEone has more $$$ than sense, IYAM.”
Or they live on the west coast.
I might be willing to *live* in a small house, as long as it was next door to my current (quite big) house, so I could continue to fill said big house with books.
YES!! A library bigger than your house . . .
Andréa: Apparently whoever bought it just resold it this March for $630K, so their sense is probably fine. (Actually, Redfin currently estimates that the house is worth more than that, at $692K, although their prediction algorithms may break down for a weird house like this.)
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/2022-24th-Ave-E-98112/home/137840
Seattle real estate is crazy expensive, and the spite house is in a particularly desirable neighborhood (Montlake), so at $500K, this was probably by far the cheapest house available in Montlake.
Also, when you retire the thought of cleaning and upkeep on a big house is less than desirable. Small house, less work.
Andrea — my wife’s attitude toward downsizing is, first, no, we won’t, but second, if we DID, we COULD get rid of a lot of our books IF WE LIVED NEXT DOOR TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Sure, we couldn’t get stuff at two in the morning, but she figures that, between a public library with a good collection and a strong interlibrary loan network and a couple of terabytes of ebooks, she would be fine.
The local public library’s selection of e-books has expanded tremendously of late. I haven’t checked out a paper book in some time. The e-books are so easy, I can have them on the iPad in minutes.
I have never encountered a comic with more CIDUs (for me) than Arlo & Janis, and yet I’m fascinated at the large amount of people who get every one of these A&J strips immediately and intuitively. I definitely am not in the demographic for it, I guess. (Gen X, not married)?
That is to say.. I’m Gen X, not married.
“I have never encountered a comic with more CIDUs (for me) than Arlo & Janis”
Ditto. Although I’m older than you. By a little.
The funny thing is, I can glance at an A&J and find it mildly amusing. But if I actually think about it (if it appears here, mostly), I have no idea why it’s funny (c.f. the wildcat joke a day or so ago).
I lived very comfortably and happily in a 500 s.f. studio apartment – with more closets/cabinets/storage space than my current 701 s.f. one-bedroom. Note that I live alone (aside from the cats), so can fit comfortably into a smaller space than two+ people would need – but it’s the storage space that makes a difference. The studio was literally lined with cabinets, in a room with a 10-foot ceiling (and they went all the way up). A narrow hallway was also lined with cabinets, and so was the kitchen. It was amazing. A “gentleman’s apartment” from 1910 or so.
It should be noted that Janis’s doodles explicitly weren’t to any sort of consistent scale (see panel 2), so it’s only ‘30% larger than what we have now’ because of the scale that Arlo chose.
I think the joke about the scale is that she was trying to hide the fact that a bigger space would be required. Arlo, on the other hand, notices how much of their furniture she is fitting into the space, and does the math.
Our house is about 1800 sq feet – 1/3 of that is the basement. It does not have normal rooms due to our lives. One of the things that attracted us to this house was that it had a family room off the kitchen – I can work on crafts for our business or personal in what is our general studio and cook at the same time. Pre flat screen TV I could even turn the TV around to watch same in the studio. The garage (1.5 car – not included in the sq footage) is where the wood shop is. The large power tools, except for the lathe, are on wheels so that they can be pulled into the small open middle area to work. The finished part of the basement has bolts of fabric on a rack he made (in the garage), a cutting table for fabric and mat board, mat board, leather hides, batting on a roll and the tools to work with all of this,plus two metal door cabinets with inventory in one and games in the other. Oh, the electric trains, movie posters on the walls, and such are also in this room. The unfinished part of the basement has house tools (as opposed to garage tools) as well as a Tormek – a wonderful sharpening tool,which due to its use of water cannot be stored in the garage. (Although the garage has heat to turn on when he is working in same, and also an AC unit.) The “office” aka the middle size bedroom has inventory stored in one of the closets and office supplies in the other and is my accounting office, the craft business office, Robert’s online mental health counseling office, and our home office. (The small bedroom is occupied by too many bears and some dolls to describe.) About 3 years ago I lost the living room – it is now the loom room except during Christmas time, when I get it back. The dining room has our reenacting stuff in large wooden boxes which also serve as benches for us at events and is used to martial what we need for reenactments so we don’t forget things, and in the RV season whatever RV stuff I had stored in the RV for the winter, but we don’t want to schlep with us.
On the other hand, the RV is not one of the lovely big expensive things one sees on TV shows. It is a Chevy Express Van converted to an RV. It is,inside, approximately 6 feet across and maybe 18 feet long. making it about 108 sq ft and it is maybe 6ft high in the taller spots. (I am 5’1″ and there are places I bang my head.) It has an aisle approximately 2′ wide by just under 5′ long (I can’t lie flat on the floor in the aisle,which I need to do to reach the storage space under the bed) and the aisle doubles as the shower area. The bed runs across wall to wall 6′ and is 6′ long on one side and 6’3″ on the other running from the headboard at the back to the “kitchen” at the foot of the longer side and toilet closet (one opens the door and sits with feet in the same aisle) on the shorter side – the aisle falling between the two. One has to be in the bed to make up the bed. What amazes us people full time in these with large dogs.