Yeah, we have lots of space, but we're not living large

I have an unnamed room at the front of my house.

Poor little room. I'm afraid it isn't very happy here. While all the other rooms have a purpose, this one is, I fear, absolutely useless. It is too small to hold a couch. It doesn't boast a phone jack or a cable mount or a faucet. What exactly is this room's purpose?

No one knows. When we first moved in, we were happy to finally have some extra square footage to call our own. We stuck a pair of wing chairs and a desk in the room, hoping it would turn itself into a little study or something. Instead, our kids did homework in their bedrooms, and I felt cozier dragging my laptop to the couch. The room soon adopted a depressed little air, almost as if it were tucking its thumbs into the emo holes in its sweatshirt. Sometimes I thought I heard strains of the emo band Taking Back Sunday from the front of the house.

I tried to think up something useful the emo room could do. When I walked around my neighborhood at night, I would peer into other people's houses to find out what their emo rooms were doing. They were dripping with elaborate window treatments. Boasting huge displays of dried flowers. Showcasing large accessories from Marshalls and T.J. Maxx. And no people. Never any people.

How did so many Americans end up with such useless spaces? I used to think it was because builders made more profit from big houses on small lots. Or because we all watch way too much HGTV. But after reading "House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes" (Doubleday, 2008), I understood that something else was going on.

Newsweek correspondent Daniel McGinn uses his book to explore the behavior and psychology that contributed to the most recent housing boom and bust. One of the most telling changes he outlines is how square footage - especially new square footage - has become the new scorecard for status in this country.

Anyone who has ever spent time at their grandma's house knows that the average size of houses has grown tremendously. McGinn points out that the average size house in 1950 was only 983 square feet. In 2005, the average newly built house had grown to 2,434 square feet. We can drive around town and note plenty of 5,000-square-foot houses - even a 9,000-square-foot house, especially if you are touring Homearama.

But it isn't just that the houses themselves are bigger. The big difference is the way we've shifted our thinking and talking about our houses. Where my grandma lived in a three-bedroom/one-bath house, my family lives in 3,200 square feet. My neighbors ask me which floor plan I have and whether my square footage includes the garage. They never ask about my emo room.

Someone should. McGinn notes that researchers haven't studied how we Americans are using our larger homes, largely because megahome living is a recent phenomenon. But the presence of that emo room does bother me. Every time I pass it, I feel no joy, no pleasure, no better life for the owning and painting and vacuuming and heating of that room. Instead it feels like a waste, like a mistake, like the 120-square-foot reminder that we'll be paying for this problem for a long time.

Jacey Eckhart, jacey87@mac.com