This saving will be largely by
doing many things with their own hands.
To be bound hand and foot either by unsalable real estate or by sentiment
is an uncomfortable condition for the young family who may find itself in
uncongenial surroundings, in an unhealthful situation, or who may need to
retrench temporarily.
Another serious objection to building and owning a house in the first
years of married life is the chance that the house will be too large or
too small, or the railroad station will be moved, or the trolley line will
be run under the garden window, or a smoking chimney will fill the library
with soot (although the latter will not be permitted in the real
twentieth-century town).
A new element has come into the question of ownership by the family of
limited means which did not meet the elder generation of house-owners. In
the past the repairs were confined to a coat of paint now and then, new
shingles, an added hen-house, or a bay window. The well might have to be
deepened, but little expense was put into or onto the house for fifty
years. The married son or daughter might add a wing, but the main house
once built was never disturbed.
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