Tuesday, January 02, 2007

House Construction and Dust Hares

Those who know me well will know that housekeeping is not amongst my top priorties. I clear off my desk from papers about as often as they elect a new pope. However, it's usually a case of disarray, rather than actual filth, that adorns our abode.

Living in a place where you enter right from ground level has forced us to become slightly more, hmm, aggressive, in our approach to cleaning. We used to live up 4 flights of stairs of a walk-up, so by the time you got to the front door, there wasn't much to wipe off of your shoes. Plus, if you left the door open for a while, there wasn't going to suddenly be a little dust-storm of leaves and debris coming into the foyer. With a ground level house, this can be the case and has meant that what normally would be a few dust bunnies under the couch was more like several giant dust hares. Not quite to genetically-mutated monster stage, but not far off. Fortunately a few turns with the vacuum cleaner soon had them at bay.

What I don't understand is why places are built absolute flush with the ground. Not even a half-step to the door, only the width of the door frame separates the door from the earth. Seems to be a common British building trend. Anyone care to explain it to me?

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