Could You Live In a Playground?
Is life too easy? What if we made things a little more difficult? Would this improve quality of life? Here is a perspective of living space design to mimic playground in your house. You might just love it, and it’s results!
Life is easy. Seriously. We get new technology and cool products advertised to us everyday that make our lives easier.
This easy lifestyle comes with a price. We move less, do less and even think less.
Imagine for a minute that you set up your living space to make life harder. Climbing, crawling, jumping and even swinging just to get into the next room. For most people, it’s like being a child again. Watch this video to get a better idea of this possibility:
How much more engaged would you be with some of these stations in your living space? Would you want them at work also? It is a reality is some instances. But now imagine if every home was designed with active lifestyle concepts. How much disease would be eliminated if people had to be more active during the day?
It might take a long time to convince people they need to install these stations or even build their new home like this. But until then, I’m going to keep playing from room to room.
Active Home Re-Design
A loft is a great way to add "active furniture" like hammocks or punching bags. How would you get up and down from the loft: Cargo net, firepole, trampoline, maybe a sliding board? Let's redesign our living space to make it more active. It starts one small step at a time to create these new habits and turn them into a lifestyle.
You get home from work. Throw on the comfy clothes. Grab a snack and turn on Netflix. There you lay for the next 4 hours.
Sound familiar? It's only because that is the way you have your home designed. Now, take 30 seconds and think about removing all that your furniture except your TV. Let's replace the couch with a oversized beanbag, replace the area rug with a gymnastics mat, add a climbing cage over your bookcase, that overhead light fixture could be a yoga hammock, and your walls could be more durable with targets on them to play catch with yourself.
This doesn't change anything you already do. It's just making movement more convenient while you "chill". I have done this at my house and it's made a world of difference in me and my family's evening activities. It's like having a rec center in our living room. There are limitless activities and games we can play while watching TV. Sometimes we even forget to turn on the TV and focus on games / competition so much that we go to bed early because we're exhausted.
Give it a try one step at a time by taking away your coffee table to make space on the floor. Now add an exercise ball in its place or even a balance board to stand on while watching TV. Let me know how it goes after a week. Soon enough houses will be designed like this and it will become second nature. Why do we need to lay down for 4 hours before we sleep for 8 more? Because we made it a habit. Let's create new habits that benefit our health!