My wife and I just got back from a long weekend in Virginia Beach. It’s one of our favorite places to spend a couple of days—it’s always relaxing, there are some very good restaurants, and there are a lot of things to do both by the beach and further inland.

Our first couple of visits we stayed in hotels, but my wife found an Airbnb in the neighboring city of Chesapeake that was priced competitively with hotels and looked really nice. And so it was—this was our third stay there. The hosts leave out a basket of snacks, microwave popcorn, and a bottle of wine. The large television is always left on with the neat, silent Roku screensaver on (the one with the city skyline slowly going by in the background). Those corny plaques with friendly, funny messages are hanging everywhere. There are way more towels and spare toiletries than you’ll need in the bathroom. There must be soundproofing somewhere, because the little place is so quiet and still inside. There’s a pool out back with chairs, a table, and two dogs who’ll run out to greet you and one of whom will jump in the pool and swim.

Whenever we visit, it feels like returning home. I always wonder, is it possible to capture that feeling in your own home? Is there some expert interior design philosophy that will do it? Being organized, having some treats in the house, etc.? Or is it just that when you’re away, your mind isn’t full of all the workaday stuff that intrudes on that sense of being at ease? Is that feeling of being vacation really our natural state that reasserts itself as soon as the work gets a pause? Is it true that you “find yourself” in the absence of responsibilities after all? I hope not.

I suppose one element of this is that in a hotel or vacation rental, there isn’t anything in the room or space that you have no chance of using. There might be a lot of amenities and extras, but they’re all sort of related to why you’re there. In other words, there’s plentitude without clutter. On the other hand, in your own house that you live in everyday, it can feel like clutter without plentitude.

The extras and treats fall into the “Eh, I don’t really need it” category, while the stuff you’ll probably never use but maybe might need one day—all the tools and attachments and gadgets, the spare curtain rod hangers and screws and rubber feet that fell off of something you probably don’t own anymore, the phone chargers for the previous generation of charging ports, the laptops that still run but aren’t fast enough to really use, a million other things—that’s what’s not in a cozy Airbnb place. It’s actually quite tricky to have a lot of things, all of which are useful.

There are people, I guess, who do just chuck all that stuff and then specifically go and buy any of the things they might possibly need, when they need them. I can’t get over the feeling that that’s irresponsible and kind of dilettantish. Almost, I suppose, a feeling that it’s immature or something to want to “feel like you’re on vacation” when you’re not. That carrying that burden of running the home is what you’re supposed to do if you want to own a place.

This gets me thinking about urbanism and a hypothesis I float sometimes—whether Americans avoid or claim to dislike urbanism because we like it. Maybe there’s no contradiction in Americans traveling to walkable European cities and raving about them and then coming back and grumbling about a new mixed-use development. Is there something like urbanism = vacation = pleasure = immaturity/indulgence/“dessert” = can’t let that be an everyday experience?

Or, relatedly, is there something like, Nice things are nice because they’re special. If we do them all the time, they won’t seem nice anymore. Is that true? I guess it’s true for certain things, like eating the whole container of ice cream. That might be fun once or twice a year. It’s the rarity and the sense of doing something you’re not supposed to do that makes it fun. But is inhabiting an organized, homey space like that? Visiting or living in a built environment where you can stroll around, pop into local businesses, run into people in friendly but low-stakes situations?

What sorts of pleasures rely on rarity to be what they are, and which ones multiply and become richer with frequency and familiarity? When is “keeping something special” simply starving yourself of something you are perfectly entitled to? And not only that, but which is good for you?

Related Reading:

The Wolverine Claws

Kitchen Contentment

Why are Airbnbs so Comfy?

What If Urbanism *Is* Eating Our Vegetables?

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