The Parent Dream House

When I was a kid, one of the most popular kids movies was Richie Rich. It was about a boy with billionaire parents who had anything a boy could possibly want including a house with everything from indoor pools and secret passages, to bumper cars and a McDonalds. It was the ultimate (1990s) kids dream house.

As a parent, dream house means something different. And it’s not like those dream house properties you see on TV.

Here’s the real Parent Dream House.

It starts with the bathroom. Because if the kitchen is the heart of any home, the bathroom is the bowels of any home and just as important. It’s trendy (well, at least as of this writing) to have white marble countertops and vintage-looking penny round tile flooring.

Not in the Parents Dream House. It’s all about utility and ease of clean-up. The walls would be made of shower board, and not just the wall inside the shower but ALL of the walls. The countertop would be stainless steel and there would be a drain in the middle of the stained concrete floor. There would have to be a little canister to keep the toilet paper dry, because this bathroom would be self-cleaning and completely waterproof. Close the door, flip a switch, and a sprayer comes out of the ceiling and sanitizes the whole room. Basically, the Parents Dream House bathroom is a dishwasher

Most dream houses are Richie Rich size mansions. Size does matter, but not so much inside the Parent Dream House. It’s the outdoor area where you really need the space. You may think this space is for pools, playsets, sports courts, dirt bike tracks, and horse stables. But there’s a lot of maintenance and trouble that comes with most of that. And kids just need room to run and play. So the Parent Dream House is on open, grassy acreage where the kids can spread out and play in nature.

Back inside. Mud rooms are seriously lacking in Texas. Just like the bathroom, the Parent Dream House has a self-cleaning mud room. Bring ‘em in, clean ‘em off, and spray it down. I’ve seen this sort of room set up for people with excessive disposable income and excessively dirty dogs. In the Parent Dream Home it’s set up for kids and comes standard.

Finally, let’s talk about the sound proofing. Open concept floor plans are all the rage, but there is a huge downside to this with kids: the noise. Not a problem in the Parent Dream Home. It has an open concept floor plan, but with the press of a button a transparent sound partition (like in the back of a limo that Richie Rich would have) comes up and divides the living room where you’re watching the big game from the rest of the house.

You’ll waive as the kids run by shrieking like banshees because in the Parent Dream House banshees are seen but not heard.