Despite the centrality of home in our daily lives, we have very little conscious knowledge about why our homes are the way they are, how they work, or how to make them work for us. David Week wants to change this. His Melbourne Free University course, Understanding Your Home, helps to close that gap in our understanding, and to make participants active shapers of home and home life. WEEK 6: CHANGING YOUR HOME shares seven tools to reshape your home. Armed with this knowledge about the psychological, cultural and economic power of our homes, what changes can we make to live better lives in a better world?

2. Understanding
Your
Home
Week
6:
Changing
Your
Home
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2
SEVEN
TOOLS
The
seven
tools
are:
1
Learning
to
see
2
Kaizen
/
Piecemeal
development
3
Circles
of
influence
4
Control
your
work
5
Value
your
time
6
A
learning
community
7
Patterns
The
purpose
of
having
tools
(and
not
rules
or
steps)
is
to
be
able
to
create
all
kinds
of
homes.
In
a
society
of
a
variety
of
cultures
and
people,
viewpoints
and
lives,
as
we
have
today,
we
should
have
as
broad
a
variety
of
homes.
Remember
the
house
as
mirror
of
self
Some
may
have
dense,
lavish
homes.
Others,
homes
that
are
self-­‐
sustaining
and
farmhouse
like.
Others,
spare
and
Zen.
And
many
others,
too,
far
to
diverse
to
list.
Not
everyone
is
“normal”,
nor
should
they
be.
Innovation
comes
from
the
outliers.

3. Understanding
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1
Learning
to
see
A
term
from
Japanese
manufacturing.
It
means
this:
• You
can’t
produce
without
waste
unless
you
know
what
value
you
are
trying
to
create.
• Once
you
know
value,
then
every
step
or
use
of
resources
that
does
not
add
to
that
value
is
waste.
• Once
you
understand
this,
you
can
walk
around
a
factory
and
SEE
value
and
SEE
waste.
• Learning
to
see
is
a
process
that
never
ends.
Home
starts
with
knowing
what
values
you
are
trying
to
produce
in
your
home.
We’ve
talked
about
three
big
social
values,
present
in
many
homes:
• The
next
generation
• Strong
relationships
• Rest
and
recovery
But
every
home
will
be
different.
Articulate
yours.
Fighting
with
kids
over
getting
to
school
on
time
is
waste,
if
not
how
you
want
to
raise
the
next
generation.
Watching
TV
is
waste,
if
it
does
not
truly
rest
you.

4. Understanding
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Week
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Changing
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4
2
Kaizen
/
Piecemeal
development
Another
Japanese
word,
Kaizen,
means
continuous
improvement.
Christopher
Alexander
called
this
“piecemeal
development.”
Many
natural
processes
proceed
piecemeal,
without
a
final
blueprint.
This
lies
at
the
heart
of
Japan’s
economic
engine.
It’s
not
abstract
philosophy.
Making
your
home
is
a
process
of
social
reinforcement
or
social
transformation.
If
your
home
grows
out
of
your
values,
then
your
values
become
manifest
in
you
home.
If
you
offer
others
a
series
of
steps,
in
which
each
step
contains
its
own
reward,
then
it’s
easy
to
take
steps.
This
is
different
from
a
process
in
which
the
reward
only
comes
when
all
step
are
complete.
If
each
step
contains
its
own
reward,
its
easy
to
get
the
habit.
You
are
less
likely
to
lose
heart.

5. Understanding
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Home
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Changing
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Home
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5
3
Circles
of
influence
The
source
of
waste
are
manifest.
In
this
course,
we’ve
looked
at
how
commercial
and
industrial
processes
invade
the
home,
and
interfere
with
the
values
of
the
home,
through
three
strategies:
• Push
stuff
into
the
home
• Outsource
their
work
into
the
home
• Dump
stress
into
the
home
The
list
can
be
extended.
In
tackling
any
issue
of
waste,
it’s
important
to
distinguish
actions
at
different
levels.
In
the
case
of
fighting
to
get
kids
to
school,
one
is
being
free
labour
for
the
school.
One
can
tackle
this:
• At
home,
by
being
more
efficient
• In
community,
by
seeking
solutions
through
parent
• Politically,
as
they
have
in
Norway:
by
making
the
school
day
start
later
Different
levels
mean
different
forms
of
action,
different
scale
of
size
and
time.
Know
at
which
scale
you
intervene.

6. Understanding
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4
Control
your
work
It’s
almost
impossible
to
make
your
house
your
own
unless
you
control
your
life.
A
“wage
slave”
can
find
themselves:
• 10
hours
a
day
gone
with
unpaid
overtime
• 3
hours
a
day
lost
in
commuting
• home
time
invaded
by
work
thoughts
and
messages
• pumped
full
of
stress
hormones
Some
key
ideas:
The
portfolio
life:
Make
your
work
life
out
of
a
portfolio
of
income-­‐
earning
activities.
Some
contribute
value.
Some
contribute
cash.
Some
joy.
Some
a
mix.
Over
time,
improve
your
portfolio.
Sack
lousy
clients
or
employers
without
throwing
yourself
on
the
job
market.
Third
spaces:
You
may
not
need
to
“go
to
work”.
Some
work
can
be
done:
• At
home
• In
a
café,
for
meetings
or
a
change
of
scenery
• In
a
neighbourhood
co-­‐working
space
or
fab
lab
• Client
offices
“Free
agents”
and
“brand
you”:
Understand
the
value
you
bring.
Even
in
a
job,
treat
yourself
as
a
business.
“In
the
17th
century,
London's
importance
as
a
trade
centre
led
to
increasing
demand
for
ship
and
cargo
insurance.
Edward
Lloyd's
coffee
house
became
recognised
as
the
place
to
go
for
marine
information
and
soon
for
insurance,
too
–
and
it’s
here
that
the
Lloyd’s
we
know
today
began.”
“The
coffee-­‐house
most
closely
associated
with
science
was
the
Grecian,
the
preferred
coffee-­‐house
of
the
members
of
the
Royal
Society,
Britain's
pioneering
scientific
institution.
On
one
occasion
a
group
of
scientists
including
Isaac
Newton
and
Edmund
Halley
dissected
a
dolphin
on
the
premises.”

7. Understanding
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Home
Week
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Changing
Your
Home
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5
Value
your
time
Half
the
world’s
time
is
not
valued.
That’s
the
time
spent
at
home.
At
the
same
time,
that
home
time
can
be
where
the
most
important
values
are
created.
We
need
money
to
buy
commodities:
food,
housing,
transport.
But
because
only
half
our
time
is
monetarily
valued
we
get
caught
in
bind:
caught
in
trading
in
your
unpaid
time
for
lower
prices,
or
for
money.
This
is
what
IKEA
does:
offer
you
low
prices,
in
exchange
for
your
unpaid
time
as
shopper,
warehouse
picker,
delivery
driver
and
Three
ways:
Put
a
dollar
value
on
your
time:
Valuations
of
household
work
tend
to
suggest
AUD25.00
as
a
reasonable.
Then,
you
can
calculate
the
true
cost
of
things
before
you
make
that
trade.
Convert
all
costs
into
time:
Vicki
Robin
and
Joe
Dominguez
describe
the
process
for
doing
so
in
“Your
Money
or
Your
Life.”
Be
unreasonable:
I
know
a
number
of
artists.
Many
are
willing
to
go
to
extreme
lengths
to
avoid
selling
their
time,
which
would
rob
them
of
their
art.
“The
model
American
male
devotes
more
than
1600
hours
a
year
to
his
car.
He
sits
in
it
while
it
goes
and
while
it
stands
idling.
He
parks
it
and
searches
for
it.
He
earns
the
money
to
put
down
on
it
and
to
meet
the
monthly
installments.
He
works
to
pay
for
gasoline,
tolls,
insurance,
taxes,
and
tickets.
He
spends
four
of
his
sixteen
waking
hours
on
the
road
or
gathering
his
resources
for
it.
And
this
figure
does
not
take
into
account
the
time
consumed
by
other
activities
dictated
by
transport:
time
spent
in
hospitals,
traffic
courts,
and
garages;
time
spent
watching
automobile
commercials
or
attending
consumer
education
meetings
to
improve
the
quality
of
the
next
buy.
The
model
American
puts
in
1600
hours
to
get
7500
miles:
less
than
five
miles
per
hour.
In
countries
deprived
of
a
transportation
industry,
people
manage
to
do
the
same,
walking
wherever
they
want
to
go,
and
they
allocate
only
3
to
8
percent
of
their
society’s
time
budget
to
traffic
instead
of
28
percent.
What
distinguishes
the
traffic
in
rich
countries
from
the
traffic
in
poor
countries
is
not
more
mileage
per
hour
of
lifetime
for
the
majority,
but
more
hours
of
compulsory
consumption
of
high
doses
of
energy,
packaged
and
unequally
distributed
by
the
transportation
industry.”

8. Understanding
Your
Home
Week
6:
Changing
Your
Home
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8
6
A
learning
community
Transforming
your
home
is
a
process
as
complex
as
transforming
the
world
or
transforming
yourself.
This
is
because
it
is
the
very
process
of
transforming
your
world
or
transforming
yourself.
• An
economy
which
is
forced
to
serve
the
values
that
are
produced
at
home
would
be
a
very
different
economy.
• Transforming
your
home
involves
a
process
of
finding
your
values,
and
then
aligning
your
actions
inside
your
sphere
of
influence
to
those
values.
It’s
hard
to
reinvent
the
home
alone.
Therefore,
enter
into
conversation
with
others.
Try
stuff
out.
Share
your
learning.
Learn
from
others.
Fortunately,
just
as
any
conversation
about
the
home
can
be
understood
as
a
policy
conversation,
almost
any
questions
can
be
understood
as
about
life
at
home.
So
you
don’t
have
be
boring.
Even
philosophy
can
boil
down
to:
How
shall
we
best
live?
To
structure
this
learning,
two
cycles:
• Nonaka:
Organisational
learning
• Kolb:
Adult
learning.

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9
7
Patterns
How
can
we
best
share
knowledge
in
a
way
that’s
reusable
and
improvable?
The
architect
Christopher
Alexander
spent
many
years
on
this
question
and
came
up
with
the
idea
of
a
pattern.
A
pattern
is
a
simple
solution
to
a
common
problem,
expressed
in
three
parts:
• The
context:
when
this
problem
occurs
• The
solution:
an
idea
of
how
to
deal
with
it
• The
argument:
why
we
might
think
this
is
going
to
work.
A
set
of
interlinking
patterns
is
called
a
pattern
language.
As
originally
formulated,
patterns
are
very
rigid.
But
we
don’t
have
to
be
rigid.
A
pattern
is
a
story:
What
you
saw
happening.
The
process
you
went
through
of
understanding
it.
What
you
changed.
How
that
worked
out.
This
follows
classical
story
arc:
a
person
is
challenged,
struggles
to
overcome
the
challenge,
and
is
changed
(or
in
tragedy:
fails).
The
story
arc
has
two
components:
an
inner
and
outer
arc.
How
the
world
is
changed.
How
the
person
is
changed.
There
is
no
“best”
story:
To
the
same
challenge,
there
will
be
a
variety
of
resolutions.
Different
patterns
might
even
suggest
opposite
resolutions.
Good
luck!
Have
fun.
Live
well.