Young House Love

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Survey Says…?

***UPDATE: We’re sending out a giant thank you to the 30,000+ respondents to our survey! We’ve selected a random winner of the $500 West Elm gift card using random.org and the lucky person is… Sarah M from Birmingham, AL! Congrats Sarah – check your inbox!***

It’s no secret that I’m a card-carrying infographic geek (in case you’re wondering, the card has a pie chart on it). Here on our blog we’ve captured one year of living in this house, our book tour, and of course your responses to our annual blogiversary survey all infograph-tacularly, so with some sweet talking to my wifey and gentle nudging to our publisher, I’ve convinced them to let me put a few infographics in our next book. #nerdvictory

Survey Nerds

But obviously I need some info before I can get all graphic on you (not that kind of graphic). That’s where you guys come in. Since Book Two is all about sharing how families really live (you can read more about it here) we thought it would be fun to share some stats on what “really live” means. We’re about halfway done shooting the book (and mostly done sorting through your AWESOME submissions) and it has been an great reminder that there’s a huge variety when it comes to families, design needs, and housing challenges. And since we can’t photograph them all, we’re hoping these infographics can represent a wider smorgasbord. Even if the questions are a little goofy sometimes…

Survey Hard Hitting

To thank you for taking our little book survey we lined up a $500 West Elm gift card for one lucky winner. We’ll select that person randomly from the respondents next Monday night (8/25) at 8pm EST. Please complete the survey just once per household. Oh and if you’re an international reader, you can win a Visa gift card instead, so it’s open to anyone in the world.

West Elm Gift Card

Taking the time to represent your little slice of home in the book could also end up earning you a shout out. We’ve got a few open-ended questions in there that will allow us to highlight some particularly unique / helpful / entertaining responses complete with your name and city (assuming you give us permission at the end of the survey, otherwise it’s 100% anonymous).

Survey Finest

You can click here to begin the survey (or on the graphic below). It’s not super-serious and by no means scientific, so we hope you guys have some fun with it. It’s hosted via Google Forms and there are some open-ended questions but they’re not required if you don’t feel like typing much. Thanks in advance for taking the time to represent how you live in your home!

Survey Get Started

Oh, and PS: Since this has a $500 prize attached to it we won’t be hosting our usual Fab Freebie tomorrow, but we’re currently assembling some cabinets in the hopes of being back with a laundry room update tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

Comments

  2. Kate @ Short & Sweets says

    for the record, I picked “hidden trash can” on purpose because, The 70s. (we have a compactor. sigh)

    Also, I totally forgot my beautiful red stand mixer when I was listing things on my counter (I doubt you care too much), and it made me realize that summer has put a crimp on my baking. Anyway, it was fun to feel like I participated in your next book :)

    Reply

  3. Reny says

    i filled out the survey. but find that one question bothered me. the master bathroom situation (tub/shower combo, separate bath/tub, just shower).. i can’t really answer that one since what i have in my master bath is only a bath tub. no shower.

    Reply

  4. Emily C. says

    I never realized how much my home was lacking! I don’t know why I’m so attached to it, haha. It doesn’t even have a dishwasher!

    Reply

  5. Caryn says

    For the office question, I would dig getting one of those walking desks, if you could do a write in option. Of course, many of them are pretty ugly looking…

    Reply

  7. Ginger says

    I answered the survey up until it was 75% finished through the bathroom questions, but couldn’t get the survey to advance forward from there. :(

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      So sorry! We had that issue when we were testing it once and it turned out to be that a dropdown field wasn’t selected/completed. Hope it helps!

      xo
      s

  8. Marci says

    I did your survey but had trouble with one of your early questions. I’m 66 and have 2 kids so answered yes to having children You probably really meant do you have any children living at home but I couldn’t just say a bald “no” to children. Since they are 26 & 29 and don’t live at home they don’t influence anything about our home except maybe making sure there’s extra beds.

    Reply

  9. Catherine says

    I had SO much fun filling out your survey! I would do that 20 more times if I could. I loved your first book, and I can’t wait for the next one to come out. I’ve been a reader since back in 2010 and have told so many people how much I love your blog, I received THREE copies of your first book this last Christmas. Hopefully you guys will make it down to Austin for a signing sometime in the future for this next one – of course if Teddy, Clara, and Burger are up for it ;)

    Reply

  10. Jo says

    I just looked through the comments to see if this had come up, but I didn’t see it: the required question of how big your house is in square feet. I have NO IDEA! For a start I use metric and any numbers I put into google to convert just seem wrong since I don’t understand all that mathy stuff and it wasn’t anything I was overly concerned about when house hunting to pay attention (I could walk into a house and could tell this one was bigger/smaller than the last one ;) ). Is there some kind of “I don’t know” option I can enter since you want numbers for that?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh man, that field makes you put numbers so why don’t you tell me how many meters you’d guess it is and I can try to convert it and give you that number to put in?

      xo
      s

    • Jo says

      I wouldn’t even have a clue! How do you even work that out (especially with a house that’s not an actual aquare?) As I said it wasn’t something that I looked at and I don’t even remember seeing size as anything that’s “pushed” in a sale; from my looking at houses they are pushed at X bedrooms Y bathrooms, rather than 100000000m2. I wouldn’t even know what an average is. Can I just put in something ludicrous like 1 or 99999999999 (assuming those are actually over the top numbers?).

  11. Kristin says

    You could do an entire book on cultural differences in housing. An apartment I looked at to rent in my state had the washer/dryer outside on the patio, but in the locked storage closet. Let’s just say I passed on that nightmare. Also, my husband tends to call the living room “the den.”

    Reply

  12. Joanne says

    Added confession: I just thought of post survey… I have 6 YHL hooks in my closet waiting to be hung, but I can’t figure out where & how I’m going to use them. All I know is I love them & they needed to be in groupings of 3, but we’ve recently moved & I’m having trouble figuring out where to hang everything we own.

    Reply

  14. Silke says

    I love these surveys SO much!!!! I was giddy as a child filling this one out. I hope you get enough international input, so you can have a “European” pie chart in the book, that would be awesome.
    Lots of love all the way from Belgium!
    Silke

    Reply

  15. Karin says

    Nothing like a good survey to get you thinking about your space! I was so excited to find your first book in our library yesterday! It looks like it has a lot of wear and tear on it, so it must be checked out a lot! Will definitely buy my own copy and can’t wait for the second one! Good luck!

    Reply

  16. Meredith says

    One thing that is hanging me up is semantics – maybe regional? What you call a living room I have grown up calling a family room. The living room was always the formal room that we aren’t allowed to go in unless we were practicing piano (no actual living lol) and the family room is the casual tv watching space. I’ve lived in 4 western states and that is pretty typical. Now I live in a good size home with a main floor great room which we can’t decide after 2 years if we call it the family room or living room. We use it interchangeably but mostly family room. (We have a large loft space upstairs that is part play room part tween and teen lounge.
    All that being said I didn’t know how to answer the living room questions.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Thanks Meredith, sorry for any confusion! Feel free to answer it with the word living room meaning the main living area you use (whether it’s the formal one or the family room) – there’s even a question where you can choose the split of how you use them. Changing words now would skew results since we already have a lot of data, but we’ve heard from others who make that distinction too! So interesting!

      xo
      s

  17. Kasie says

    For the questions like “What’s your top priority in your most used entryway? *
    Beautiful & Welcoming
    Functional & Organized”

    Why can’t it be Beautiful, Welcoming AND Functional and Organized?! Why must it be one or the other? I really think we have achieved the best of both worlds (I mean minus our missing doors;) )

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We considered adding “both” to that but didn’t think we’d learn much since everyone would just click that one. We thought it would be more interesting to see which one people picked if forced to choose between those two options :)

      xo
      s

  18. Grayson F says

    I just completed the survey and I accidentally clicked the “use my name” button at the end! If you use any of my answers, please leave them anonymous! Thanks!
    PS- I love your blog! I’m sure your new book will be great!

    Reply

  19. Zoe says

    wow. it was way hard to calculate my home in square feet!! I think the rest of the world uses meters… I know we do here in Australia.

    Anyway, there was no option in the dining room/ dining table question section for open plan living.
    I mean for a dining zone in your open plan room which also has a kitchen and lounge room/area. there was only formal dining room or kitchen table or eating at the kitchen bench – to me that is not the same as open plan with a seperate formal or informal dining zone. (This is how most houses are built in Australia – open plan)

    I addressed it in one of the final questions though.

    I hope you get good results!
    Z

    Reply

  21. Anna says

    Interesting survey as it made me question some things about my house and come to realisations about certain spaces (ie. I now want to change my computer chair).

    Two minor things that jumped out at me from the survey – the square footage is going to be a REALLY rough guesstimate from some people. We tend to talk about land size in square metres in combination with numbers of bedrooms when discussing house sizes here in the part of Australia that I live in. I wouldn’t have a clue how many square feet my house would be so had to take a stab in the dark.

    I’m not sure why, but the washer question presumes that if you have a front loader you have a dryer, and that they are in the same room. I noticed on your blog that you seem to buy matching pairs of these appliances – that must be a US thing?? I selected on top because if I had my dryer in my laundry that’s probably where I’d end up putting it. My dryer is in my garage, not my laundry because the laundry lacks sufficient ventilation.

    Reply

  23. Ann Firth says

    As a fellow geek, I’ll be looking out for some fun charts, graphs, and (I hope!) some good ‘ol Venn diagrams :)

    Reply

  25. Willow says

    I know this is probably too late (someone woke up from their nap just as I was finishing taking the survey for myself yesterday!), but I think it would be prudent to leave the “what is your gender?” question open-ended or at least have an “other” option. Not everyone conforms to a gender binary and I’m SURE you lovely people in no way want to make your wonderful blog an unwelcoming place for those who do not. I’m saying this out of love because I’m confident the limited choices were simply an oversight and know you would never do anything intentionally hurtful. :)

    Reply

  26. Kati says

    Taking the survey made me really proud of our “lipstick-on-a-pig” apartment. We’ve done a really great job with a lame place!

    Reply

  28. AlisonG says

    I got through the whole thing, it was long winded. Only I don’t get the questions and how it relates to writing a book. A lot of the questions were strange. Do tell…

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Just thought it would be fun to represent a wide range of people and how they live, what they love, what they struggle with, etc (especially since we can only photograph a limited amount of homes). We hope it’ll be interesting for people to see where others fall on the same issues and read about families who might have the same challenges, confessions, or preferences.

      -John

  29. Pre says

    I filled out the survey yesterday, but it took a while so I came back today to comment. For one of the open-ended questions on the last page I posted a sort of dilemma I’ve been having regarding floor coverings. It very well may not make the book, however I just wanted to call it out as I think it could be a very interesting topic to consider for a blog post. And it could also be very relevant for families (even though I’m an individual) if you do consider it for the book.

    I am generally great at coming up with creative solutions for every problem that comes my way… but floor coverings when I am faced with severe allergies and asthma has me somewhat stumped. I can’t use rugs due to their collection of dust, fibers, etc as vacuuming just doesn’t work effectively and washing them would literally need to be done daily which isn’t practical and I don’t have a machine in-home

    Aside from the not so attractive and fairly expensive Wellness Mats… or rolls of cork which are meant as underlayment and can’t get wet and I don’t see how to clean… I can’t figure out an option for floor coverings. It’s definitely an obstacle, especially when renters are required to have them (for sound barrier) – and if you have kids you may just want them for a softer ground!

    With your experience in home decor and design I thought you might be able to come up with some creative options for those of us who have to deal with allergies and asthma but still want (or need) a nice renter-friendly floor covering alternative to the traditional area rug! Are you up to the task? :)

    Who knows… it could be interesting for a monthly blog column even… taking on a creative real-life home challenge and presenting various solutions.

    Reply

  30. Alice says

    Fun survey and it really got me thinking about my house and prioritirles. I don’t know if someone else mentioned it already, but although I answered that I have no kids, I still got the ‘How much say do your kids have in their room decor?’ question and I think there was another one about where toys are or where play occurs. Just thought you should know in case it influences the results. Alas my ‘kids’ have no say in their decor.

    Reply

  33. Bonnie says

    I had fun answering the survey although it was trickier for me because I’m one of your older followers. I have three kids, but they don’t live here anymore, but they and their kids visit, alot! So, we have toys but not necessarily the other situations regarding “live in” kids.
    I enjoy your bloging so much and reading and viewing how successful you are in transforming your rooms from liveable to fabulous. Thank you!

    Reply

  34. Susan says

    I’ve tried the survey twice and I get to what I think must be the next to the last page and I can’t go any farther. So frustrating

    Reply

  36. Laura says

    Just wanted to say how much I love you guys! I’ve been following your blog since Burger was your only baby and it’s been so fun to see your family grow and be so successful. Congrats on the new book! I’m eagerly waiting for it!

    Reply

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