Our street has gotten four new homes built in the past year. One of them was a Parade of Homes home, which was aply named. There are a lot of people looking for homes. Sure, many were looking AT homes, but we've heard through the neighborhood grapevine that several offers were proferred -- and refused! The builder believes he can get his price.

Our whole neighborhood is teardown central these days. It's older, with smaller homes, so it's prime for such turnover. Twenty years ago, we were "those people," buying and tearing down a factory-built home, back when term had less high-tech connotations. We were ahead of the curve, building the home we wanted on a lot we loved.

The nest is semi-empty now, though. Other friends are downsizing, trying to gauge how little house they need versus how much money must be saved, depending on how their later years develop. (Wow, is there any more reluctant way to write: in case they end up in a  nursing home.)

So it's little wonder that the conversation emerges: Should we sell? We've gotten our prime use from the home. I put in many, many square feet of garden that seems to grow a bit more each spring. The porch is sagging a bit. Street repairs are on the civic calendar. The driveway definitely needs a major redo -- unless we decide to be ahead of curve on the return to gravel drives. (You read it here first.)

It's not so big a house that we're knocking around, but there's extra space. We could put the excess funds to good use, believing as everyone does that replacement costs will be nowhere near what our selling price will be. (Someday, I want to be a fly on the wall of a Realtors' happy hour when they start telling war stories.)

We talked seriously -- more seriously than I thought we would, frankly. But the decision to stay wasn't difficult. We love our neighbors, and believe they also are here for years. The neighborhood, while changing, still is terrific. The punchline, of course, is that we just can't bear to think of packing everything up and schlepping it somewhere else -- only to have to UNPACK it again.

The best thing is that while I love my house, I learned that I could leave it. I really could. But if I don't have to (duly knocking wood) I don't want to. Maintenance will only grow more pressing. Paint is needed. The driveway --argh and argh! In other words, I suspect we will have the conversation again, maybe in 10 years.But for now, I'm happy to stay.

I hope I won't fear that next conversation. We've moved one set of parents from their home, somewhat reluctantly. The other set of parents probably should follow suit, but no one's willing to push the issue. But they need to talk about it, and know that it's OK.

How often do you think of moving? What has made you stay? What goes into the idea of downsizing? Those who have downsized --- any regrets?

And honestly: What do you think of gravel driveways?

Whenever I find myself mentally whining that my 1920s house is too small in some places, I remind myself that the original owners managed to raise three kids there, so two people should be able to navigate around its choke points without much difficulty.

The fact that my nearly 1,800-square-foot house seems "cozy" is yet another testimony to how our expectations about the way we live have changed in the time since our house was built. I was reminded of this by the recent release of the 1940 Census data. While I already knew who lived in our house at that point  -- and have met the three people then listed on the census form as children living in the house -- I still was curious to see what I could learn from the form.

I had to wade well into the document to find the specific house I was looking for, but that gave me more of an overall glimpse of my neighborhood on the way. Several things were clear: Families were larger. Very few women worked, with usually only a single wage earner per household. Live-in maids weren't unheard of; there were usually one or two per block, including with that family of seven down the block that somehow crammed into a home not that much bigger than my own. There were extended families living under one roof, with offspring and their spouses living with the in-laws.

Most of the residents were from Minnesota or surrounding Upper Midwest states. But a few, like the owner of our home, came from Norway.

The census reports also revealed something about house values and relative affordability. In 1940, the Minneapolis house I now live in was valued at $9,000. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $138,371 in 2010 dollars. Even with the prolonged market downturn, the tax assessor says our house is worth more than twice that now, so that says something about the value of real estate in the extremely long term. The original homeowner earned $4,500 in 1940, exactly half the value of the home  --.and about $69,000 in 2010 dollars. While now most of the people in neighborhood feel the need of two professional incomes, in 1940 families got by on one, and the most common professions were clerks, stenographers and insurance salesmen. Lots and lots of insurance salesmen.

If you want to learn more about the people who lived in your current house, or where you grew up, check out www.stevemorse.org/census/unified.html. You'll be searching by address, not by ancestor, and you'll want to plug in a cross street to winnow down the search results. And be forewarned that even though the address you're searching for produces a document for an Enumeration District, the address you're looking for might well not be on the first page that (slowly) comes up, so you may need to hit the next button several times before finding what you're looking for. But that way you'll glean an idea of who lived in your neighborhood back before the trees matured and the front porch changed.

Easter is only a few days away, but I hadn't given much thought to Easter baskets. With two kids in college, we're not exactly flush with cash for goodies and trinkets. 

You might think it odd that someone with college-age kids is thinking about Easter baskets at all, but they're a long-standing tradition in my family. My parents hid Easter baskets for me and my two sisters until we were well into our 20s. 

The contents of the Easter baskets changed as we grew up, from candy and little toys to candy and makeup. But one item was in every Easter basket, year after year:

Underwear.

Yup. My mom bought each of us a pretty pair of pastel undies and tucked them into a basket, surrounded by jelly  beans and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. I think the original idea was that we would wear the Easter underwear to church that morning, along with all our other new Easter finery, which in those days included ribbon-trimmed hats and little white gloves. 

My kids never dressed like that for Easter, but I kept up the Easter underwear tradition -- although I did update it a bit to account for modern underwear preferences. Instead of the lace-trimmed Granny panties my sisters and I received in the '60s, I always found some colorful boxers for my son and some cute bikini briefs for my daughter.

Both kids now think it's hilarious that the Easter Bunny brings underwear, and joke about it while hunting for their baskets.  

I haven't bought this year's Easter underwear yet. But I've got something to go with it -- homemade sachets for the underwear drawer. I made them last night on the spur of the moment. I was cleaning out my patio pots, ripping out the dead stalks to make room for spring planting. 

I was just about to rip out one plant when I remember what it was: lavender. The leaves were withered and silvery, but still amazingly fragrant. I couldn't throw away all that perfectly good lavender. I had to do something with it. But what? Then I remembered the little scented sachets that my English grandmother used to place in her dresser drawers. 

There were some tiny fabric bags with drawstring tops in my gift-wrap stash, so I dug them out of storage and filled them with lavender. One for my daughter, one for my mom and one for me. (I don't think my 19-year-old son is ready for lavender-scented boxers.) 

What do you put in Easter baskets? Do you have any odd family traditions?     

OK, it's not that toothbrushes are evil, exactly, but amid our increasing scrutiny into recycling and saving the Earth, comes this fact: Every year in the United States some 450 million plastic toothbrushes make their way to landfills nationally, according to E/The Environmental magazine (which notes that if we followed dentists' recommendations and replaced our toothbrushes every three months, the problem would be even worse.)

For all the care we place upon tearing the plastic windows from the tissue box, or separating the shiny paper from the newsprint, it's a good bet that most toothbrushes get pitched into the trash without a second thought.

Enter a company called World Centric, which is introducing what it calls the first compostable toothbrush. The brush is made of a resin call Ingeo, which is a synthetic fiber made from corn. The brush and its travel case are certified compostable by Biodegradable Products Institute, which also notes its smaller carbon footprint because a plant-based resin takes less energy to produce than petroleum-based plastic resins.

There already are recyclable toothbrushes, made by companies such as Recycline, Eco-Dent, and Radius. In addition, a company called Toothbrushes Express will send you new toothbrushes with a mailer enabling you to return your used brushes.

World Centric, however, claims its toothbrush is designed to fully compost within 3 to 6 six months when sent to a commercial composting facility  -- not just any old landfill where components won't necessarily degrade. For people without access to a commercial composting facility in their area, World Centric will provide a prepaid envelope that customers can use to return the toothbrush and case, which  World Centric will send to a composting facility.

Alas, there still is no perfectly perfect solution for dealign with bristles. Nylon bristles are not compostable – something that the toothbrush industry is working on. So users are asked to snap off the working end of the brush before composting. The World Centric brush sells for about $4.50 at natural grocery stores, some Whole Foods stores and at www.worldcentric.org.

Or you can extend the use of your toothbrushes artistically, following directions on various sites for making funky, brightly colored bracelets. Just google "toothbrush bracelets" and go for it, remembering to then properly recycle them once your tastes change.

Sunday is the last day of the Parade of  Homes.So far, I’ve been underwhelmed.

 
Where’s the shimmery glass walls, bright juicy colors and mod Jonathan Adler furnishings? I’d like to see countertops made of recycled glass and sleek concrete instead of  eye-glazing granite.

Last year, I toured a fantastical home in Minnetonka awash with the creativity of local interior designer Jaque Bethke. She suspended an arty glass fixture with Medusa-like tentacles above the master bathtub. Stacked glass chandeliers doubled as columns in the living room. It  was one of those  "wow" homes that was worth a stop.

After driving from house-to-house, navigating with a tiny stamp-size map, squeezing into a parking spot and slipping on blue booties at the front door— I want to be rewarded with

 jaw-dropping eye candy.This year, I found the same old hand-scraped mahogany floors, “Old World” charm, rolled arm sofas and the obvious Gs — gourmet kitchen and granite. Mixing dark walnut and white enameled woodwork in one room was about as edgy as it got.

 I get it that most of the homes are built on spec and have to appeal to a wide range of tastes and decorating styles (think neutral) in order to get sold. Many boast smart, functional design with lovely must-have amenities. But like many Parade gawkers, I’m not buying —  just looking.  Where are the homes in which a designer and builder were allowed to go a little crazy and deviate from the beige-on-brown-on-beige?

There’s more than 300 homes on the Parade and the brief descriptions typically don’t go beyond “exotic woods,” “artfully crafted living spaces” and “HGTV flooring” (whatever that means).

So I need your help. Have you toured any of the spring Parade Homes that you remember five minutes after you walked out the door? And urged your friends to check out?  Please share — and don’t forget to include the Parade number and city.