Home is a perspective. People can live inside the same four walls, sheltered by the same roof, sit around the same dining table and see different things. Or see the same things in entirely different ways.

Psychologists are fond of saying, “Every child gets his own parents.” In other words, siblings can have vastly different experiences, perspectives and memories of the same parents. I think something similar goes on with houses and the people who share them.

I am a snoop by nature and profession. Part Harriet the Spy, part Lois Lane, and a pinch post-prison Martha Stewart, I take notes on other people’s homes, write about them, and, occasionally, try to incorporate their nifty versions of domesticity into my own.

Several years ago at a friend’s house, I met a young woman married to a man old enough to be her father. She was beautiful. He was rich. She loved to dance. He claimed two left feet. She said she longed to go out dancing but her husband preferred to stay home. Now, I don’t like to think of myself as judgmental but I may as well have donned black robes and slammed a gavel as she leaned in to confide how they resolved their differences.