Doors and the Dutch

I want everyone reading this, if they're at home, to get up out of their chair, walk out the front door, and come back inside. Then count the number of doors you have to open (and close) to get to your computer. If you're not at home, close your eyes, and do it in your head.
I'll wait.

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I assume you've just taken a real or imaginary trip through your house, and can now tell me exactly how many doors you've walked through. If you're American, or live in an American home, I'm going to guess your number is going to be around one, maybe two. There is the front door, and then possibly the door to your office. If you're Dutch, on the other hand, your number could peak as high as four.

I was never aware of the high density of doors in Dutch homes until last week, when I spent at least half my trips through people's houses doubling back to close the various doors I had opened to get to such mundane places as the bathroom, the coat closet, our bedroom, or even the outside. Some houses even had a door for the stairs. It was amazing. There were doors with wood paneling, doors with windows in them, doors with stained glass panes, white doors, brown doors, wooden doors...lots and lots doors.

Perhaps we live in a really cheap house, and our builder was just extremely stingy, but our house here in Georgia is very sparse on doors. Except for our bedrooms, bathrooms, various closets, and the laundry room, our house has no doors. You could walk into the front door and out the back door, passing through our dining room, living room, and kitchen, without ever touching a doorknob. Our pantry has a door too, come to think of it, but the kitchen itself doesn't. It has little walkways with trim, that the kids use as a jungle gym. But no doors. And the doors that we do have, are really only closed when the rooms are in use. Otherwise, we have no particular rules for closing or opening doors. You do what you want with doors in our house, for we have absolute door freedom.

So, to us, the Dutch door density was quite a revelation. In my brother's house alone, to get from the dining room to the powder room, you had to open the door to the kitchen, and the door to the hallway to get to the downstairs bathroom. I won't even describe the amount of doors it took to get to the upstairs bathroom. And what was even more mind-boggling? Every single one of those doors was closed. All the time.
At first I thought Dutch people are just extremely disciplined, and we here in Georgia are nothing but a bunch of wild door monkeys, until I realized that when any single one of these doors was left open, a cold draft would quickly permeate the room, which would have husband-dear or I jumping up, run to the door, and quickly close it before frostbite would set in. But can you imagine how this week progressed for us? We would go to our room to get a book, walk through about four doors to get there, walk back to close each one of them before opening the next, then turn around and repeat, only to sit down on the couch and realize we forgot our house shoes, and get up and do the whole song and dance routine again. At least it got better throughout the week, and our hosts were most gracious about us leaving random doors open, hiking their heating bill, I'm sure, but I can assure you that coming home to a house with nothing but open space was really, very nice.

I think that maybe I was born in a barn. Moo.