Inside A Plain, Spacious, Squeaky-Clean Amish Home (27 Photos)
The two words that first hit me to describe this Amish home are “spacious” and “squeaky clean”. You’ll see what I mean in the photos below.
The community is Salem, Indiana. This is also a quite low, or plain/traditional home. In this case that means zero bathrooms. The area of Salem has more than one Amish community today. One is a New Order Amish settlement, the other is a Swiss Amish community. This home is from the latter. Here’s the long home description via Zillow (warning, abundant semi-colons ahead 🙂 ):
Here’s your opportunity to own an authentic 6 BR Amish 1.5-story home in Washington County on 13.47 park-like acres; covered porch leads to a spacious 28 x 25 gathering room with beautiful red oak hardwood floor; kitchen & dining room feature red oak hardwood floors; partial BASEMENT provides great storage plus partially-finished recreation room; double-pane windows; front & rear covered porches; low-maintenance vinyl exterior; circular gravel driveway; 34 x 64 barn with 6 stalls & water hydrant; 30 x 50 workshop with concrete floor; 2 livestock shelters; 4 separate livestock lots; holding pen with chute & head gate; 12-ton grain bin; perimeter fenced with woven wire; large garden area; small stocked pond with bass, bluegill & crappie; ideal for off-grid living; rural water is connected to 2 exterior hydrants on the property; electric connection available at road; Salem Community Schools district; 15 minutes to Interstate 65/SR 56 interchange at Scottsburg.
Kitchen area
The kitchen space. Long kitchen table, pans neatly hung on the wall, beautiful kerosene stove, and hats and jackets hung on wall hooks.
You can get a sense of why I called this home “spacious”, with the large doors leading into the living area. It’s a typical design in Amish homes, which accommodate large families and visitors.
A closer look at the kerosene stove.
Here’s an additional area, also with a kerosene stove.
Living Area
Now the large living area.
I like the symmetry of this rocking chair area. Antlers displayed on the wall. Beautiful green kerosene lamps.
Look at the light reflecting in that ceiling. Amish homes typically have ceilings like this. A bed on the left, also not uncommon in plainer Amish homes especially to see that.
Bedrooms
A look at the bedrooms, starting with what is possibly the parents’ room, but maybe not. The baby crib is often an indicator of that.
Boy’s room. What looks to be a large safe on the left. Are those golf clubs propped in the opposite corner?
Girl’s room.
To me, this bedroom is both plain and vibrant simultaneously.
Basement
This finished part of the basement has both a ping pong table and a place for working out. It looks like it’s a combination bench press/leg curl machine. Not something you see in every Amish home, but workout equipment like exercise bicycles is not unheard of. Not every Amish occupation involves manual labor, and some might appreciate the chance to exercise like other Americans do.
You can see a more traditional basement area with canned goods here. This might be the only part of the home that couldn’t be described as “squeaky clean”. The basement part above can be seen through the door, where you’ll notice the workout equipment again.
Dawdihaus
It’s not referenced where I can see, but it also appears this home has a dawdihaus, which is a smaller home on the property where grandparents typically live. There is mention of a workshop, which might occupy part of this building, with the rest a living space. Or,I might be wrong on that.
But in any case, the following photos feel like they are part of a different living area, and by their dimensions certainly remind one of a dawdihaus.
This kitchen area is what you might call picture perfect.
The table cover resembles a giant blue bottle cap. Blues abound in these homes.
Cozy area with stove.
Plainer Amish homes will commonly have a cooler as a source for drinking water.
Same area, from another angle.
A small bedroom.
Another view of the kitchen area. I’m not sure what the red thing is. It certainly stands out.
Main Property
Back to the main home, a view from the front porch.
And a view of the barn, with open buggies common in the Swiss Amish settlements.
Finally, a view of the property from the beginning of the lane.
Price
What is this property selling for? Well, I should probably ask “what was it sold for?” as it seems to have found a buyer since it first crossed my radar (hat-tip to reader Lena). The home again is six bedrooms, zero bathrooms, 4,431 square feet, on over 13 acres of land. Throw in additional buildings like a large barn, workshop/dawdihaus (I think), and others.
This property was reportedly sold for $247,000 (Steve Silver of Re/Max).
Where are the quilts!
Sure is spacious…I was wondering why the beds don’t have the famous Amish quilts on them? They’re so beautiful I’d certainly display..not fold them up somewhere., I think that red item might be a mini fridge or freezer…of course ran by generator I guess.
Amazing!!!
That is unreal…It is beautiful…Especially liked the room with the green..When I got to the
part about the price, blew my mind..Thought for sure it was going to be double that
amount..I guess because of no electricity and 0 bathroom was the reason..But still
thought it should be more..It was amazing..
Lack of trim
Hello Erik,
Currently the offer for the B&B accommodation is still in place. One of these times you’ll tire of me rattling on about you coming here to check out some Wisconsin Amish settlements! Please book your reservation! 🙂
Back to the house… You know how I am about the lack of trim around windows and floors just to be “unfinished” to get a tax break! When you’ve spent all the time and energy into such a place, with floors to die for, and then don’t finish the bedrooms, to me is in bad taste. Just sayin…
squeaky clean
Having been fostered by an old order Amish family, pictures like these don’t really surpise me. I could write an entire novel and still not finish all the things I learned and saw during those precious years. Just a few thoughts here, first yes, even living on a fully operational home and farm was such a happy time for me. We didn’t wait for something or someone to entertain us we just made our own entertainment. Some of the things were things like me being the brunt of jokes (not unkind things) as I learned to navigate the old order ways. Like being told to “make out the light” and me thinking that meant to kiss the kerosene lamp. (Luckily I didn’t try that one) or Mom asking me to call the men in from the fields and me running out to the main yard where they could hear me and yelling at the top of my lungs “coo messa” which meant “cow poop” rather than “kum essa” and mom fussing because I also did handstands in the yards and my dress flying up over my head leaving nothing to anyone’s immagination. We’d race each other to finish our part of the mile long stretch of egetable gardening. Going for a swim on a hot summer’s evening ( us girls just swiming in our dresses) finding berry bushes along the roadside and returning the next day to pick them for jams and pies then having belly aches from eating too many.
Flaslight tag, just about anything else but mostly finding faster ways to finish the work by making it a game. Yes, even cleaning the house (to a squeaky clean) or canning fruit and vegetables was made fun by making up games as we went. It’s there where I learned to properly clean a house and ironing with a real iron heated on the stovetop. Oh my perhaps I should start writing a book rather than using Eric’s page as a sounding board! Sorry Eric! I’ll close with the reality of hard work, no insomnia, drinking raw cow’s milk, Saturda!y evenings going around visiting our friends, me singing Linda Ronstat tunes because they were fascinated that I nearly did sound like her (b/c they all owned transister battery operated radios.) ok, I’ll stop now.
Yes. Write a book.
Thank you for sharing! You should write a book. It sounds like you had a wonderful part of your childhood with your foster family. Every child should have experiences like those you’ve described. I think I’ve always been drawn to the Amish because they share the values of my family. God, family, working together, a big garden, sharing lots of meals and time together in the kitchen, enjoying Gods creation. Please write your book and share it here, so we can buy it, and learn more about you and your Amish foster family.