A Family Moves To A Smaller Quezon City Home (And They Love It)

We have featured Arlene and Bong Maslog’s family home in Quezon City no less than ten times. It has appeared twice on the covers of Real Living magazine, and on several more occasions in the many articles Arlene has styled and written as a contributor. Being an architect, the various homes and condos she designed have also graced the pages of the magazine and the website.

IMAGE photos by Bahaghari and Ocs Alvarez: The Maslog kids, 2003 and 2009

On another heartwarming note, we—and most of our readers—have also seen the Maslogs’ two children (above) grow up before our eyes. Their living spaces (seen below) occasionally change color palettes, furniture pieces, and layout, but always remain comfortable and cozy. The only constant in all the home tours is their pet Chow-Chow, Samson.

IMAGE photo by Ocs Alvarez: the living room in their old house in 2009

But a few months ago, the Maslogs made the big move out of their sprawling family home, which they had lived in for 17 years, and into a smaller townhouse in a quieter part of Quezon City. “The move was so emotional at first, but my dad wanted us to live closer to them,” Arlene relates. “We welcomed it naman, because it’s convenient for the kids’s school, and the traffic [at the old house] was getting so bad because of the MRT construction.”

Arlene did her own subtle design tweaks to their new home to make it feel like their former house, but the biggest challenge the family faced was transferring their belongings from a 300sqm house (with garden) to a 200sqm townhouse. “I was really challenged, because even in our old house, I wanted to purge and downsize, so parang this was the perfect opportunity to do it,” says Arlene. “And even though I was the type who would purge and donate, ang dami pa rin! So what we did was to move everything that was important first, and then the next, and so forth.”

Even with a considerably smaller home, the family now enjoys its perks. They live closer to their elderly parents, the now-grown-up children have an easier commute to school, and their classmates hang out there more often. But when Arlene is asked what she misses from their old home, she answers: “I miss the garden. And it’s Samson who really misses the garden! Before we moved out, he went around it pa, nagba-bye siya."