As we are unpacking our boxes—yes, we still have many to go—I keep thinking about what it is that makes a home. I mean a house is a house, and a home can be a house, but can a house be home? In my thoughts, home as house is true, but house as home is not.
“Huh?,” you may be asking.
Let me explain a little further.
My husband recently was hired to a new full-time job after being retired for the past six months, and we finally sold our house in New Mexico. We’ve been putting off some purchases as our income had gone down dramatically due to retirement and paying for two households. The good thing is we found out we were able to live on the reduced income with some minor changes, which is nice to know as we grow closer to both of us being fully retired.
This weekend we went and purchased a new coffee table for the loft area. Now we can play board games upstairs if we wish to do so.
We enjoy board games, and that coffee table helped our new house feel more like home.
When we hung some pictures, and my quilt from student teaching, a few weeks ago, that added to the house feeling more like home.
The husband hung the ceiling fan in the living room, thus also giving us more light to read in the living room by the fireplace, which added to our house feeling more like home.
This weekend I began rearranging the kitchen area. Since I do most of the cooking and baking, I like to have the kitchen a certain way to make things more easily accessible. I put dividers in drawers and moved things around for them to be more logically located, and now the kitchen feels more like home.
Today, after almost two years, my cookbooks are finally all back together again. The other purchase for this weekend was a bookcase for my office. After putting it together last night and anchoring it this morning, the bookcase was ready for the cookbooks. It took a little while and a lot of shuffling things around (printer, file cabinet, dog food bin, a cupboard, and a small refrigerator). I then started adding cookbooks from around the house as they were being stored in several different rooms. This small feat bumped the home factor up a great deal.
Once I had the cookbooks all in one place, it immediately felt like a piece of the home puzzle suddenly fit in place. It made my heart happy! The icing on the cake was also being able to organize them as I placed them on the shelves. (Side note: As you can see, I still have lots of space to add more, thank goodness!)
It is those little things, along with the people inside, that help move a house into being a home.
I’m curious what makes a house a home for you. I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Happy Homemaking!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 