You can pay money for a house. You can move into that house. You can even start improvements on that house. But for me at least those steps don’t make a house a home. It’s been such a long time since I have had a house, at first I thought it was just a transition problem, but honestly this feels quite a bit like the first house we ever bought and just like then it felt a bit like we were “playing house.” Weird right for a 58-year-old woman? But I try to own my feelings at this age, and it just didn’t feel permanent to me.
I have no doubt that some of that was 10 years of moving from place to place with a built-in lack of permanence and I hoped that as we started to make the house “our own” that would change. Lee was tremendously helpful with this because I have been working a lot so he had me post a list on the fridge of my top 5 items I wanted done. Simultaneously he worked on things he cared about as well and slowly we started to change the space.
One of my favorite things he did was turn the large breezeway/mud room into a HUGE pantry. He hung shelves on the walls, built freestanding shelves for canned goods, and turned this weird awkward space into an amazing room. I also found a space for all of my magnets from our travels, and now I really like it in there. One of the best things he bought was a couple of cabinets and a countertop from FB Marketplace and now I have a space I can use to plant or do canning. At the moment it’s a GREAT space to unbag groceries when they get here without making a mess of the kitchen. VERY cool.
At the same time, I decided I was going to try and plant a fall garden, and he helped me tackle the crazy weird situation out there. In the month between the offer and closing we had a wall of thistle and other weeds that were well over our heads, and to clear all that out was a multi-day effort. Lee used a brush cutter attachment on the weedeater, then I would hand remove the thistles then he did it again. My in-laws gave me a nice little roto tiller (lifesaver) and I tilled the ground and then shoveled out whatever was left. It took over a week to get it all done (we could only work part of each day because of the heat) and I was able to plant some corn, green beans, and snow peas. I planted from seeds and wasn’t sure how that would go but this is good dirt, and I am shocked by how quickly I have gotten sprouts. Very cool! During this process I also for the first time in my life created a compost pile which was a layer of cardboard, layer of vegetation, over and over again, I stopped when the pile got to about 4 feet tall and I am pretty proud of the effort. Better for the environment and hopefully at some point I will have mulch and/or soil.
Oh and guess what! Back in the corner totally surrounded with weeds we discovered two huge rasberry bushes!! Very cool. It was a bear getting the weeds out of there, but there is already tons of fruit.
So, the outside areas were starting to feel like mine but the house not so much. Part of that was we were still waiting on living room furniture so when the couch and chair came and we finally got it arranged that made a big difference. Ultimately, I talked Lee into hanging the TV on the wall and putting the couch underneath it and the room really works now. Plus, it was all in time for Wimbledon which I have rarely gotten to watch the last ten years but with a DVR and cable I could watch to my heart’s content.
The original couch placement Lee and Jack loved but I felt shoved in the corner in my new chair (which is awesome by the way) but admittedly too big for the room.
There were other things along the way that really mattered to me. Lee installed a screen door in the front which was awesome and although he was worried it was actually as easy as could be and only took him 15 minutes!
We also got some housewarming presents from a couple of people that were really nice and had some visitors which was great!
One of the other things that made it start to feel like home was when we got the rest of our storage tubs from DeDe and Denny’s. It was mostly T-Shirts from our travels (Lee has enough literally to last until he dies) but there were a few treasures in there including this colander my mom gave me that I kept all these years.
Overall, the thing that had the most impact was the first night we had a steak dinner. It took a few weeks to be able to sit down and have a nice meal, but that moment felt very special. For us home is truly where the steak is 🙂
It still doesn’t feel like home quite yet, but we are getting there, and I am about to fill it with animals which I think will make all the difference. That’s in the next post!
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Camper Chronicles 