What Makes A House A Home?

Since leaving my parents’ home for college, I’ve moved 17 times, living in four states and two continents. The more nomadic I got, the more my concept of what made a comfortable home changed.  I wasn’t interested in creating an environment that was enriching to me or welcoming to my guests. At that time, all I was looking for was a place in which to eat, sleep and, most importantly, exit efficiently.  Not surprisingly, at a certain point I stopped unpacking and started using boxes of books and clothes as furniture.

Last year, when I moved into my new husband’s house, things changed. Suddenly there was furniture to be repaired, stacks of canned goods, books and tchotchkes to sort and nearly a dozen rooms to patch up and decorate. It was an awesome feeling in every sense of the word. How could I make this house feel like a home for both of us?

To gain a little perspective, I started examining the things I like about the last place I felt truly at home. In hindsight, the house I grew up in was, and still is, a pretty unusual house filled with a lot of unique features and design challenges. A spiral staircase connects the large open middle floor to a tiny cramped loft above and a cluster of bedrooms below. My father fills the loft with his 2,000 piece puzzles and massive collection of yellowed paperback classics. Downstairs, my mother finds ingenious ways to display her collection of antiques and artifacts from the farms and fields surrounding us. My brother’s massive paintings dominate the walls -including a 9 foot piece appropriately titled “Giantess,” while my own smaller drawings remain a permanent fixture on the fridge. When I visit my childhood home, it’s all of these remnants of our past and present identities coexisting that makes me feel welcome and gives me a sense of belonging.

Herein lies the more spiritual side to homemaking- something that even the prettiest pictures in design magazine and blogs could never fabricate. In Eternal Echoes John O’Donohue writes: “The human heart longs to dwell…From ancient times, we have carved out dwelling places on the Earth. Against the raw spread of Nature, the dwelling always takes on a particular intensity. It is a nest of warmth and intimacy. Over years and generations, a large aura of soul seeps into a dwelling and converts it in some way into a temple of presence. We leave our presence on whatever we touch and wherever we dwell. This presence can never be subsequently revoked or wiped away; the aura endures.”

From this I finally understand that a home that feels comfortable and “lived in” doesn’t just happen overnight. It will grow as our lives together unfold within our home. There’s a certain amount of trust involved with just starting out. While everything may not always be as beautiful as I want it to be, I know that with every day I am finally constructing a home. As my husband and I start culling the things we no longer need and begin making more deliberate choices, I can start to see a nascent version of what that might eventually look like … but it’s what it will feel like that truly excites me.  My affinity for “forest-y looking” color palates, photos of our dog, all of his tech-y gadgets… all these things come together to create the body of our home but it’s the memories we will make there that will become its soul.