What makes your house a home?

Meagan30479385

I only see my car as a form of transport. A means of getting from A to B safety and on time. Sure I have my music and sing loudly while in traffic but I've never considered my car anything but a means of transport. My house however is another story.

My house is a kind of a shrine to my experiences over my lifetime. There's a photograph I took when I was 18 and leaving home to live in dorms while at uni. The picture shows dusk forever falling over the home where I grew up. I love seeing the pictures of my time at the beach with my kids. My favourite are the typographical posters of the holiday places I've visited in my bedroom. In my living room are the nic knacks I collected from my time at the dorms during uni, the first house I rented as a single person, the photos of my wedding. I considered each of those places my home at one time or another, whether it was for months or years. It's also important for me to display the pictures of friends and family, favourite music or books, all of which are also meaningful, and represent to me why home is so important.

I see my home as part of my self-definition, which is why I like to do things like decorate my house, take care of it, nurture it when it needs repairing. I think I value my home so much because it represents stability for me, a place I can go, get in my pj's, watch some Netflix with my family and feel completely and utterly not judged at all.

What makes my home is also an accumulation of my lifetime. Not just possession but memories. I can't possibly live everywhere I once labeled home, but I can frame these places on my walls. My pictures can serve as a reminder of the more adventurous person I was in Uni, the more carefree person I was when I first started working, the home I brought my first baby home to and the memories we created. Home doesn't have to be a conventional four walls, but to me is an accumulation of where I've come and where I am now. The place I can be myself, the completely relaxed person who can sit in their chair in their reading nook and not have to worry about the person I need to project. My house is where I feel most able to be myself. Not the corporate person I present at work, professional to staff, friendly to work colleagues. Not even when I play sport or go to the gym and allow myself to be less guarded, even with friends having a coffee who I've know forever. So home to me is not just the physical four walls, but the memories, the photos and knick knacks, my beautiful little family, my garden, the smell of baking cupcakes on a Saturday, the pictures of times past and the safety I feel