Making A House A Home

It's now been four days since Sandy left. I still am cleaning up. The house was a bit of a mess. Not like having terrible renters who trash the property, but the normal "moving out mayhem" that goes with sorting, packing and tossing out the old stuff you aren't going to take with you. Years of dust, grime and "where did that come from???". Yeah, just like that.

Now I face a challenge -- how do I turn this from what was "our house" into "my home".  That's not as easy as it might sound.

As I mentioned, I've been cleaning a lot. The messes have been almost everywhere I turn. And then there's the broken stuff. For example:

"You might want to have someone come check the fridge. It's now leaking into the freezer and freezing on the bottom, it's freezing the meat drawer in the refrigerator side and it's leaving a coat of frost in the freezer."

Hmmmm. Perfect timing on letting me know that something was up. Would have been nice to get some advance notice, but so it goes. I handled it anyway.

My first task was to pull down all the empty hooks from the wall where her artwork hung that she took. She left the hooks there. Apparently, I might want to replace those items immediately. Nope, not so much. Went through and cleared the walls. Next, pull down the remaining pictures and junk that I didn't want any more on the walls. Needless to say, I have a lot of wall space now! :-) Not a lot survived that purging.

There are many more flat spots now too. Counter space, nooks and crannies. Much of it all opened up. I don't plan on just getting more "stuff"... I don't think that will make it more "homey" than just leaving it the way that it is. I am now considering the question "what makes a house a home?". I never really thought about that before now. Maybe spending some time considering this will be good... maybe I am just wasting my time. I now have time to myself to consider such questions.

The long term prospects for the house are an open ended question anyway. Given the change, I may decide to relocate somewhere in the spring and put the house up for a long term lease. I don't know. Things are all up in the air. For the time being, I know that I am going to try to keep getting rid of stuff and simplifying my life. Less stuff == more agility. I can use that right now.

Maybe I'll repaint. Maybe I'll add the surround sound speakers I never got around to putting in. There are a lot of open questions and things I could do. How much I end up doing (and really can afford to do) is another question entirely. One thing is for sure. I want to enjoy my home. I want to keep it the way I want to keep it. If there's anything I don't like about it from here, it's my choice to either do something about it or not. No one to complain about. It'll all be on me.

That's both the good news and the bad news. We'll see how having a home and bachelor life mix. This ought to be interesting.