This house never felt like home. Does yours? Normal?
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Anonymous
| I get you OP. I’ve lived quite a few places and some just have a different feel than others. I remember crying hysterically when we started getting offers for our last house. There was SO much wrong with it - located on a busy street, small bedrooms, tiny kitchen - but it was home. |
Anonymous
I’m the PP who strongly prefers old houses. I really love sarah susanka’s book, The Not So Big House, which really makes you think about how you use your house and what you need your home to do for you. It was also really great at explaining how the blueprints/architectural design could drastically change your lived experience in your home. I wouldn’t say that it was explicitly geared towards what makes a house feel like a home per se, but it might trigger some ideas for you about how you want to live in your home. It really helped us understand what we needed in a house when we were househunting. Our house is by no means perfect (because it’s a 100 yr old bungalow that only just got a/c and an upgrade from oil heat this summer, and there are still 150k worth of projects to tackle here), but our place has been perfect for us, imperfections and all. The other thing that I would do is examine within yourself how you want to feel in your home, and what makes a home feel homey to you. If you’ve lived in places that feel homey to you and others that haven’t, what is the difference between those places? What feels homey is highly individualized, and you’re the only person who can answer what feels homey to you. |
Anonymous
| I like the home, but dislike the unfriendly neighborhood. It’s in a desirable zip code. |
Anonymous
When looking at houses, look at ALOT of them. Like, tons. Don’t go by pictures - visit and really envision your life in the house. You’ll have different furniture and art, and can paint whatever colors you want. But try to see your life in the house. Do you like entertaining? Do you want a dining room big enough for dinner parties? What do you do in the kitchen? How close together do you want certain rooms? Then when you move in, play with multiple layouts for furniture in each room. You’ll set it up initially, let it sit for a few weeks. Then in the room you don’t like the most, change it up (for me, I painted the room I hated most first and now I love that room!). Do the same with other rooms. Reorganize as many times as you need to until it works for you. |
Anonymous
+1 The the house that is “home” to me is the one I lived to when I was 12 and where my parents still live. I get the very best feeling there. |
Anonymous
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I “get” what you mean, op.
I don’t believe that you can make a house a home, if you could, real estate wouldn’t be a section on this board. It wouldn’t be something anybody fought over, why would you when you could just buy more/different s*** at Target or wherever. Anybody who disagrees either lives where they want, or knows they can move without a friend or family member tsk-tsking about how you “just bought it” “need to give it some time” “be grateful for what you have” “buy more/different s*** to decorate” or “make some memories”. In each house I’ve lived in, I’ve made memories, only a couple of those houses including my current one feel like home. I had 2 children in 2 of our previous houses, neither of those houses felt like home, though of course I am glad I have my kids. It’s simply that the houses in question never and didn’t feel like home. My advice is that you think about what you do want. I am assuming that you aren’t someone who thinks “my only home is the one I grew up in”.. it’s fine to want the features you had growing up, it’s not fine to view nothing else as ever being nice/good/appropriate. Don’t discount natural light, seasonal affective disorder is very real. Don’t discount how you feel in a given space. My parents bought a house with very poor lighting. They literally took out a wall and put windows in to increase the light. It never quite worked for reasons I don’t understand. I do remember there were times when I felt like I was swimming through glue, and if it helps anybody, I am totally blind. Logically, natural light shouldn’t matter to me. I can’t tell if the sun is shining unless I feel it, as in feel the warmth. I can’t tell if the light is on in a given room. I’ve vacuumed, changed diapers, cooked, only to have my husband or one of my kids walk in, and then me hear the flick of the light switch turning on. I don’t care about indoor lighting, but I do seem impacted by natural light, my preschooler told me once “You are like a plant Mommy, you need the sun just like they do” Those who say “just put in more lamps” if that’s what works for you, fine. You can buy all the lamps you want. If it doesn’t, and OP knows herself, then she’s just wasting money on lamps. My parents also spent a lot of money on what they thought would be better light bulbs. That didn’t work either. Finally, don’t compromise on a house.. ever. Men can pretty much live anywhere, and if they don’t like their house, they either sell it, or they “live” at work, the gym, a bar, or wherever they do a hobby. Men tend to not be home as much as women especially if kids are involved. For example I’m already planning to be home with a kid after her second covid vaccine the middle of next week. My husband isn’t. He’s going to work. This is fine with me, my point is that I’ll have a yucky feeling kid on my hands who is too young to be left alone and who won’t want to go anyplace should I decide “I hate this house, I need to get out for a bit”. Men tend to not have to think about these issues. I’ve never heard a man say “I sure do miss that house” they may say “If we’d stayed, we’d be a lot richer then we are now” or “Compared to what we bought, that house I thought we couldn’t afford would have been the better option” but never “I miss”. Do a deep dive into what you do want. If you have kids, plan for long term, you want a place that you will enjoy when they are high schoolers. Don’t even look at a 2 bedroom house if you want a 4 bedroom house. If you want a house with an old fashioned attic, realize that you’ll probably need to look at and like much older homes. Likewise, don’t expect an older home to have a dry basement, dry basements are relatively new as in the past 80 years or so.. and even that isn’t a guarantee. Talk to people you meet in and around the surrounding area. People who like where they live will be happy to tell you about where you can get a coffee, or about a nice park or about things they like. I have literally sat in the car arms crossed refusing to look at a house when a neighbor wouldn’t speak to me. It torked off my husband and our agent, though my husband realized later I was right. My logic is that while nobody owes me a conversation, my money is mine to spend where I like, and I don’t like people who for whatever reason don’t care enough about where they live to try and engage. Don’t ask about a specific house, be real careful asking where their kids go to school, you don’t want to seem creepy, but you can always say “we’re planning on a baby, what do you think of the schools”. but do ask about the neighborhood, “Hey, I’m hungry, where might I get a nice taco” “my kids play soccer, is there anything like that around here?” that sort of thing. The point is to get a feel for how you will like a neighborhood and how or if you will relate to your neighbors. Listen for what they say but also how they say it. As you’re finding out, it’s very difficult to roll things back once you buy. Some of the posts on this thread have already made you feel bad about selling property that you are legally allowed to sell. Think about that for a minute. Why would anybody on this board care what you do with your property. Good luck, op. Do make sure that you are mentally healthy. You’ll never get your grandma’s house on a summer day no matter how much you miss Grandma. All houses need to be maintained, we are replacing a door on ours and we had to replace the furnace this spring, yes this spring. We also got a whole house humidifier and hooked it up to 240 circuit so it would produce more steam. Do be clear in what you want, open kitchen, stick to it. Lots of light, stick to it. Quiet street, stick with it. A backyard so you can garden or read, stick with it. Some things are plug and play, though a surprising amount isn’t. As a final thought I do wish women would learn not to compromise on houses with their husbands, and I love my husband dearly. Real estate agents know they‘re selling to women more then men. If I ran the world, I’d teach girls how to shop for housing that they will want to live in once they have children.. not babies, children. It’s something we don’t talk much about in our society. |
Anonymous
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I grew up poor. Then my dad won some money (lottery) and we moved to a huge house. It was perpetually empty. And I hated it.
It never felt as homey as our old two bedroom apartment filled with junk. As a became an adult I was very reticent about ever buying more home than we can handle. I really didn’t want to spend my days cleaning or gardening- I wanted to read in my chair and dream. We had kids- we moved to a slightly larger home. Then both of us started to work from home with our young children and it was like- let’s get a bigger home. Fast forward a couple of years later- we love our new huge home but it doesn’t feel like me. It’s definitely home, but it’s a little too large, a little too empty. My kids still share a room and I can tell they aren’t eager to split up. My oldest is now 13. He still doesn’t want to have his own room. We all just want a little more closeness. The one thing I have done to sort of help me out with this feeling is to make nooks where I kinda make it a little more cozy. I also have Christmas lights up in certain areas all year round. I put up little altars of memories where I can. OP- I hope this helps. You’re not alone in this problem. We don’t have any regrets really but I totally get it. |
Anonymous
| I love the inside of my 100 year old house but once I step outside I feel out of place. I grew up on a lake and I always find myself wishing for water. The landscape will never be home. |
Anonymous
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I think our house feels like a home and I feel happy to be there. Each room works for us. I can go into any room and spend time there. We often sit in the backyard and watch the kids play for hours. Or we sit on the front porch and they ride their bikes and play bubble and chalk. The dining room has space.for Christmas breakfast and the office has a play corner for the baby and the kitchen has room for art projects to be displayed.
For me the space working for our lives and our needs is the most important. I will never have a chef's kitchen in this house and the third bedroom is small and the list of projects is endless but the functionality of the space is what matters and makes this feel like home. So if you are house hunting, really imagine how you would set up and use each room. If the room is not right, the house will not be your home |
Anonymous
+1000 I snipped it for emphasis. It’s not about the dream wedding as much as the home you end up with. I posted right after you, and I will say the current home we have checked off all of the boxes. But it still needs tweaking. And it still doesn’t feel as homey as our old townhome. |
Anonymous
This. So this. |
Anonymous
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13:58, thank you for that post.
I’m in a unique situation where my husband picked this house and he loves this house. He’s crushed to move. But I’m the one home all day. This house is so difficult for me. He’s insistent that every house will have issues and I’ll never be satisfied. I hope that’s not true. |
Anonymous
You're the one with the house in the city, and a husband who is gone all day while you're juggling the kids and their stuff in your teeny house, right? You should tell him that yes, every house will have issues, but there are some issues you can live with and some you can't. This house has issues you can't live with. |
Anonymous
| I've owned several houses. They have never felt like "home." However, two apartments I had did. I will rent again when my kids grow up. I don't like owning. |
Anonymous
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I am in the same boat. I've been living in this house for 5 years now and it's just not "home" to me. I think it's because it's the drastic opposite of the kind of place I grew up in - modern and open instead of warm and cozy. Also it's a split-level and there's no real "upstairs." For some reason not sleeping upstairs weirds me out.
Just the other day I noticed that in all of my dreams, whenever I'm at "home," it's my childhood home but with my current wife, pets, furniture, etc. Clearly my subconscious isn't any happier with my house than I am. |