What makes a home, a home?
Home can be anywhere and everywhere. Home can be a person, a feeling, a place.
I have this idea of my dream home. It’s a simple white cottage within a walled squared garden, complete with manicured grass and a paved driveway to one side leading to a small garage. The cottage itself isn’t big, just big enough for the three of us, and before you reach the simple yet welcoming front door, you are greeted by a veranda which wraps around the front half of the cottage, housing a couple of comfy chairs where you can sit peacefully surrounded by terracotta plant pots overflowing with vibrant red flowers. Maybe there is a cute wreath on the door, a slim letterbox, a brass knocker to match. Inside, the cottage is minimalist yet cosy, filled with all of my favourite things: a sofa you can sink into, a bed you struggle to get out of, a bookshelf full to the brim, a desk by the window. A sanctuary. A place I can call my own. A place where I can close the door on the madness of the outside world, light a candle, relax.
I suppose I had a home like that once. It wasn’t white, it didn’t have a veranda, but it had a garden and a driveway and a garage; it was our safe haven filled with all of our things. But we gave it up, replacing it with a temporary home on wheels, whilst we search for a new place we might want to call home. The house we once owned however didn’t feel like a home. It felt like a noose, holding me back from life, preventing me from being able to live the life I wanted to live. I felt under pressure. Pressure to turn that house into a home. Pressure to fill it with nice things, to decorate accordingly, to renovate, to spend my hard-earned money. I enjoyed it in the beginning: the thrill of all of those years of saving finally coming to fruition, the gratitude of being able to buy our first house on the south coast of England, the excitement of decorating and furnishing a place we could finally call our own. At that point in my life I was on the daily grind, and, much like buying material possessions to wear or expensive creams to slather my face in, filling my house with nice things gave me justification. It allowed me to justify my stressful, busy job as, at the end of a hard day, I had a beautiful space which I had created to unwind in.
I find myself constantly torn. I enjoy nice things. I always have and I probably always will. But I began to realise that having nice things is not the be all and end all. And if the only way I could have those nice things was from working a nine ‘til five and giving up the majority of my time to only be surrounded by stuff as opposed to memories, there was suddenly a choice to be made. So, the house was sold, our possessions sold with it, and we moved into our camper van where the things we own are minimised and travel along with us. It’s a simpler life and one filled with experiences as opposed to those nice things.
I sometimes wonder how much of an impact our earlier years has on a concept such as a home. I didn’t live in one home growing up and I’ve never experienced going home as an adult to the familiar smells and sounds of the house I grew up in. A product of divorce, I had many homes filled with different people. And I will admit that none of the homes I have lived in over the course of my life holds a special place in my heart. I could say the first house I ever knew or I could say the first house I bought with my husband, but I would be lying. I don’t get attached to bricks and mortar; I rarely get sentimental. When Sean and I left our home on the south coast to move in with his mum before we embarked on travelling Europe, I found myself sat in my mother-in-laws kitchen awash with a feeling of relief, of freedom, of knowing we had absolutely made the right decision.
Is home ownership all it’s cracked up to be?
Society puts too much pressure on home ownership. It is drilled into us that we have to own a home and pay the mortgage so by the time we are sixty we are set for a comfortable retirement. I refuse to believe that this is the only way. I refuse to believe that we have to work every day of our lives to save up for this future state which may or may not happen. But we all go along with it because you want to prove you can, to prove your worth as a grown up making your own way in this world. And we may set ourselves the goal of owning a home before we are thirty because we all know that life ends at thirty. The narrative surely needs to change.
The prospect of owning a home now for many is unobtainable, a milestone to only be dreamed of. Coupled with that is the stigma around renting, that it is dead money, that there is no better investment than bricks and mortar. It’s easy for the parents of millennials to spin this tale; they grew up in an age where house prices were low in comparison to their wages. It was a simpler time. People need to realise that owning a home isn’t the right option for everybody and renters should not be looked down upon as paupers. Renting can be a flexible, commitment free option. Of course the flip side is that it’s not your own and you are ultimately paying someone else’s mortgage. But there really is no right or wrong. There are upsides and downsides to each and everyone needs to find the right path for them.
For me, being mortgage free is the dream but in the UK, unless you are lucky enough to be extremely wealthy, win the lottery or get left a lump sum of inheritence from some long lost aunt, the prospect is unimaginable. I can only imagine the cost of our mortgage if we were still in the house today. We fixed in for three years with an interest rate less than 2%, our mortgage costing the same as our current monthly travel budget. A rate increase to 5% or more would have increased that figure dramatically. Then add on top of that the rising cost of heating and food, along with the upcoming rise in council tax, and a healthy disposable income becomes a thing of the past. Sean and I joke that we got out at the right time but it’s really not a joke. With the state of the UK right now, I’m glad we aren’t a part of it. We are free.
Our future home …
For me a home doesn’t have to have a shiny front door, a fancy kitchen, painted walls or carpeted floors. Home can be anywhere and everywhere. Home can be a person, a feeling, a place. I remember when we moved from Yorkshire to Brighton in 2016 and I had this surreal feeling of returning home for the first time. Whenever we would leave and come back, for a holiday or for a trip up north, I would return with a feeling of familiarity, of feeling like I was coming home. But the ‘home’ wasn’t necessarily the flat in Hove we lived in or the house we eventually owned: it was the place. We then made the decision to leave that place but it will always remain special to me. And who knows, maybe we will return one day.
It's true what they say about wanting what you can’t, or don’t, have. Right now, I don’t have stability or security so I could hazard a guess that’s the reason why I’m suddenly dreaming of my perfect home. Or perhaps I have seen one too many stunningly white cottages in Andalucía. Or perhaps in removing myself from my old situation, it has opened my eyes and mind to what I do want, to the kind of home I want to create in the future. At least, that’s the reason I’m choosing to believe.
And whilst I’m enjoying taking a break from the commitment and the ties, I know one day I will want to plant my roots and own a home again but I will want it to look a little different to the situation I have recently left behind. I want a home far away from the ties of a mortgage or the reliance of a nine ‘til five, a home that I don’t feel the pressure to decorate to a certain standard or to feel like I have to keep up with the Jones’, whoever they may be! Most of all, I want a home that will enable me to live a more flexible and varied lifestyle, I want a home that will enable us to create the life we want to create, ultimately allowing us to live our lives the way we want to live.
Tell me, what do you think of when you think of home?
Much love always xxx
Hi Lyndsay, I think it's interesting timing that we both wrote about home on the same day. I agree with you, that much of our society pegs "success" around owning a home. I believe home is where we feel safe, where we feel loved, where we keep and hold our values. It doesn't have to be a physical place, although we are fortunate to have a roof over our heads (you a van room, mine a traditional home roof). It's funny because I have lived in my home for 10 years and our house remodel is beautiful but I am still drawn to the idea of traveling across the country in a van like you! Home is also a place in which we can dream. :)