When Does a House Become a Home?
Is it when the construction is finished, or something much deeper?
On a recent road trip back from Minnesota, to collect the last of our belongings stored there, the drive felt like a returning to home, in spite of the fact that we were not yet living in our new house. The house is not yet finished, but we had already begun moving stuff into it.
Moving our memories into the house helped to make the space feel like a home. But, the fact of the matter is that it began feeling like home long before that. It really began feeling like home early this spring, when the foundation of the house was not even finished. Sitting around a camp fire nestled into a ridge of trees that run from the road down to the home site, feeling the tranquility of the surrounding forest, is when the place began feeling like home.
As the house has gotten more finished, as we have hosted friends who have come to visit, as we have begun connecting to the amazing people here in our new community, as we have begun planting raspberries, blueberries, apples, peaches and more, it has begun feeling more and more like our home, which feels really good following a year and a half of living as nomads, after selling our house of 31 years in Minnesota, as this new one was built. It has been a wild and crazy adventure that has required us to live as minimalists. It has been a wonderful learning experience, giving us a trove of lessons we will take into the new life we are creating here. We will use them to expand our sustainable, environmentally-friendly lifestyle in the middle of a stunning maple forest.
Tonight should be the first night we get to actually sleep in our new house. Yet even with much work ahead to retrieve more belongings from storage here in Vermont, unpack, put up art work and really settle in, it already feels like home.