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Honored Contributor
Posts: 9,861
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Do you take your home for granted?

It occurred to me last night, while watching a home improvement show, that I am guilty of taking my home for granted.

 

I live in a two-bedroom town home.  It would be just the right size for DH and me, but for reasons beyond our control, our grown son is living with us.  This means we have no private space except for the bedroom - no den, no office and very little storage.  

 

We gave the kitchen a facelift this year, and made some other improvements.  My home is lovely.  Everyone who visits says they love it and could just move right in, it's so pretty and homey.

 

The problem is that I don't notice the good things about it nearly enough. I tend to focus on the lack of space, the clutter DH and DS leave laying around, the lack of privacy... the fact that it is not anything like the home I imagined myself living in at this time in my life.

 

Because of this, I think I'm going to start a House Gratitude Journal with photos.  I'm going to remind myself how blessed I am to have a nice home and food to eat and a family to love.

 

I thought it might be nice to start a house gratitude thread.  Tell us what you really appreciate about your home. You can add photos, or not.

 

~ house cat ~
Valued Contributor
Posts: 874
Registered: ‎03-13-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

Housecat, I do agree. 

Did you ever notice most of these shows the first thing they do is clean up the clutter!  Oh My!  Whenever I start to get discouraged I take a walk through and spend an hour or two organizing.  It makes such a big difference.  I tend to get discorganized gradually, working on a project you let something slide and suddenly there is disarray. 

 

The last few weeks I have taken the time to lightly sand and put a new finish on the bedroom set in the guest room.  It was 40 years old and now looks like new.  Really didn't take that long.  If only I could get my dear husband to shed magazines.  He is interested in so many things and always thinks he will need the info at a later date.  It takes me a day to go through his items, I then sort the by publication and date, anything older than a year gets put into file boxes and I put the current year on the bookshelf next to his chair.

 

It seems like you are always doing the same things but that's what it takes.

 

We also make a list of what we would do to the house to sell it and then work on it. In the end there really aren't  many things but we appreciate what we have more.

 

 

 

 

Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,875
Registered: ‎04-27-2015

Re: Do you take your home for granted?


@house_cat wrote:

It occurred to me last night, while watching a home improvement show, that I am guilty of taking my home for granted.

 

I live in a two-bedroom town home.  It would be just the right size for DH and me, but for reasons beyond our control, our grown son is living with us.  This means we have no private space except for the bedroom - no den, no office and very little storage.  

 

We gave the kitchen a facelift this year, and made some other improvements.  My home is lovely.  Everyone who visits says they love it and could just move right in, it's so pretty and homey.

 

The problem is that I don't notice the good things about it nearly enough. I tend to focus on the lack of space, the clutter DH and DS leave laying around, the lack of privacy... the fact that it is not anything like the home I imagined myself living in at this time in my life.

 

Because of this, I think I'm going to start a House Gratitude Journal with photos.  I'm going to remind myself how blessed I am to have a nice home and food to eat and a family to love.

 

I thought it might be nice to start a house gratitude thread.  Tell us what you really appreciate about your home. You can add photos, or not.

 


Great idea, I would post with photos.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,567
Registered: ‎03-14-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

@house_cat  You are blessed to have children...I couldn't have any...

I think another thing that might help is maybe reducing the clutter (I don't know how much you have) and that might relieve stress and your focus to be on all the lovely things ou have to look at. 

I know for me, when I am in 'gardening mode' in early-mid Spring, I have difficulty keeping up with clutter/inside home chores, so when I do sit down to relax and enjoy our home, I tend to focus on what isn't done, put away or accomplished.

When I am caught up, and most everything is in it's place (as a comfortable 'lived in space'), I can enjoy our surroundings in peace. My mind can also relax.

There are times I do wish we had a bigger home for...a spa tub for the bathroom, a bit more counter space and cabinets in the kitchen, and to be able to uproot the entire home and plop it down on 20 acres away from our annoying neighbors...

Surrounding yourself with things I love to look at certainly helps me (I don't know how often you change your decor)...

Otherwise, I am happy/content in our little home Smiley Very Happy

Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,204
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

[ Edited ]

house cat, your life sounds so familiar. DH and I moved into a smaller place thinking it was just us when 31yo son moved in.  Suddenly I am moving stuff to fit him and his stuff in.  I've decided a lot of decor needs to be donate and I really need to cutback on my crafting.  When DH and I want to talk we go to coffee shop near house.  And yes, DH and DS don't do much around the house.  They think they are doing so much when their dishes go to the kitchen.

Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,985
Registered: ‎03-19-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

I think a lot of people probably share your sentiment.  That is why there is so many of these home improvement shows.  We are always striving for something we think we need or lack when decluttering, and reorganization could improve the situation.

 

What I appreciate about my home is the privacy on our wooded property.  I love all the floor to ceiling windows in our living room.  My first floor laundry is something I will never live without again.  The double closets in the bedrooms.  My tiny kitchen that gives me one step access to everything.   

 

Are there things I would change or that don't work well in this house, of course, but I still love it as much as I did when we built it.

Respected Contributor
Posts: 2,112
Registered: ‎12-08-2014

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

    Yes, I do appreciate and love our home.  Even though our current garden style condo won't be our home for very long.  We're selling and buying a larger condo in the same development.  To be honest, that was all my husband's idea.  I was fine where we are now but he wants a bigger condo and he wants to be on the other side of our complex.  It's more "park like"; there are more trees and shrubs and flowering plants.  It's also quieter because it's away from visitor parking.   I'm sure I'll love the new place as much or more than I love where we've been for 7 years.  Decorating will be fun.  There's a waiting list of people for our condo complex, a nice retired couple looked at it Sunday and they are coming by tonight to look at it again. Hopefully, they'll make an offer.  I admit, owning two condos and having so much of our money tied up in a second condo makes me very nervous and not very happy.    Since mortages aren't a factor for them or for us; if they decide to buy our place (fingers crossed); both closings should happen very quickly.    We could be in our new place by Halloween.  Hubby insists that he'll do all the packing and unpacking and with help from my daughters and sil.  I cannot even face the thought of all that work and disruption.  But I will really, really enjoy putting out new place together.  I love decorating and in the new place, I will have a real kitchen and much more space and more windows.     

Honored Contributor
Posts: 9,861
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

Okay, I have only a couple of minutes, so I'll start us off thinking positively!

Ready?!

 

I bought this wonderful chair this past spring. It cost more than was reasonable, but I love, love, LOVE it!

big chair.jpg

and I bought this unit from Ikea to give me more workspace in my small kitchen. It covers part of the window, but the space was otherwise useless. It has lots of storage and I'm really happy I added it.

kitchen butcher block.jpg

~ house cat ~
Honored Contributor
Posts: 15,345
Registered: ‎05-01-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

house cat, love your chair and kitchen cabinet. I need a comfortable chair for reading, have to start looking around. The kitchen cabinet was a great idea. Love to see and hear other people's ideas.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 20,019
Registered: ‎08-08-2010

Re: Do you take your home for granted?

Boy I can fall into this trap rather easily myself. I am at home all day, every day. That was great when my son was young, as I could be with him, taking him wherever he needed to be, volunteering at school, doing all kinds of kid based projects, baking etc. I was too busy and too broke to really focus on what I found lacking in my home.

 

Fast forward to a college kid who still lives here but is almost never around, a husband on second shift, and I find myself with a ton of time on my hands to really see all things in my home that I don't like.

 

I see the outdated and worn out kitchen, rooms that need a fresh coat of paint, etc. and tend to over focus on those things. Then there is the clutter. It isn't horrible in my home, but I seem to be always putting things up, rearranging decor and picking up after two guys (who really aren't that horribly messy because they aren't here much) and I tend to focus on a lot of the negative things.

 

In fact, we have done a lot to the house and property over 21 years, and it is so much nicer than when we bought it, but like all homes, they need constant work and attention and updating.

 

I don't watch a lot (any, really) of the HGTV type of programming, but I think between that and magazines ( and the occasional scare from watching Hoarders) we are expecting homes to be pristine, perfect, and streamlined 24/7. But that just isn't reality. 

 

I am grateful for what we have, overall, I love the home I've created, but am constantly wanting to continue the updating/upgrading. It does get hard to find a balance sometimes. This is not the style/era of house I ever thought I'd be living in at this point in my life either, but that ship has sailed!