Home

“A home is for functionality. Not a show place.” 

I read these words today and they resonated with me. Now, I would never say my home is a show place. It’s just a simple, little, very old house. It has rooms and they all have four walls – no open floor plan here. It has cracked plaster and worn floors. It’s been added onto and I have to be honest, the addition was not done well. The original part of the house, the over 100 year old part, is built to last. The addition, which was put on long before we bought it, was not. The floorplan is wonky. When we had it appraised years ago, the appraiser said the floorplan was odd but works. When we bought this place, 31 years ago, I didn’t really want it. The only positive for me was it was in the country. And it wasn’t going to be our forever home. And yet, 31 years later, here we are. And this is home. I’ve grown to love this little house.

I’ve raised four kids in this little three bedroom/one bathroom house. We’ve eaten countless meals and played countless games at the dining room table. We’ve spent countless hours sitting in the living room talking and just being. I’d hate to guess how much time I’ve spent in the kitchen cooking and doing dishes. When you live in a little house with that many people, if you’re truly living, you really can’t have a showplace in the sense that you have a beautiful, spotless home with everything perfectly in place. Just the opposite. Even when you’ve spent hours cleaning and picking up, there will still be a mound of shoes at the backdoor, eggs in a basket on the kitchen counter, piles of books and toys scattered here and there, a project started and not yet finished on the dining room table. And that is how it should be. A comfortable place to just be. To live. To function.

We used to entertain here quite a bit. When the older kids were younger and our group of friends also had kids, we would have people out. The kids would play together in the bedrooms and the adults would play games and cards at the dining room table. We had lots of fun. That slowly changed over the years. As the kids got older and involved in extracurricular things, our time was spent with our friends at these functions. Then the kids grew up and moved out. Now entertaining means the kids come over to visit. And bring the grandkids. And this little house pretty much stays the same. We’ve done some improvements here and there and there’s many more that need to be done. But for the most part, it’s stayed the same. It’s home. It’s lived in and loved. It functions. Not as a showplace but as a home. And that makes me happy.