No Place Like Home

I've just had a blinding revelation after talking to a couple of friends about returning to my new house from holiday. I now realise why it simply doesn't feel like home.

A home is lots of different things. It's a refuge & a sanctuary from the world outside. A place to retreat to when life gets a bit tough. A comfortable place full of your own "stuff" which reflects who you are & what is important to you. A place filled with reminders of people & a life past. A place where you can be yourself & shed the image you present to the world. A place where you can relax & entertain friends & family. A very important place to your sense of self & well being.

For me, up to 2009, it was a place had always I shared with people I liked or loved. The whole of my life up to that point was spent living with someone else - parents, friends, a husband, a child, (now very much an independent adult). Adjusting to a solitary life has been a very mixed journey, not all bad & in some ways liberating.

This is the first house I have been totally responsible for. Choosing it, furnishing it, deciding exactly what goes where. At the moment it is in a state of mild chaos. It isn't as clean or organised as I would like & feel more comfortable with. There are lots of jobs outstanding because I'm waiting for work to be done & furniture to be delivered. It doesn't seem worth blitzing the cleaning until that is all completed.

The move here has been fraught with problems, some of which are ongoing & draining. Just coping with the million & one things you have to do when you move has taxed my brain & my energy to their limits, without the additional problems I have had - & some I still have. All of this impacts on how I feel about my house & explains why it doesn't, as yet, seem like a home.

Now I understand the underlying problem I can do something about it. I've set myself a goal to have the furniture in place, the boxes emptied & the cupboards filled with everything in it's proper place by the end of November. Also I want to have the electrics & the central heating sorted by then & the whole house deep cleaned. That gives me December to do the nice things like hanging pictures & showing off ornaments. The re-decorating can wait till next year.

So, with any luck, by Christmas it will finally feel like a home.