For most of us, it should be relatively simple to count up all the addresses you've had during your life. But a home is more than a place to sleep and get your mail sent to, as all of us at Apartment Therapy well know.
The term "home" refers to a feeling just as much as a place, and (in my experience, anyway) it doesn't include dorm rooms, crappy first apartments and the four months you spent living with your partner's parents. My personal house-to-home ratio is 1:3 — I've called nine different addresses home during my time on planet Earth, but, on reflection, I've only had a real attachment to three of them.
Obviously, the home I grew up in counts; my parents still live there and I return whenever humanly possible. The list also includes the Toronto apartment I shared with my best friend during university, which we treated like a palace (and, on mutual reflection once we'd graduated and each moved to über-expensive cities, was in fact pretty darn palatial).
So if only some houses are homes, how do you differentiate? This sort of topic is our bread-and-butter around here, and we've covered topics like Essentials for Every Home and Free Ways to Make Your House a Home in depth. For me, there are three simple things which differentiate between a home and any ol' address:
- Responsibility and care. A true home is one you feel at least some measure of responsibility for. You clean it, decorate it, and fret when things fall into disrepair. Even if these things aren't entirely your problem (I doubt I was concerned with the workings of my furnace at age eight, for instance), they impact on the way you experience the space. Quite simply, you care.
- Your stuff around you. I freely admit it: I like my stuff. I like my artwork, my bedding, my furniture and my pots and pans. While the belongings of roommates or family might be serviceable and just as nice, there's something comforting about using the things that you've personally collected over the years. Anything else is second best.
- Feels permanent (or at least, not transient). Some people are better at this than others, but for me it's difficult to feel at home in a place that comes with an expiration date. While few spaces are actually "forever homes" in the truest sense of the term, there needs to be some sense of permanence to a living situation for us to really relax into it. Otherwise, it's far too easy to disregard numbers 1 and 2 on the list; after all, why repaint that room or unpack all your fancy china if you'll be moving on in the near future?
So, what's your house-to-home ratio? What do you feel makes a home, anyway?
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32 years old
14 houses/apartments
7 of them are very significant for me and i'm going to list them out just because it's fun to type them out!
1. westport ct (canterbury close)
2. norfolk ma (stop river road)
3. fredericksburg va (charlotte street)
4. cambridge ma (craigie circle)
5. cambridge ma (market street)
6. sevilla spain (calle cuna)
7. arlington ma (jason court)
Until I was in my mid30s, I had never lived in one place longer than 3 years. Just when my father's career meant the family could stay put, I left home for college. Since then, I've only lived in 2 places.
The first few years in my first house were fine, but when I had been there about 3 years I realized that I had never learned how to get rid of things without moving. I had basically purged stuff, and deep cleaned,redecorated and rearranged by moving house. I had to learn new skills.
Plus, I realized that I was still living 'temporarily' in the house - pictures leaning against the mantel instead of hung etc. It took some effort to slow down and expand into the available time and space.
18 places: suburban ranch home, farm house, college apartment, urban artist loft, old victorians, scary dangerous apartments, pacific northwest wilderness cabin, beach shack in malibu, exclusive hillside neighborhood architect designed house with views. And a number of other apartments too.
Every place is a home to me.
I have lived in 8 apt./houses over the years. I would consider two of those real homes where I really had a deep connection with the house plus one that I've never lived in but visited and that would be my grandparents home. The first home is where I grew up with my parents. The second is where I am currently and where I believe I will be the rest of my life. When I first stepped into my current home I had an overwhelming feeling of HOME. Like, this is where I was always meant to be. All the other houses or apts. were just landing points in my life until I got to my real destination.
About to move to my 23rd home in 24 years. Luckily, it usually only takes a short amount of time for a place to feel like home for me. I frequently slip up and refer to hotel rooms or hostel dorms as "home" when I am traveling.
What is a home? It's wherever I am that I can make mine. It can be a rental car, or a hotel room. There's always books, sometimes music, sometimes a snack or a bottle of water. What makes it home is that I can arrange things for myself. It's a tiny sliver of space thats mine to inhabit, however temporarily. And it's best if my husband is there, too.
If we lost everything in flood fire or natural disaster, and had to start over somewhere else, if I had my husband, my Kindle & my iphone, I would have home.
I've been in 4 places in LA, 1 place in Tokyo and then 6 in NYC.
The last 2 in NYC have been home, but this most recent one is the only one I've owned or lived in alone, so it's is really my first adult home. I'm 39, by the way.
It feels freat to live in an adult home, even if it is far from perfect.
7 homes plus 1 dorm room (definitely wasn't a home). Prior to college though I lived in the same house my entire life and still refer to visiting my parents as "going home".
This is House #15 and Home #3. It feels like home, even though I know we'll have to leave here at some point - we're renting and the owners want to sell. We can't strip off the bottle-green wallpaper or take up the red carpets, so I've had to make my peace with what's here instead of wishing it were different. It's larger than anywhere I've ever lived - so there's space for me and my ex to share the home and the parenting without having to share a bedroom.
What makes this place feel like home? I feel safe here. I have an ugly, comfortable armchair, inherited from the previous tenants and I get to write my morning pages with the doors open to the garden. I may not love the wallpaper, but I get to cook dinner in the kitchen while my son makes Lego models at the table in the same room. So part of it is about the physical structure of the house - it's very family-friendly - but part of it is about not wishing it were mine. I planted bulbs last winter as an act of faith that we'd still be here to enjoy them. If we weren't, the bulbs would still flower. I've finally realised that home-making is about what we do IN the house, rather than what I do (or imagine doing) TO the house.
I'd say two - my childhood home and the house my husband and I bought last year. I'd say I'm still in the process of making our current house a home, but I definitely see progress and welcoming a new addition to our family early next year should help that even more.
My parents bought a new house when I was about to enter my junior year of college (a half mile from the one they had my entire life), but dispite living there for about three months after college I still think of it as their home when I visit, not mine. I've also had a dorm room, two college apartments, and an apartment with my husband, and while all of them felt homey, they still all felt transient.
16 addresses. I would consider 6 of them homes, in that they have warm feelings and a sense of nostalgia attached to them. And except for my first (family home) and most recent (with spouse), the other 4 were places that I lived by myself. Anyplace I ever lived with a roommate just didn't feel like "home".
In 22 years, 17 addresses (on three continents and in seven cities). I've become used to living in a state of semi-permanence, and as much as I'd like to call where I grew up in Singapore "home," I don't think I really know the meaning of the word. The closest thing to it is the house in New Orleans my mom and I moved into post-Katrina. For me, it's sort of a comforting home base to retreat to. Plus, I get to see my mom while I'm there.
I'm hoping the new apartment I just moved into will be homeish, but that will likely last only a year, which is kind of a shame because it's the most beautiful place. But that said, I wouldn't trade the itinerant lifestyle for anything.
I've lived in 21 places, and I'm 28. They're all just houses. I make them feel like home while I'm there, and then do the same with the next one. My memories are all about the people and the events that happened in the house, not the house itself.
I can't remember how many. I went to 14 schools before I graduated high school. It was approximately that many houses. Since then, it's been about another 14, give or take a few. Make it around 30.
My best and favorite house is my grandmother's house where I had a tiny bedroom under the eaves.
14 total and I'm coming up on the big 30 in two weeks. The only homes that ever truly felt like homes were the four I lived in as a child. I still haven't gotten the hang of settling in. And, I too, suffer from the inability to purge without a move. As I near the end of a month and a cross country move to Minnesota I get excited and overwhelmed by all the purging needed.
In the first 29 years, I had 116 different addresses. Growing up with a single mom, we had to move every time the rent went up - which in the 70's and 80's in Australia, was a regular occurrence (still is to a certain extent), and then as an adult, I moved a fair bit, too. The longest I ever stayed anywhere was 1975-78. The shortest was 3 days. The average was around 13 weeks/3 months.
That all changed when I met my husband and we built our first home together - we moved in in December 1999, and we're still here. But now, anywhere I am with him feels like home :)
Age 27
12+ houses
2 homes - one from age 6-10, and one for about a year at age 16. Oddly enough I have lived at our current place for almost 10 years, which breaks all previous records, yet it has never really felt like home.
While I cannot remember how many different addresses I've had in my life, I have finally found an apartment that is decent enough for me to stay indefinitely. I have lived in so many noisy, buggy, cruddy dumps that I cannot even express how relieved I feel to have gotten a reasonably liveable place. It feels like a new lease on life! Sounds corny, but it is already becoming a home instead of just another icky apartment and I am truly savoring it. Home. Such a warming word.
I hit 17 places fifteen years ago (when I was in my early 30s)....bought an apartment in NYC and have been here ever since....as one of the other commenters wrote -- you have to relearn so many skills....it never dawned on me that I might have to repair or replace a major appliance....but also I find I try to keep less and less....I guess I miss that two-to-three year moving purge.
28 years old
7 homes / 7 apartments
Homes listed below
San Antonio, Tx (Meadow Sun) - 4 years
Norman, OK (Iowa St) - 4 years
Wichita, KS (Turquoise) - 2 years
Wichita, KS (Baytree) - 2 years
Coppell, TX (Graywood Ln) - 5 years
Lubbock, TX (Kemper) - 2 years
Houston, TX (Thicket Ln) - 4 years
My entire 18-24 was a series of apartments. If you paid me I couldn't tell you the names or streets of all of those. My husband has only lived in 6 places his whole life - he can't believe that I've never stayed anywhere more than 4-5 years.
I'm almost 50 and I've lived in 32 places since birth! Only 7 of those places I would call home including the rental I live in now. I've owned 3 of the 32 places and I don't consider any of those places homes, even though I lived in one of them for 5 years. The place I live in now is home because I have it exactly the way I want, I love the apartment, the neighborhood and the city. I'm also in a good place in my career and overall I'm happy.
Home is where my pets are.
It's nice to read that other fellow AT posters have had a similar experiences with moving many times. I struggled with that as a child as my parents moved us around a lot and I am determined to stay put as an adult b.c I still wish I had been able to maintain lifelong friends that I see my other friends have. ITA with @CATIAELIZABETH - the people in the homes make it a home more than the house itself. You can love the aesthetics and architecture of a house but without my family in it, I wouldn't feel the same about it.
I thought I moved a lot until I read the prior posts.
I'm 55 and have moved 18 times not including the various dorms and apartments in college.
Every one of them had something special and felt like home. My favorites are a tie between the little craftsman house on the side of a mountain in Ashland, Oregon and my current one, which is in the woods by a little lake in Montgomery, TX.
12 addresses (if you count my college days)
Of those, I'd say 2 felt most like home: the house my family bought when I was 7 and where I lived til college age (and my father's death and my mother's remarriage) and later, my long-time apartment in San Francisco
The East Bay condo that I bought still does not truly feel like home to me, even after 5 years, though that's a combination of the circumstances of my moving (new bldg owners/eviction from apartment); the economy causing me to procrastinate on improvements the condo really needs (hoping to tackle some of those finally this year) and having a ripple effect on decorating; and the lack of what I consider a real neighborhood.
My miscellaneous belongings and my 2 cats do the most to make the place feel almost home-like, but I'm unsure I'll ever feel at home here, and will be very interested to read other readers' responses on what has most contributed to their places feel like home.
I feel like the odd one out here: 28 years old and I've only lived in two places: my parents' home and my current one bedroom apartment. My university was relatively close home and the whole dorm experience isn't a big deal in my country, especially for those of us who live in the capital or around the area, so it didn't make sense to move out as a student when I could commute every day.
26 years old...lived in 8 different homes!
57 years old and I've had 6 different addresses. I can't imagine moving as many times as many of you have. My roots are better developed than my wings...
Home is where my husband and my books/ Kindle are.
Home
BY EDGAR ALBERT GUEST
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,
A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam
Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,
An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.
It don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be,
How much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything.
Home ain’t a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;
Afore it’s home there’s got t’ be a heap o’ livin’ in it;
Within the walls there’s got t’ be some babies born, and then
Right there ye’ve got t’ bring ‘em up t’ women good, an’ men;
And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn’t part
With anything they ever used—they’ve grown into yer heart:
The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore
Ye hoard; an’ if ye could ye’d keep the thumbmarks on the door.
Ye’ve got t’ weep t’ make it home, ye’ve got t’ sit an’ sigh
An’ watch beside a loved one’s bed, an’ know that Death is nigh;
An’ in the stillness o’ the night t’ see Death’s angel come,
An’ close the eyes o’ her that smiled, an’ leave her sweet voice dumb.
Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an’ when yer tears are dried,
Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an’ sanctified;
An’ tuggin’ at ye always are the pleasant memories
O’ her that was an’ is no more—ye can’t escape from these.
Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ play,
An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day;
Even the roses ’round the porch must blossom year by year
Afore they ’come a part o’ ye, suggestin’ someone dear
Who used t’ love ’em long ago, an’ trained ’em jes’ t’ run
The way they do, so’s they would get the early mornin’ sun;
Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ dome:
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.
I'm 52. I've lived in 24 different apartments/houses, not counting dorm rooms or the 5 houses I house-sat in during grad school.
My dad retired from the military when I was 16. By that time, I'd lived in 13 different houses/apartments, on three continents.
I think moving so much, so often, gives you a different definition of "home." Home is where the family is, not so much a particular building. I feel pretty much at home wherever I am living.
house, house, house, apartment, condo, apt, apt, and apt! The 1st felt like home the most.
Being a military family and being in a career that moves...a lot.. let's see...since marriage - we've lived in seven states, four of them twice. Twice overseas. And now back to DC. So at least 14 places we've had all of our stuff completely unpacked and pictures hanging. This doesn't include my own two tours in the military before marriage, the various moves within tours due to space on base becoming available and all the dorms plus growing up in various homes in the US. We're great at moving in a place quickly!
34 places in 60 years. 16 growing up; 18 after marriage (neither were military, it just sort of happened that way).
The best thing about moving a lot: we don't have much junk, since we throw lots of stuff away every time. I'm happy about that every time I look in my empty attic, clean garage, or small storage shed that only has a few boxes of Christmas decorations and a few boxes my children have stored with us.
The worst thing: we'll probably retire with zero equity because of the ups and downs of the housing market.
But every house has been a home.
I'm like PARNASSUS - everywhere I am is home. I don't want to take the time to count how many addresses I've lived at but it's a lot and every one has been home.
Those criteria don't work for me.
Responsibility - I feel responsible for my surroundings even if it's a weekend hotel room. I thought everyone did.
Stuff - again, in a hotel I have my stuff even if it's a small bag. If I have my phone, ID, a corkscrew and a bottle of wine, I feel at home.
Permanent - I never think of any home as permanent. I mean, it's permanent at the time, if that makes sense.
It doesn't matter how many places I've lived in, what matters to me is what I do to make each place a home, also home woult not be home without my boyfriend and our cat.
This blog post comes at a great time in my family's life. Tonight is the very first night that we are all sleeping in our new house. That doesn't sound like a very big deal; I see a lot of commenters are well past a dozen. But for the last sixteen years, my parents have been building their dream home...in the backyard. My dad is a steel contractor, and this house is his pièce de résistance.
While I have only considered two, now three, places home (my first two dorms and study abroad host family's house not counted), it really comes down to quality and not quantity for me. This house is more than just that. It represents two dozen years of planning and a lot of patience on my mom's part. It is the pride in craftmanship. This house and I grew up together, and now that we're officially moved in, it feels like my adolescence is officially over. The house isn't finished -- the master bedroom is still bare studs, the bare bathroom window is an exhibitionist's dream, the living room furniture is still mismatched, the bedrooms room are composed of only a bed and a lamp -- but it already feels lived in and loved on.
So to answer the question: three homes. One doublewide trailer, one historic apartment in Charleston, and now, the dream home.
Ten places in twenty five years. Five in the last seven years with my husband and our children, age six and under. To some extent, they are all home, but some more than others. Even though we only stayed a year or so on average in our last 5 homes, we always hang pictures, I always paint when allowed to, make changes, etc. I always seem to think we will stay longer than we do. I like treating each house like I might stay forever. We have been in our current home two years and have decided to stay for a while longer. It feels good, strange, but good.
Home is anywhere you go, "Ahhh, finally home" when you get there after a long day. In that case, all three addresses and one city count.
First house - birth to age seven.
Second house - age seven to age twenty-five, currently in the process of it going on the market.
Third/in-between house - the room I rented halfway across the planet for five months on a study abroad thing.
In about four months, we'll be getting address number four - a rental for about a year - and then, a year after that, address number five, an apartment in a building that's currently being built.
26 years old.
2 houses growing up in toronto (5 years and 13 years).
1 year in a dorm room in vancouver.
2 apartments in vancouver (3 years and 1 year).
2 apartments in pittsburgh (2 years and 1 year).
i am about to move to central america for the next year. 5 months in honduras, 5 in guatemala, and multiple locations within each country. when i return, i'm planning to move with my partner, but he's in the midst of an upheaval, so we have no idea where that will be yet.
no where is home anymore. my homes in toronto were homes when i grew up, but now they feel very foreign to me. it's my parents' space, not mine. i associate my college years in vancouver with my lifelong friends and the places that first felt like "mine," but most of them are moving away from the city, so i don't even have a reason to visit anymore and i have no where to stay when i do. i've tried to make my pittsburgh apartments feel like homes (and they have), but i don't feel particularly connected to the city itself. i'm not "from" pittsburgh, i just live there.
The one I purchased 3 years ago is home.
This is fascinating -- what a peripatetic culture we live in!
I am 62. I count about 16 homes, not counting dorm rooms (which actually felt quite homey to me). I guess about 5 of these had meaning to me, although all of them served their purpose in my life at the time.
I think maybe where I am now is where I will stay, though -- although my partner keeps talking about "the NEXT house we build" and all the amazing features it will have! (OK, if we come into millions of dollars to build the perfect house on the perfect lot AND furnish it, AND (most importantly) hire somebody else to pack and move, because I am SO done with that!!!)
In 56 years, I've lived in 14 places and I consider just 3 "home". My present apartment is definitely home because I've sacrificed and worked hard to put it together and to furnish and decorate it. It's my "baby" my "accomplishment". I can call the shots as to how much stuff and the quality of stuff I have in it. I can control the enviroment in it. And it feels like "home sweet home". It's not fancy, but I am thankful from the bottom of my heart to have it.
39 years old, 14 different addresses, and none of them feel the way the home in Maine will.....one day.
3 total
Upstairs in my grandparents two family house until I was 5
My parents house until I got married
My apt with my husband & cats