Sunday, August 15, 2010

Home Sweet Home (again this is a long post I am sure only my mother will find it interesting)

OK,  As promised I will now talk about my house.    Before I get to my Provo house I want to give some background information.   First of all  when my mom and I go on our daily walks we discuss many things but one topic that keeps coming up is the idea of  identity.   How most of the conflicts we encounter in our lives are really questions of identity and roles, and whether our life circumstances are meeting our personal idea of who we are and whether our roles are fulfilling our identity.   I know interesting... have you thought about what your identity is and what roles that identity has, and what society, your family, or even your inner voice (which I believe is the Spirit) tells you about your identity, .....I know! see how this topic can cover years and years of  walks.   Any way what does this have to do with houses.   Well actually a lot.

In 2008  I bought myself a house for my 29th birthday.   See my lovely house.

I loved this house, but I was also surprised how much it became part of my identity.  I think in the United States especially home ownership says a lot about a person's identity.  It says I am a stable, contributing member of my community, who pays taxes, cares about the crime rate, and wants to have a beautiful lawn.   Home ownership says I am successful enough to make a down payment and pay a monthly mortgage, to maintain a home and to put nice things in a home.  It also says I am now a grown up, and trust me nothing makes you grow up more that a  mortgage.   I would have quit my job numerous times had it not been for that mortgage.   It really made me grow up :)   But all of those things could have happened with any house.  Why did I LOVE this house?

First of all the neighborhood.  I loved that I could walk to my parents house, my office, downtown, or even to the store,  not that I did that a lot, but I liked the idea.

But mostly I loved the inside of the house:  
See that arch over the dining room,  I fell in love with the home right there, plus there is a little entrance nook (that I don't have a good picture of) that also helped with the wooing.    Plus the wood floors...don't you love the wood floors?  And finally the color.  (I know it is silly to buy a house for the paint color, but I did, and honestly  my renters rented the house for the paint color as well.)  They are really nice colors.  

So when I decided to go to graduate school  this house was the hardest thing to give up...I even considered going to NC State just so I could keep the house!  I know!    But things did not work out that way, I knew it was time to leave NC  so that meant leaving my house, I spent many an evening sitting on my living room floor crying because I did not want to leave my house.  But the more I thought about it I told myself I was being silly... it is just a house after all....it is not who I am.  So I started to think about what about this house formed my identity and what part of my house could I take to school with me...

So with that thought simmering in the back of my mind I set about selling my house, telling myself the money from the house will allow me to graduate from school debt free.  

My parents also were looking for some investment property to purchase, and with some minor convincing they decided to purchase a condo in a University town, such as Provo.  So I was simultaneous trying to sell my sweet sweet home and looking for its replacement somewhere in Provo.   I decided that a huge part of my home identity is what it said about me, about what I liked, so I decided there were some must have items in my new home...  And I know these may sound silly, but we are talking about identity here.

I needed wood floors, and I needed a fireplace with a mantel.   I know silly items to look for in a college house, but those were the two parts of my house that I had to take with me.  I found some houses that looked  cute and one that even had an arch!  But my dad convinced me to get a condo by reminding me of the yard work...my yard was my nemesis, well not really my yard, but all of my trees that insisted on falling all of the time.  So we finally settled on this condo
See all of the trees around it!  For you NC folks that is a lot of trees for Utah.  And they can all fall down and I will not have to clean up a single one!   I love condo life.

Here is the inside of my new home (just the downstairs, I am still working on the bedrooms)

new kitchen
Here is the kitchen.  I think I might paint the cabinets at some point so it will look like my old kitchen, But I don't know if it will look good with the light counter tops.
old kitchen

Here is the dining area
And here is the living room
The floors are laminate instead of wood,  and the house is a lot smaller than my last one (this one is just 900 sqft) but it is just the right size for two busy grad students.   And it has the fireplace and mantle.  O.K. remember how I said a fireplace mantel was part of my identity?  This is why.   This is my old fireplace mantel.

My fireplace mantel gave me a lot of problems when I first moved into my home.  I am not a decorator, and that mantel just sat bare for a long time just mocking me.  I stuck a few candles on the mantel at first just to fill the empty space, but it looked lame.   I came across a Better Homes and Garden's article that talked about how to fill the mantel space and one suggestion was use books.  I really latched onto that idea because I have a lot of books.  The article said to group the books according to color with the jackets off, and then place them artfully on your mantel.  So I went through all of my books and found all of the hard covered single color books I could find.  I then chose the colors that matched the colors of my living room and placed them on the mantel.  It looked really good!  I was so surprised.   It was only after I had lived with my mantel for a while that I realized that these random books I had chosen solely for their solid color  really expressed a lot about my identity.   I am one of those rare people that have actually read all of the books that I own.  (I won't say the same for my Kindle books), but if I actually own a book I have probably read it at least once.  If you look over the titles on the mantel you will get a snapshot of who I am.   And I wanted to bring that to college with me.  So I shipped my mantel books out to Provo, (I stored most of the other ones) and set them up on my new mantel.
 So now my second house is starting to feel like home, and who knows in the Spring of 2012 I might be sitting on this living room floor crying because I will have to leave my little condo behind.


4 comments:

  1. Oh Jenny I loved your house too. It was sooo cute and the color of your house was great.

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  2. I am an expert in leaving -- I have 13 times since 1993.
    It took several moves to realize that like Maureen O'Hara in "Quiet Man," I need to have my things about me. The building doesn't really matter -- it's the familiar and dear stuff that makes it home.
    So unpack your dishes, hang your pictures, put your linens away and new starts feeling comfortable.
    Someday I'm sure we will leave the current home behind, and it's the fig tree I'll miss most ...

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  3. Jamie- I loved having you as a roommate in my little house. Even if it was a short stay. Do you have a blog? Melissa Do you?

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  4. Homes, no matter a house or a condo, are always hard to leave. I've already spent time missing my fruit trees when we move from this house...someday. Which by-the-way, I need to bring you some plums next time we come down.

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