What Home Is...

We have three categories here at Forward Our Mail: Discover Home, Simplify Life, and Experience More. Normally, I place these articles under one of those headings. But this one is different. As I’ve pondered these thoughts for the last few days I’ve realized that this article resonates with all three. So today, I invite you in to my space, not to talk about decor or organizing, but to pause for a brief moment and discover together what home is. Let’s chat…

Home is…

The world is loud. And it’s growing louder every day. It’s negative taglines that set out to prove to you that you’re doing “X” wrong. You’ve seen them…”Six mistakes you’re making in your hair care routine… Three things you’re doing wrong at dinner time… Fifteen mistakes you’re making in your house cleaning…” It seems like the voices around us are growing ever increasingly loud, trying to prove to us that what we are doing is wrong and if we simply do it their way, we’ll be doing it right. But each of us holds within ourselves the knowledge and the ability to create this place the way we want it – and need it – to be.

I used to believe that home was a place, an address, a geographical location like the town or city in which we lived. I believe it was the little house that sat on one wooded acre of property, or the two-story walk out with the pond out back…

But I’m coming to release that home isn’t tied to where you live, but rather how you live. It is something you take with you wherever you go, whether it’s a high-rise in the city, a cottage in the country, or an apartment somewhere in between.

It is something you make – and that is how I see my life – I am bent on making home wherever I can, however I can, and do it as best as I can.

This is what home is, to me…

Home is…

Home is dicing peppers and onions and tomatoes for a pasta salad. It is the satisfaction of clipping herbs straight from the window sill where you planted them so carefully and placed them strategically so you may access them whenever you want. Home is the smell of freshly cut basil. And oregano. And thyme. It is slicing Kalamata olives and making dressing made from good olive oil. It is placing freshly cooked pasta in an ice bath and waiting for it to cool. And it’s mixing carefully together the ingredients you prepared with love.

Home is feeding – and stirring- sourdough bread starter. It is the enjoyment of making your favorite tea in a mug purchased by your son as a gift for your birthday.

This feeling is made better when you looking across the kitchen and see the herbs growing well, and watch the sunlight cast shadows across the table you’ll set for dinner.

Home is…

Home is a window thrown open wide that allows the fresh breeze in and the stale air out. It’s smelling the flowers growing on a balcony shade garden you created. It is the flicker of a candle flame that fragrances the hallway.

It is the music playing through wireless speakers your husband installed..

These are the beautiful things of home.

Home is…

But it is also the everyday things. It is the tasks we set our hands to on a random Tuesday morning. To the world around us, they may seem unimportant, but we know, we know, deep in our hearts, that they are the tasks that really – really – make a place home.

It is treating a stain before you toss a hand towel into the laundry. It is the pile of ironing that awaits your attention. It is the unfinished task of making the bed because you forgot to start the dryer and the sheets aren’t quite ready, yet. But home is also the fragrance of lavender and chamomile you sprayed on the bed topper to refresh it.

It is knowing that everyone –everyone – gets soap scum build up on the shower glass. And it’s finding satisfaction in the rhythm of cleaning it until it sparkles.

Home is wiping clean the shower caddy, and knowing that it can’t stay aesthetic for long… the loofah and squeegee must be replaced for another day’s use. It’s the fragrance of the shower products and the cleaning spray mingling together into something that resembles lemons and rosemary.

The feeling of home is wiping mirror smudges in a blue and white summer sundress.

Home is…

Home is the kitchen essentials that stay right out in the open because you use them every day. It is the dove that visits the fountain on the patio. Or the softness of a white waffle weave blanket that keeps you warm at night. Home is the color you select that make a place welcoming. It’s the mirror you hang that reflects the sunlight. It’s the entry table you arrange, and rearrange, because you want home to be the best it can possibly be.

Home is…

Home is that feeling of belonging. It’s more than the color scheme or design aesthetic we choose. It is the collection of sounds and fragrances we thoughtfully select, it’s the words we speak, it’s the naps we take, the walks we treasure, and the feeling that somehow, someway, it has all come together in this one gigantic blessing.

It is knowing that no matter where you go, what you take with you, or what you leave behind, you’ve learned how to recreate it again and again. Because it’s the rhythms and rhymes of life that make home, home. It isn’t always perfect, but it always perfectly yours!