How Much Do You Love Your House Right Now?

I was listening to an episode of the Coffee + Crumbs podcast (I think it was This is How We Do: Home Decor) where the co-hosts were talking about how much they love their homes right now.

And it got me thinking.  How much do I love our home?

I've written before about {10} Things I Love About Our House and {10} Things I Dislike About Our House and those lists still stand.   I can tell you that it is possible to live with just one bathroom for a long time (12 years and still going) but that it is certainly not ideal.   (Which it's really only a pain maybe for a few minutes each day, the vast majority of the time our bathroom is sitting empty and it doesn't matter we only have one.  BUT those few minutes when someone is wishing there was another option?  Those really matter.)

But, one bathroom problems aside, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being I LOVE IT FOREVER, I'd give our house an 8.  Which feels like a lot of a happy accident given how little we knew about houses and decorating and DIY at 22 when we bought it.

Would I buy this house again right now?  No, 1 bathroom and only 2 real bedrooms would not be a good choice when we already have 2 kids.  That would actually be crazy.

But I am sure glad we made the choice we did way back then.

This is not the perfect house for us right now (see the often mentioned only one bathroom) but it has been home for us for over 12 years and we've definitely put our stamp on it, inside and out.  We had some projects in mind when we bought it but not nearly all the ones we've taken on and some of my favorite outcomes weren't even a possibility back then.

I couldn't imagine living anywhere else and even the thought of leaving it someday makes me really sad even though we aren't even looking to move yet. 

Even though it's not perfect, I think part of what really makes me love it is that we've stopped putting things off until "our next house" and just made this one as perfect as it can be with it's limitations.

For a long time we talked about buying a new couch, building a picnic table, and adding a swing set "at our next house".  We've taken care of all of those in the last couple years.  We've stopped giving ourselves limitations, besides budget, for what we can do here and that seems to have opened up all sorts of possibilities.  I want to make the most of where we live, to really love it, to have it feel lived it (but still generally clean, I don't get along well with clutter).

It's actually really freeing to stop thinking "at our next house we'll..." and just make the most of what we have now.  And to stop thinking we'll have projects done when we finish the current list.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

We'll never finish all our project lists.  I can almost guarantee there will, someday, be a post on this blog about the things we still wanted to tackle here but didn't get to because we finally moved (I have some time to come up with a shorter title). 

Playhouse in progress

Once the swing set playhouse is done (will it ever be done?) there is still a large majority of this list that I'd still like to get done this year (I don't want to admit how many of those items are still open...I'm HOPING I can knock some out in the next couple months...with Christmas...it's not looking good).  And then there is another list I have going on my phone for possible house projects.  We add to that almost as fast as we finish things. 


I'm glad we stopped waiting for the next house, waiting for some day in the future when everything will be perfect (impossible).  I'm glad for almost all of the projects here we've taken on.  Even though there is always more we want to do, I'm really really happy with here we live right now.  It's not perfect, but it's home.

How much do YOU love your house?  What could make you love it more?