I apologize for all the House Posts lately.
At the moment, houses are kind of on my mind a little more than, like…sweaters. Lipstick. Whatever.
I’ve been doing a lot of inventorying of our possessions these last few weeks, trying to sift through what to bring, what to sell, what to donate and what to trash, and what it comes down to is this: A move is a fantastic time to streamline and cut all the unnecessary baggage out of your life…but that’s the trick, figuring out what’s your “baggage” and what’s just yours.
Part of me wants to just sell all our furniture except for our very most precious family things, save on the moving costs, and start afresh once we find our new home in our new state – I do get why that’s so appealing – but here’s the thing: When we moved into this house we came with just a few hand-me-downs and a bunch of pieces we’d cobbled together from wherever (from the Salvation Army, from friends, from the street outside our apartment)…and then, over these past three years, we built on that rickety little foundation and created…
a home.
I love it. It’s not perfect or interior decorator-y or anything, but I look around me and see memories in these things. I remember unearthing my crazy blue lamp at a random thrift shop with my friend Katie, and her expression (horrified) when I told her that I was buying it. I remember the day our first grown-up couch arrived, and how we jumped around on it with our son. I remember finding our Mystery Chair in an antique store in Nyack for seventy-five dollars, and writing about it, and watching as my post about it became a sort of hub for lovers of the obscure furniture brand’s pieces. I remember discovering this wagon-wheel table at a store in downtown Manhattan while shooting my show and begging them to hold it for me until we closed on our house (which turned out not to be until several months later, and I am still grateful that they did me that favor).
I love the way our house looks. I love the way it feels. And I have no idea where it is that we’re going to end up, but when we finally do land there, I want to be able to look around me and realize:
oh.
I’m home.
And so a lot of pieces are getting sold or donated – our futon, our son’s toddler bed, my Ikea Malm dresser (because It’s Time).
But the special things are coming with us. Because yeah, it’s just stuff – but it’s the stuff of our life.
