how small is it?

Originally published on Valentine’s Day, 2011. We’ve renovated three houses in the ten years since I wrote this piece. Love transcends renovation.

I’ve fallen head over heels for a little house. Heavy emphasis on the word little. It’s so small that there’s not even much room for quirky charm. But I can still see it. Even in the bathroom…

Really, I can.

I think my beloved (husband, not house) was feeling a little of the love too, when he toured the place with me. “Yeah, I get it,” he said, “but it’s too small. And it’s a boatload of work.”

No argument. It has the square footage of a shoe box and lacked about, oh… 95% of the things we’ve talked about when venturing into ‘downsizing’ discussions. But I’m talking totally smitten here. What ifs and maybes swam in my head and I was at the computer day and night until I had the place totally renovated - green, budget friendly and to die for - with us totally living there.

Alas, it’s an unrequited love. When I called the listing agent again, she ripped the beating heart right out of my chest. Before I could pledge my troth, not to mention all of our worldly goods, someone else had swept in and snatched up the object of my affection. 

This is not to say I don’t feel a deep and abiding love for the home in which we live. It’s our fourth home. In a break from the 'whither thou goest’ philosophy, when we moved here I told my husband that if he wanted to move again…well, alimony was going to be a bitch. So, for almost twenty years our house has been the epitome of what I longed for growing up, a real family home.

Filled with memories and horse hair plaster, we’ve celebrated highs and weathered lows in this house, raised four kids, survived a major renovation.  Until my recent walk on the wild side, I didn’t think I would ever willingly leave it. But my brief affaire de coeur with the tiny house has shown me that, hmm… I guess I didn’t really mean that part about the alimony.

As long as we’re in it together, I could not only live some place else, I could be jazzed about it. I guess it’s true that a house is a building, but home is where your heart is.