Finally Feeling Like Home

Day 13 of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:"What's the best change you made to the place you live?" Take two adults who've spent an absurd amount of time in grad school, saddle one with a crappy paying postdoctoral fellowship for three years, and add a good ol’ dose of New England thrift, and you have me and Jon – longtime owners of hand me downs (for which we are grateful but haven’t always been the right fit) or inexpensive furniture we purchased but weren’t wild about.

We’ve been in our not-so-new new home for almost a year and a half and for the most part we still don’t have things hanging on the walls. This has been due in part to inertia, but mostly due to the fact that we’re still trying to sort out our layout. But this fall we decided to stop being ridiculous and to start making our home ours. For the first time ever we invested in a piece of furniture we both really loved (this gorgeous Kingston Media Console from Crate & Barrel…damn, it’s on sale right now...). We also swapped out our huge old speakers and towering stack of audio equipment for an iPod (took the plunge on a brand new one) and a Bose sounddock (thank you Craigslist), and most recently turned a stagnant space into a cozy living space by getting rid of a towering bookcase (again, thank you Craigslist), purchasing two sitting chairs, a table, and an entryway bench, laying down a rug, and turning our beat up old media console into a clever place to stow Laurel’s stuff (I made a chic table skirt).

We still have work to do -- like hanging pictures -- but our home is finally feeling like home. And I’m grateful to be here.