A House Doesn't Become A Home When The Furniture Arrives

Over the last four years, we've moved twice.
The first time, I was eight months pregnant, we left a house where we had lived for almost five years and moved into what we knew would be a temporary home while my husband built our family house.

It was a strange season of life.
On one hand, I knew we wouldn't stay there forever. On the other, our baby was about to be born and I desperately wanted the place where we brought baby home to feel like ours. But how do you do that if you’re only passing by?
There were so many boxes. Books I had packed while heavily pregnant disappeared into storage and stayed there for years. We picked some pieces of furniture because it worked, not because we loved it.
Rooms changed as we adapted to life with a newborn, then a toddler.
I wanted to create a home for our new family, but part of me was always aware we were only passing through.

Finally when Baby A. was almost two and a half, we moved. The house we had spent years dreaming about wasn't ready ready. 
We only had running water in a bathroom, the stairs were unfinished. Dust seemed to cover Every. Single. Surface.
The art studio didn’t have a floor. There was still so much work to do.
Moving definitively less like a grand reveal and more like organised chaos. And yet, one of the first things I did was hang a couple of paintings.
Not because the house was finished. Quite the opposite actually. I just needed something familiar.
Something that reminded me this wasn't a building site anymore. It was becoming our home.

Then, sit down for this please, came one of those small moments that somehow end up meaning everything…
I unpacked my books. The same books that had spent almost three years in boxes. My beloved books.
Not sure you know this about me, but I do love reading, I love everything about books, and  I love the look of books on a shelf. Books would be my drug of choice. 

For the first time in years, they were sitting on shelves instead of hidden away.
I remember looking at them and thinking:
"Oh. We're home."

The house wasn’t finished, rooms were far from being decorated, and we had almost none of the furniture we wanted.
But pieces of our life had started finding their place again.

Since then, our home has been built in small bursts of energy.
A plant in a corner. A painting on a wall. A stack of books. A piece of furniture that carries a memory, like my grandfather’s chaise longue.

Little by little, the house has started telling our story.

The thing is that for a long time, I felt impatient. I wanted every room finished. I wanted the house to look the way I imagined it would, now.
But, at the beginning of this year, something shifted.
Maybe because life has a way of reminding us that time is precious but also fluid.
Maybe because I've spent more time at home than ever before.
Or maybe because I've finally accepted that the speed of building a home doesn't always match the speed of our dreams.

Now, I like that we're taking our time.
I like that we're living in each room before deciding what it needs or how it will grow with us.
I like that we're making choices based on real life rather than a mood board on Pinterest.

A home takes time, and I'm okay with that now.
In fact, I think that's what makes it even more meaningful.

One of my favourite things has been seeing how art shapes our space.
Never as decor, or something you add at the end. But as something that helps define the room itself.

Sometimes a painting changes the energy completely, it creates a focal point, so much so you don’t really miss the table :)
Sometimes it just makes a room feel more like you.

I've come to believe that homes aren't built in a single moment.
They are built slowly, through books, plants, memories and all the objects that matter to you, and you only (so maybe not books and plants at all!).
And yes, through art that makes us feel something and all the small decisions that tell the people who live there:
"You belong here, this is your safe & happy place”

Maybe that's what home really is.
Not a finished place, but a place that keeps becoming.