Huybers Retirement Adventure: Making a House Our Home

Our View of the Sunrise

From the time we moved into our new home on November 1^st, we have been busy trying to settle in and call it our home.

For the first month, we had no furniture. Actually to be more accurate, we had some furniture we borrowed from our motor home like the kitchen table (which we used to put our computer on), a couple of lawn chairs so we could watch TV, and of course we borrowed the mattress so we had something to sleep on. We knew that all of this would be temporary until our things arrived from BC at the end of the month. It was like camping indoors, but it didn’t quite feel like our place.

On November 30^th our furniture arrived. Yeah! The movers were excellent. Every box they brought into the house they checked with me first to see where I wanted it to go. I had clearly marked the rooms as to what they were so if I said “Office” they knew to go to the room marked “Office”. It went very smoothly. When the movers left, we were left with piles of boxes in every room. The thought of unpacking all of them was overwhelming.

The month of December was spent opening up boxes and trying to figure out where we wanted to put things. We had down sized quite a bit going from a large 5 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom plus Office home. If we didn’t know where to put something, it went back in the box to worry about later. But first … we had to put up the Christmas decorations! After all, Christmas was fast approaching and traditionally our Christmas decorations went up on December 1^st. I was falling behind! We found all our Christmas decorations and managed to decorate the house in time for Christmas and it looked great. But it felt strange not having the kids or family and friends at Christmas so by Boxing Day we took it all down.

After taking down the Christmas tree and all the decorations finally we were able to arrange the furniture the way we wanted it. We love the house we bought, but it just didn’t feel quite like it was our home. I couldn’t put my finger on it as it was just a feeling I had. But something was just not right.

We continued to open up boxes as we entered into the month of January. We were surprised at what we would find in some of them. Most of the boxes had been unpacked and put away, but now we were going through the “I don’t know what to do with this” boxes, along with the odd box we thought we knew what was in them but just hadn’t opened it yet. We had made a list of the things in the boxes, but every once in a while we found something that wasn’t on the list. Eventually all the boxes were opened but still, the house just didn’t feel like a home yet.

Then yesterday, Ron said let’s see where you want to hang this picture. It was a large painting that was presented to Ron when he retired from the Army. We decided to hang it over the sofa in the living room. It looked nice there. Then we brought out another picture, then another. Before we knew it, we had filled the walls with our paintings, photos, and nick nacks. As we hung the last large picture frame over the TV we sat back and looked around. Now this place looks like OUR HOME!

The feeling that something was missing was true. Our personal touches, our familiar photos and mementos had not been taken out of the boxes and placed on the walls. This is what makes this our home. It took us a while to finally get it arranged and organized the way we wanted it, but it is finally a place that we can call Our Home!