Journeying though Home(s): Past, Present and Future

Meanderings beyond the four walls.

Dabbling with a bit of audio again, in case you’d prefer to listen this week.

When we travel, away from home, we appreciate different ways of living. Of being. We explore little luxuries that feel foreign to us, or seek to experience something new, whether for enjoyment or to tell us something about ourselves.

The places we choose to stay when we travel, be it somewhere to merely shower and sleep, or a place in which to make a home away from home, require consideration. We put great thought into how where we hang our hat will impact who we are and how we live while we are away. How the place we will rely on for rest will contribute to our wider journey.

But what about the ultimate journey we are on?

That of living life. Day in, day out.

How does where we reside, when at home, play a part in our daily meanderings? Do we give enough thought to how it lets us embrace new experiences, or offers us new ways of being?

All of these are questions I’ve been pondering over the past six months or so, as my partner, A, and I have set out on the path of trying to buy our own home. We are already aware this will not be our forever home, and so in a few years time we’ll likely be going through this process all over again - though by then from the supposed vantage point of already being on the property ladder. Seasoned travellers, as it were.

In trying to think about what I want from this next move, in many ways one of the most significant yet on my journey through life, I have been reflecting on the 12 homes I have lived in through my (almost) 31 years, trying to draw out what feelings and experiences and features I want to take into this (expensive) next step, and what I’m keen to leave behind.

With each space, each set of four walls, character building in it’s own way, what can where I have been so far, tell me about where I want to go?

Views you want to take with you.

Flying the Nest

Until the age of 18 I lived in the same house. The house I still often refer to as home. A stable foundation, with a room of my own. I had the freedom to paint the walls lilac when that was my favourite colour, drape voile instead of curtains around the window when I thought that made me sophisticated, and put boyband posters on the wall when that was the cool thing to do.

My bedroom was an enjoyable place for me to spend time, but it wasn’t somewhere I shut myself away in. The door was often open, and I was usually found downstairs, whether reading, watching TV or doing homework.

I felt the whole house to be mine, shared of course, but no less mine than anyone else’s.

Getting older and learning that such a sense of expansive welcomeness and security was not something everyone grew up with made me all the more appreciative of it. Even more so as I ventured into shared housing of a different sense.

Soon my bedroom(s) as a room of my own took on a whole new meaning. It was the only space that was truly mine, and acted as a place to sleep, study, create, relax. This of course is not uncommon, even outside the student experience, but it meant that making it feel like home became even more important.

In Bath’s university halls, I used pictures and mementos to cover the sickly-green coloured brick walls of my box room. I wanted it to feel welcoming to new friends who might come around for a cuppa, and familiar for me to curl up in alone with a book.

In a house of eleven, this space was sacred.

But in it’s own way, so was the downstairs kitchen area, with it’s metal chairs and harsh lighting. Connections were made, laughs were shared, and friendships were built, around a school-canteen-esque kitchen table.

The following year, I cherished my room as an orderly space in an otherwise often untidy house, though this time of five. While it may have been a bit messy for my liking, the downstairs felt more capable of hosting; something that I came to realise was important to me. The sofas were a bit battered and the wooden table riddled with scratches, but the living/dining room that sat separate to the kitchen was a welcome shift from the austere first year offering.

Neither house drew me to the kitchen though, perhaps on account of too many people sharing one stove and different definitions of washing up norms. I made only simple, makeshift meals in a space that did not feel enough like mine to enjoy spending time on something more interesting. So with the next move, this time to London, I was grateful for a more expansive kitchen-living space, with high ceilings that seemed to open up new possibilities, shared with just one other person.

The move to London was not easy. It took three trips with my then-course-acquaintance (but soon to be close friend) to find something affordable and also liveable, and an agency/landlord that would offer a rental contract on an intern salary. But once in - having hoovered the mattresses and disinfected the drawers - we made that space feel like ours.

Shared, homely, and welcoming.

Friends passing through London would make use of our Caledonian Road sofa-bed, and gather for morning coffee in our small but functional outdoor patio area. We put vintage movie posters on the walls and candles in every corner. It was hers and it was mine and it was ours. The backdrop to our big city life.

Back to uni for final year, I was keen to stick with a two-person approach, and moved back in with the friend who’d been my mainstay through the first two years. Mine was the bigger of the two bedrooms, becoming a communal space as well as my own, with a sofa and a coffee table that felt cosier than the small kitchen-dining area. Often the kitchen would be taken over by baking experiments - that I happily benefitted from over the years, including at her wedding last year! - and so that sofa was where we’d catch up and unwind over tea and biscuits at the end of a long day, or devour a Dominos with a DVD. I still have the throw I bought to cover that sofa with, and it’s as nice to snuggle into now as it was then.

It was odd at times to be sleeping in such an open space - a ground floor, street-facing front room of a Georgian town house (by then split into flats). But I was grateful for that space allowing for a huge desk in front of a bay window - potentially the best writing set up I’ll ever have had - and still plenty of space to roll out my yoga mat. The grandeur did not lend itself to effective heating however; it was not uncommon for me to rest a herbal tea on the side of the bath while I showered, as a way to keep warm while washing in tepid water.

There is much about these student abodes I’d rather forget (goosebumps in the shower not withstanding) but so much more I take care to remember.

They were spaces that encouraged me to think about what it means for home to be both private and public, and more importantly cultivated two of my closest friendships.

Returning to the Big Smoke

Back in London upon graduating, my first stop was Camden, room-sitting in a friend’s flat as her pal was away for summer. It was perfect timing, and the perfect set up. Although I was living in someone else’s space, without many of my own things, and starting a new job, I felt at home in the bright and airy flat that was equally cosy and lived in.

While I figured out a longer term plan, I was made to feel that I could use all four corners of that space as I pleased - read the books, cook with the spices, drink any of the shelf full of teas. I was grateful then, and still am, for this familiarity from a friend I had only met the year before.

Eight years later, I would go on to give a reading at her wedding.

The brunch she threw to welcome me back to the big city in style 🥂

As the end of my cushy set up approached, my former London roomie moved back to the city and suggested we recreate our previous set up, but now at a flat her parents owned. Rent was offered below market rate, for a glorious apartment overlooking Regent’s Park. My room there was compact, with two single beds that at times made it feel as though I was waiting for someone to arrive, but came in handy when friends, or my Mam, came to stay.

We enjoyed two happy years there together. Lining up our yoga mats for living room practice. Hosting alone, and as a pair. Watching Netflix with wine and pasta on the sofa; a sofa with the precise softness to invite long, deep chats into the early hours. While the other was out and about, each enjoying solitude in the comfort of those four walls.

I moved out as her then-boyfriend moved in. It was the first time since moving to Bath for university that I was likely to live with people I didn’t know. It also happened to be a period in which I was recovering from a few months of illness that had me thinking in new ways about how I wanted to live.

I prioritised having a nice room, and I found one, in a Maida Vale Edwardian mansion block. Spacious, with a big bed and large desk, plenty of wardrobe space and still room to sprawl out on a yoga mat. But I missed having a living room. And the kitchen was tiny - no more than one person could cook at any given time. It was also the kind of kitchen in which as you put something in your allocated cupboard the one day, you couldn't guarantee it'd be there the next.

Despite being on a sort of health kick then, I did very little cooking. I was afraid of taking up space, and afraid to use the appliances that never seemed to be without a layer of grime no matter how hard I scrubbed. I exercised outdoors more, to avoid an overreliance on the comfort of my room - a room I would instinctively lock each time I left. But I also ate out more. Making regular after-work plans meant I could avoid having to navigate the unwelcoming kitchen, and, more importantly, an unwelcome feeling of loneliness. A feeling I couldn’t admit to anyone at the time, let alone myself.

So when the opportunity came the following summer to flat-sit for four months - alone - I jumped at the chance. It meant going south of the river, to Peckham, and being unable to unpack all my belongings as the owner left much of theirs behind. But it was mine to look after and enjoy - again for rent below the likely market rate for somewhere overlooking the Rye. I was immediately much happier there, immersing myself in the piles of books that framed the floorboards, making use of (clean!) pots, pans and countertops, and feeling content with the solitude but once again able to host friends.

It was an honour to care for a beautiful home that someone else had created, and allowed me to embed in as my own.

Several New Beginnings

When that sweet summer was up, I headed back up north to move in with another university friend, in Highbury. New routines, new rhythms and time required for learning to live with someone in this way again.

The pandemic threw a spanner in the works however, and so half way through our first year I was back at home home in Wales for the longest time since before I'd left for university. New routines and rhythms took on a whole new meaning. My office was sometimes on the table that had hosted birthday buffets in years gone by, and sometimes in the room in which I’d once played with Barbies.

Venturing back to London after the first lockdown, I hesitated over where I really belonged. That spring of 2020, as heavy with sunshine as it was with grief for my grandmother, had made me feel like home was very clearly back in Wales. With family. With the people that you want to be with when life feels like it’s all falling apart.

But, as I was told by doting loved ones and a therapist alike, we cannot live as though life might fall apart at any moment. We must live in a way that makes us feel alive; in places that let us feel like ourselves, letting us explore who we are and who we want to be - not who we were.

And so, I settled once again into the big city, and two became three as another friend moved back to the UK and we set up home as a trio, in a different flat about 20 minutes up the road. There were flat Christmases and covid-friendly birthday celebrations as the rules continued to fluctuate. My room, now with a small desk that was for work more than pleasure, was decorated with carefully curated trinkets, and buying new bedding became a demonstration of adulting after months back in my childhood room.

The flat did feel homely, but once again it was in my own room that I felt most relaxed and content. In part I think this was due to the natural light I was lucky to have seep through a floor to ceiling window, that the kitchen/living area did not have the benefit of. But we were all nearing our late 20s by this point, and in enjoying our own space were considering the next steps in different ways.

For me, I was ready to explore the idea of a home with A.

Though we talked about buying, I insisted on renting when we first moved in, not yet ready to make that investment. Once we’d agreed on a place, a new home for two, day one presented unforeseen challenges as the empty space revealed the the cleaning and paint jobs needed before we could settle. I wanted to fix it all up as a duo, marking the start of our new lives together. He, rightly, recognised the need for outside help and was insistent that we make use of it.

It was just the beginning of new compromises to be made.

Home with Him

The home we have now is a bit of a mismatch; an amalgamation of furniture and furnishings that in part came with the flat, and that we each have brought with us. Some of mine have seen me through several homes - like the IKEA Billy bookcase that A came and took apart at my previous flat, carrying all the pieces up the stairs to our new home, and rebuilt to store as many of my books as possible. It takes pride of place in our living room. We have cushions and rugs from his native Albania, but that we’ve bought on trips there together. Some of the plates we use regularly are by now third-hand. But for Christmas last year we got a shiny new kettle and microwave.

Sometimes the sound of his podcast blasts from the kitchen, while the steam from my piping hot shower can render the bathroom unusable.

I will often walk into the living room to find him sprawled across the tiny sofa, and feel I have nowhere to sit. He will sometimes find me in bed, with all four pillows and every decorative cushion, and wonder where he is to sleep.

But we always make space for each other, for that is what it is to share a home in this specific way. Partners. Equals. Each room belonging to all, but with the gentle privacy of desk drawers or personalised shelves to keep a little something for ourselves.

And so, in moving from home to home, I have travelled in ways that a holiday could never provide. I have been taught lessons a fancy hotel could never teach, and learnt to appreciate small comforts that I do not need a backpacking trip to tell me I could not live without.

Home might be a feeling, but our surroundings, and how they influence interactions with those in a shared space, contribute to that inner emotion.

As we look therefore to make this huge investment, in four walls that will take me on as yet unknown journeys, my hope is that this new space offers an unparalleled welcomeness. Harking back to the sense I got in the home in which I grew up. A sense of calm. Of safety. Of things having a place in which to live, and rooms in which I will equally want to spend time.

The furniture will be ours. His and mine. Shared, and all chosen for this home.

The piece I am most excited for us to buy? A sofa. A corner suite, to be precise. Through all the moves through all the years, the places with and without, with ones I wanted to sit on and ones I tended to avoid, I have come to celebrate the sofa as, in many ways, the heart of the home.

A sofa welcomes you with open arms after a long day. On it, in it, you can find comfort alone, and share good times with company. Leant on for reading or watching, writing or daydreaming, it’s potential is endless and my yearning for a good one is deep.

These will be coming with us (in the hope we can one day hang them straight!).

Which begs the question, what is the heart of your home?

What is it that you yearn for, or take great pleasure in already having to enjoy?

What unexpected journeys has your home taken you on, and what draws you back in from a journey outside of it?

And whether you own your home or not, what is it that makes it feel like truly yours, either in partnership, communion or solitude?

If these are themes that interest you as much as they’ve got me engaged these past few months, I’d highly recommend

Penny Wincer

’s Home Matters as a heartwarming and inspiring read. I know I will return to it over the coming months, and indeed through the years. Here on Substack, I’m also enjoying learning about interior design from

Hannah Ashe

’s writing too.

A beautiful read (against that cosy throw!).

So, whether or not A and I actually secure the flat we are currently hoping to call our home remains to be seen (as I have hinted at in recent months, the paperwork is laborious and never-ending).

Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the journey it’s already taking me on, and excited to create a home I - we - will hopefully always be eager to return to.

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