Filed under: Your Home, Design, etc
When you leave a friend's home, do you sometimes long for a better house (and maybe even a better life)? One writer shares what she's learned about moving beyond house envy and achieving domestic bliss.As Brian and I drove south on Route 93 toward Boston, my throat tightened with each exit. Soon, we'd pull into our driveway -- but I didn't want to go home. I wanted to break away. I wanted to run free.
No, I don't want out of my marriage. I want out of my house. We'd just visited friends who live an hour outside the city, whose palatial colonial belongs in a magazine. You know the type: The bathrooms outnumber the occupants, the kitchen is as high-tech as the Pentagon, and the just-so nursery could house an island nation.
A view of the house where the writer lives. Photo: Kara Baskin
Yeah, I'm jealous. Brian and I live in a two-family house stylistically peculiar to Eastern Massachusetts (see above). It's charming, with a built-in china cabinet and hardwood floors. The park's a stroll to the right; restaurants are just down the block.
It was perfect when Brian started grad school -- close to campus, convenient to Boston, with a spare room for my office. We loved the fireplace, we loved the kitchen (one friend described as "straight out of Stowe Mountain Lodge"). We figured we'd buy a bigger place when Brian graduated. Then I got laid off from my magazine gig and got pregnant (all in the same three-week period!), switched jobs, had my baby boy Andy...and real estate wasn't the first thing on our mind.
The writer and her darling baby. Photo: Kara Baskin
But these days? It's always on my mind. Our once-adorable sanctuary is stifling me. Charting out personal space requires a GPS. Take, for example, venturing from living room to kitchen. First I have to circumnavigate the coffee table (which doubles as a laptop station, since my office is now a nursery), then wind my way around Andy's Exersaucer (a hulking piece of plastic that monopolizes a doorway), then crab-walk past the dining table without overturning my houseplant. By the time I reach my Stowe Mountain kitchen, I'm ready for a tumbler of wine.
After returning from our friends' mini-manse, I shoved my closet shut, kicked aside Andy's toys, crawled into bed, and emailed our realtor -- a guy we've strung along like a ho-hum boyfriend. Sweetly and not too desperately, I asked to recommence our housing search pronto. But here's the thing: Sure, I wanted him to find us a house. But really, I wanted him to find me an identity.
Left: A shot of the writer's bookshelves, which she had to move from the office to the kitchen when the baby was born. Right: The famous "Stowe Mountain Lodge" kitchen. Photos: Kara Baskin
Our friends' house makes me feel insecure about my choices. I can't help it: I'm envious because their sprawling abode makes them seem so together, so in lock-step with what adults do: Have a baby, buy a house, move to the suburbs. My friends must be responsible, settled, content. They have adult toys like ride-on mowers! They have adult problems, like flooded basements and leaking roofs! I imagine they flip through swatch books and dreamily wonder which color might really say: "Welcome to my fourth bathroom!"
My problems are collegiate and confusing by comparison. Our narrow closet isn't big enough for my ballet flats, but my kid's Exersaucer is too big for my living room. Am I where I "should" be at 32? Having a baby forces the issue, physically and mentally. I know we can't linger in our two-bedroom. Eventually, Andy will walk, at which point he'll toddle into the same wall so many times that he'll develop a complex. Rationally, I know this is dramatic. Emotionally, inadequacy consumes me. A house is an extension of yourself: an announcement of your taste, your priorities, and really, your financial reach. It cements your place in the world.
Which is why buying a house feels so frightening and revealing for me. It will expose my priorities and my economic wherewithal. Some days, I just don't know what I value in a home (and, Capricorn that I am, what I feel comfortable buying). I think I might feel restless in the suburbs, but I also don't want to live right in the city. Rural? I'd develop twelve personalities and drive myself nuts.
A shot of the writer's former office, now a nursery. Photo: Kara Baskin
Silly, really, since I like where I live. It's limbo, but it's home. A home I've carefully decorated, a home that's five minutes from great pizza, a home that houses a devoted son and husband (whom I am slowly driving crazy with my fretting). But I often find myself getting defensive about the home I once adored. I hate that my poor mother-in-law offers to sleep on the couch when visiting. I feel like an urban weirdo, since her two grown daughters have children and houses in small towns. When my mom comes over to watch Andy, she's barely in the door before mentioning the latest four-bedroom for sale down the street.
It got to the point that I couldn't hear about another person buying a house without feeling left behind. I'd Google the address and summon Brian to my laptop, point and fret. Why do they have what I want? It didn't matter if they'd bought an estate or an outhouse. It drove me crazy that someone knew what they wanted, while I languished behind a laptop, ambivalent and bitter, stalking Zillow like Single White Female. Meanwhile, my physical home -- warm, cozy, happy -- was becoming my mental purgatory.
I know what you're thinking: I sound spoiled, with my overcrowded closet and inconvenient Exersaucer. I have what my friend Elizabeth calls a "first-world problem." But I'm willing to bet I'm not the only person to feel this way. Accepting my jealousy, and letting it guide me, was my first step toward house-healing.
Do you need to get beyond your own house envy? Here's what works for me:
Fight house envy by... letting jealousy work for you.
I think about what I covet, then I let my jealousy function as a guidepost. It's telling me what I want. I love my friend's sleek condo on Beacon Hill. I also love my colleague's herb-filled treehouse. I allow my wants to narrow my focus -- not remind me of what I don't have. How can I combine urban and rustic into my own dream home?
Left: A view of the writer's dining room. Right: Her husband Brian and their baby boy. Photo: Kara Baskin
Fight house envy by... imagining living that person's life.
Not living in her home, but living her life, making her bed and kissing her husband and cuddling her kids. Almost immediately, I realize how much I'd miss my own life.
Fight house envy by... remembering that everyone compromises when they buy a home.
Maybe the flashy condo owner has a spouse who works so hard to afford the mortgage that they rarely see one another. Maybe the bungalow-dweller gave up a city-based career. It's dangerously easy to imagine a house (or life) as "perfect" on the outside, as black and white as my friend's gleaming kitchen tiles. Perfection is for magazine spreads and Facebook albums. Not life.
Fight house envy by... letting uncomfortable feelings guide you, not ruin you.
Let jealousy bring your own dreams into focus. And remember that a home is only as happy as the people living in it. Really, there are some things you just can't mortgage.
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