What makes a house a home?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. My parents just sold their house; the house that my brother and sister and I grew up in. The house with our handprints in front of the shop with the year 1998 above them. The house with the markings on the wall showing how much we have grown. The house that is filled with every single memory of my childhood. I’ve never lived anywhere else except for when I moved to college.

Is a home the house you grew up in or is it more than that? What makes a town your home? How can you make your new town or apartment your home? I always thought that my parents' house would be my home forever. That’s until I went off to college and came home for the first time. It felt strange. I was at my parents house, everything was familiar, but something felt off. It felt strange because my things weren't there. I wasn’t a part of their daily routines anymore. I was home but I weirdly felt like a guest in my own house, the house that I lived in for 18 years.

This strange feeling grew more and more each time I came home. And little by little I took more things back with me to college. I began to have more of my belongings at my college apartment than at my parents house. I was living out of a suitcase at home, when I thought that it should have been the other way around. Returning to college felt more normal and comfortable than I thought it ever would be. I felt like I was coming home, and my roommates soon turned into my family.

So what makes some place your home? Just having your things there? I guess so, but it's also what you choose to make of it. If you choose to stay in and Netflix your life away, then yeah, your new town is probably going to be really boring. But if you make an adventure out of it and try to get out and explore new things within your new town, then you see over time it's going to start becoming more of a home and less of a strange place.

I see so many college students rushing back to their parents house every chance they get, only to turn around and complain about living there again. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t live at home ever again. It’s our attitude and our outlook on life and where you live that will make any town and any apartment great and memorable. It’s being surrounded by your family and the people that you love and that love you back that makes any place a home.

So as I move from a country girl to a suburb girl, I will always have a home to go back to, it just might look a little different on the outside.