Home Enough

Dearest Homekeeper,

One of the unexpected blessings of this season has been finding myself caring for someone else’s home.

I am house-sitting for a divorced father while he completes some professional training in a graduate program on the East Coast. His young daughter lives with him here several days each week, where he runs his own business. And then there is Baily, his gentle Ragdoll cat, who has decided we make suitable companions. If you know anything about Ragdoll breeds, this is not uncommon. After my years of running a bed and breakfast where pets simply weren’t practical, it has been serendipitously cozy to once again share a home with a cat.

Living in someone else’s home requires a certain humility. It isn’t my place to remake it according to my own tastes. Instead, I find myself listening to the house first. While he is away, I’ve made only a few careful organizational changes, always trying to preserve the home’s personality rather than replace it with my own.

It has reminded me that every home tells a story long before its occupier says a word.

Cleverly, he carved out colorful spaces for his daughter. Her bedroom and bathroom are painted in cheerful shades of coral and purple, and in his finished basement is a dedicated art station marked off in those same playful colors. One of my favorite design choices is his bedroom, where he committed to one color completely. By drenching the room in a single hue of charcoal gray, he created a space that feels both dramatic and unexpectedly restful.

Back down in the basement is what I think of as a movement studio for his daughter, complete with aerial silks hanging from the ceiling, large gymnastic mats, and a pod swing where exercise, imaginative play, and a place for sensory calm meet. Elsewhere in the house is a movie room with a projector, another room devoted to his impressive Lego creations, and even a weight room filling a garage bay.

As I walked through this house, I was reminded how we each create home.

He expresses his interests and personality through dedicated lifestyle rooms. Each room theme has its own destination.

I sleep in the guest bedroom and have a bathroom of my own. Tucked away, almost out of sight, from the main living spaces, it’s a little haven where I can add touches that feel like me, creating a cozy corner of home while still honoring the character and rhythm of the rest of the house. Rather than dedicating an entire room to one purpose, and probably because I previously lived in limited private square footage, I enjoy creating blended living zones where functions and things that bring me pleasure coexist aesthetically. I catch myself digging into my furniture stored locally for those certain accouterments that make a space feel like my own.

Perhaps because I have spent the last 12 years living in a smaller home after all my children left to create a life of their own, I learned to create these layered spaces where reading, conversation, decorating, and quiet reflection comfortably coincide in a home that was also the place of my B&B business. Rather than giving one purpose to one room (in my case, three rooms were otherwise dedicated to guest rooms), I’m familiar with creating a private living space that is both comfortable and familiar to me.

Neither approach, lifestyle rooms or creating a sanctuary, is better. They simply reflect the lives we live.

One of his design choices I particularly admire is his use of black as an accent throughout the main living areas. It quietly repeats itself in chandeliers, light fixtures, picture frames, and artwork, tying the rooms together against a backdrop of warm neutrals, soft grays, and thriving green plants. I noticed, too, that he prefers generous overhead lighting, while I instinctively reach for lamps and softer pools of light.

So yes, I placed a throw blanket over the sofa where I like to read, near a fireplace. Not because I wanted to change the room, but because I wanted a small cozy corner.

Outside, a generous yard surrounds the house. Thankfully, a mowing service keeps the grass in check, leaving me to try and keep it green in this summer’s heat, tend the border gardens, and learn, little by little, what each plant needs. I’ve often said I wanted to try and perfect my green thumb. It seems this season has given me that opportunity as well.

In the evenings, outside my bedroom window, fireflies drift by bidding me “sweet dreams”. It has been a long season stay for them. Bailey curls up nearby on my bed. The house settles into its nighttime rhythm. For a while, this home becomes home enough for me.

Perhaps that is one of life’s quieter lessons. We don’t always have to own a place to care for it. Sometimes we are simply stewards for a season, leaving a home just a little better than we found it while honoring an ongoing story that is being written within its walls.

With you in the keeping, Cathenry.ch@gmail.com

P.S. A sense of home quietly arrives the moment we begin caring well for the place we find ourselves.