We are big on homes. We love them.
We love admiring other homes…get very jealous of other
homes, look at homes. Follow prices.
We own three homes and I am not sure if this was a good
decision or a bad decision. Financially that is. These have and will be a hard
number of years and will continue ahead in the same hard way for us because of them. But they give us joy and
heartache too.
Our home in the suburbs of Montreal is our functional
home. “Trent” out cottage is our live life home and then two years ago we
bought an old home in a charming village and turned it into my husband’s office
for his law practice. None of them are really investments at all since we had
all the renovations done vs doing it ourselves …but they have all enriched our
lives a lot on different levels and for different reasons.
The problem is that we were capable of having the
money to buy them (and mortgage them!) but not enough money to have anyone take care of them-and so
that is done by us and demands a lot of organization, and work and effort.
Literally in spring and fall we have hundreds of activities to barely upkeep
these properties and manage by tasks lists after list of what needs doing. But
especially for the cottage we fully enjoy it summer and winter…so it is worth
it. But it is a lot of work and sometimes I wonder what we would do with that
time if we did not have these added responsibilities? And we live in constant
fear of something breaking in one place or another, something flooding. Both
financial fear and fear that we won’t have enough time and energy to fix them.
It’s going to be a very tricky decade financially for us
trying to juggle this all. And in a decade we will likely sell our suburban
home and rent an apartment as our kids will hopefully be moved out or on their
way out. And we will try to have jobs that allow us to spend 4 days a week at
Trent and 3 days a week in the city apartment. This is the 10 yr plan so we can
get some money out of property and into our hands!!!
But what I have learnt most about homes is that you need
to inhabit them before you make decisions about them. One wise woman who owned
5 properties once told me “Never do a single renovation until a year living in
a home” and she is right.
Homes have personalities just like we do. Homes are used
in different ways by different people. When we moved to Trent we had all sorts
of ideas of how we would use this cottage based primarily on how we used our
other family cottage. We are not good at change so we tried to replicate what
our old life was. Thank goodness we did not do renos as that would have been a
big mistake-as it did take us about two years to get used to the new house and
figure out how we use it. We never ever thought that our solarium full of light
and sunshine could serve as a bedroom for guests who could actually sleep in in
there as an example. This house only has one real bedroom and two tiny cottagey
bedrooms in the basement. Lucky for us we have lots of friends and so big gangs
up here and that was always an issue. In
summer we let guests sleep in the solarium (winter never as it has fireplace
and where we spend all our time). We also never fully realized that we are like
raccoons and sleep outside a lot. (Unfortunately this vacation not once as
weather SUCKS!!!!) (we are right now for the 6th day in a row on our dock in winter clothes with blankets piled on top of us)
But we are creatures of habits. When I met my husband he
owned a home. When we moved to our current home we have to replicate his home
décor for his mental sanity (white carpet, bay window , golden hardwood floors, wood railing stained same color going
upstairs. It was not really that I even liked these things but knew it was the
only way to get my husband up and out!
I know him well.
Moving him to this cottage from the one he shared with
his family forever was as crazy as if may sound “a crisis”. Honestly even with
what we have had to get through this year (real crisisis) I remember that move
as probably the hardest thing we did as a couple. I don’t expect anyone to
understand. Each couple has their things..this was ours. Cottage time is our
life. We would sell our house and move into an apartment much easier and quicker
than we would our cottage. You would have to tear the earth from under us to
make us leave here. I know..I know..first world problems.
(Trust me we have and have had had our fair share of real problems too.)
And we also think of houses long term. We have an
opportunity right now to buy land behind us in the forest. We have no money for
this and would go directly on our line of credit-but the long term thinkers we
are we know it makes sense. If ever we got money one day or our kids had money
(for now we have an aspiring chiropractor, orthodontist and social
worker/grocery bag packer in the family) they could take the land and build a
small second cottage on the land behind and have water access through this
property. We would all live happily ever after! Our dream!!! Tricky one.
But homes are not a commodity to us-they are a way of
life. For anyone who knows us well they know this fully about us. We LIVE in
our homes. They are clean but not necessarily always tidy-they are beautiful in
some ways and haphazard in others-they are lived in..and lived in well. Homes
are where we create memories. And dreams, we carve out time to be together and
spend hours making lists of how we can use them to the fullest. Our homes are
our favorite place to be. Staycations are much more exciting to us than travelling
but we do the travel anyways as we know it is good for us, there are parts of
it we truly love, and we want to be cultured and interesting. But cottage life
is truly where we all belong. It is our institution.
But as time goes on and I see our children growing I
realize that one day I will decorate more, and garden and cook and landscape. I
will take the time I devote now to our family and transfer it to our homes. Right
now our home are very ignored for the most part as we are too busy living. We
care for them at the minimal needed. Decorated them beautifully and then forgot
about them for the most part except for basic upkeep. Our time is spent living
in them. And that is the way it should be in our minds.
There is a time and a place for everything in life.
To find that balance between order and living is the key.
Everyone has their own formulas that work. Half the clients I coach are seeking this formula for themselves. They all aspire to look back on life and have no regrets. I help them find their way.
My husband’s office we are not sure is an investment and
that is very worrisome. But it brings him happiness and joy to be
there-something he had lost in his career for a while and seems to have back to
some degree now working out of a charming old home in a quaint village. We
have managed to bring back some life to his career thought the building. Is
there a price to this? Can there be? We know esthetics are deeply important to
us….now he goes to work with a feeling of pride and comfort. But there is a
huge cost to that. Huge.
For now all in know is that the wise woman was right.
Inhabit a home before you make decisions for it. Get to know it and let it get
to know you too. Make friends with it-and let it be your love and not your
enemy.
Inhabit each other
