Hi everybody—I missed you all during my sabbatical! Oh boy, do we have a lot of catching up to do…
If you’ve been following my blog for awhile (or reading the archives), you know that in 2009 my husband and I sold our house, and almost everything we owned, to move overseas. The whole experience was like starting life anew with a clean slate. We traveled extensively, and lived a mainly nomadic life—moving every few months with all our possessions in our duffel bags.
Well, it’s time for a clean slate once again. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be filling you in on some big changes in my personal life (and revealing why I’ve been taking some time off). Today’s post is Big Surprise #1 of 3; stay tuned for the rest!
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of home—mainly because I’ve had so many in the past few years.
During my time abroad, I’ve lived in numerous flats, hotels, and sublets: some tiny, some large, some empty, some furnished top-to-bottom with other people’s stuff.
The experience has changed my perception of “home.” No longer is it linked with my ownership of property or possessions; it’s simply where I lay my head to rest each night.
Minimalism made this nomadic lifestyle possible, and enjoyable, for me. It gave me an incredible sense of freedom, enabling me to experience daily life in a foreign country, and extensive travel throughout Europe and Asia. In a sense, I felt that the world was my home.
But travel and temporary accommodations aside, my home has now changed in a significant way.
For the last few years, England was my home—and a beautiful one at that. I loved the energy of London, the beauty of the countryside, and every minute of my time there. My husband and I were embraced by the people we met, and enchanted with the places we visited. We felt so comfortable there, it was easy to forget that we were expats.
The only exception was when we traveled, and returned to England by air. We spent a lot of time in Heathrow airport, much of it in the passport control line. Because we were on visas, we were extensively questioned each time we landed. We were asked where we’d been, where we were living, and what we did to support ourselves. Our fingerprints were usually scanned as well, to make sure they matched the ones on record. I always felt there was the slightest chance they might not let us back in.
Well, I recently went through passport control once again—but this time in the US, as my husband’s job has returned us to the States. It was the first time I’d been back to America since we moved to the UK. Over on the baggage carousel waited my duffel bag with all my belongings—the same one I’d carried the opposite direction two years before. As I stood in line, I prepared myself, as always, to explain my qualifications to enter the country.
But this time things were different: when it was my turn, the agent didn’t ask me questions, fingerprint me, or give me a suspicious look. He simply stamped my passport, looked up at me, and said with a smile, “Welcome home.”
I’d love to know what “home” means to you—is it putting down roots, or simply where you are at the present moment? Has minimalism made you feel any differently about it? Please share your thoughts in the Comments. And once again, it’s great to “come home” to my blog and this wonderful community!
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
Sp pleased you’re back, happy and healthy. I missed you. I tried to keep the minimalist home fires burning on my page- but you are irreplaceable xx
Home is so hard to define. It’s more of a feeling than a place. People, too, are a bigger part of it than a building. I can feel at home pretty much anywhere, my stuff doesn’t really matter all that much anymore. It used to .. but then I grew up, I guess?
Home is an interesting concept that can have many different meanings for everyone. I grew up as a child of German parents in Switzerland. Even though I lived there for almost 25 years, my parents always let me know that “we are not from here”. While no Swiss would ever second-guess my Swissness (I went to school there and have a perfect accent), I never felt Swiss inside. But could I feel German, having never lived there? I the meantime, I have lived in two German cities for some time, but also in the Netherlands and Japan. I am now back in Switzerland for a while, but in the French part, which feels different again. I guess not having this strong feeling of a home makes it easier for me to leave a place and start anew somewhere else. I feel like I have many homes now, and going back to any of the places I have lived in gives me a feeling of coming home. I’ll be staying in Tokyo for a few weeks now and I’m really excited to go back “home”! My husband sometimes says, to him, home is whereever we are together.
Things will be even more fluid for my kid, who will have parents of two different nationalities and be born in a place where neither of the mother languages of his/her parents are spoken. And chances are that our traveling days are far from over, given our jobs. I hope he or she will be a true citizen of the world who can be at home anywhere!
Welcome back!
I always enjoy reading the “real life minimalist” stories, but how I’ve missed your other postings.
This article is very heartfelt and I feel the same way about “home”
Since I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 17, I lived in a lot of different houses. Every time I moved in to a new place, I’ve met good friends.
At one point, someone asked me why I was comfortable moving out and in and why I don’t seem sad.
That question made me think… But I realized ‘home’ doesn’t have to be only one place. It could be many.
Welcome Back!
“Home” to me currently means where I am at the present moment but also where my friends are. I enjoy not owning a place or being tide down to a place and have happily travelled frequently in the last few years with just a rucksack!
It’s good to have you back.
It is frustrating when you are at home in a country, yet the authorities or the locals refer you as an outsider (alien).
Well, welcome back to the Homeland. You’re lucky you weren’t strip-searched by the TSA.
I used to think this was “home” – my fifth great-grandfather fought in the Revolution, after all – but I don’t think he would recognize what we’ve become, or what he ostensibly fought for.
WELCOME BACK!!!!
Missed you…
Woohoo! Happy to see you are back, and looking forward to future postings about your return. Hopefully tales of finding a place to live and how you “feather” your new nest. With photos, of course. :-) Always love to see what you do with your living spaces.
Welcome back, I missed your posts.
Home to me is where my family is. We were thinking about moving abroad, my husband has been offered a position in a few different places, but we want our daughter to be close to her extended family, and plant roots. When she is older she can have a say.. but for now we don’t want to tear her away, as she takes comfort in the familiar, and she adores her cousins..
Hi PR,
It’s just my opinion, but i’d suggest having another think about your options. It could be an amazing experience for all of you, being in another country discovering and becoming familiar with a new environment. Your daughter may learn another language, make new friends and so on. As MissM has shown, when the time is right you can return. Either way, if you are comfortable with your are choice that’s the main thing.
Glad you are back! Home to me is by-and-large a feeling I get any time I’m with my husband. My father died when I was 17, my mom moved 1500 miles away to take care of her own dad when I was 19, and since home for me is where my family is, my husband (then boyfriend) became my family, my home. I’m 26 now, and we are about to wipe the slate clean as we move 1500 miles across the country to begin the next chapter of our life, but I don’t feel a sense of leaving home. As long as I’m with him, location is irrelevant when it comes to feeling “at home.”
It’s so nice to have you back!! I’ve missed your posts!! Until I married, I had never moved, stayed in the same place my whole life and it was boring. Since getting married, we have moved 19 times in 20 years and I have loved each move. I love the excitement of moving. We have been in our current location for 2 years and by now even the kids are getting restless for a move. Wherever we all are as a family is home.
So glad you’re back!
I’m a homebird. Love my actual home, the people in it and the home comforts. After a two week holiday, I am usually VERY relieved to get back to our house, the cats, my own washing machine.
I’ve embraced minimalism but for such different reasons than yourself and so many others. It isn’t to free me from a physical location but to allow me and my family to enjoy our home so much more.
On a wider note, I moved back to my hometown at age 28, ten years after moving away to uni and work. I then felt I was “home” because I knew the following:
1. Where the local locksmith was without using a directory
2. My way around the archaic leisure centre and it’s big orange boxes (no lockers)
3. The big path that leads from east to west of town and can be cycled but can’t really be seen from the road.
Insider knowledge = home. :-)
Karen
(Scotland)
I agree about the insider knowledge- home for me is the town where I was born, grew up, and where my friends return to, even though many of them don’t live here any more…a familiar place, where I feel comfortable!
Welcome back! I, too, have missed your posts – beautifully written and thought-provoking!
Home is an odd idea for me. I grew up in a unique house on unnaturally beautiful plot of land in the otherwise flat and impoverished suburbs of a Midwestern metropolis. After I was orphaned, I made an impulsive decision to move to a beautiful city on the East Coast. I had fallen in love with its walkability, trees, history, and proximity to water. It quickly became my new home, physically and psychologically.
Some years later, I moved to a nearby state to go to grad school. The stay was supposed to be brief, but it has now been over a decade, and I suspect I’m not leaving! I was reluctant to consider it my home, and have only recently started thinking about it that way.
At the same time, I still feel that the Midwest is my home – that the people and the landscape shaped my approach to the world – and that the East Coast city is my home. But I don’t live there any more, and my residence is in this new state.
So where is home? I’m not entirely sure, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing!
Hi Francine!
Glad to have you back. :)
Your post strings several chords with me, I actually did it the opposite way from you and moved to the US from Western Europe a few years ago (am American, but board abroad), with only two suitcases and a messenger bag. I was never a hoarder and always somewhat of a minimalist, but after that I began to really appreciate having even less! Getting rid of all the stuff I could not take had still been a nightmare.
And ever since I have felt like you, a bit of a nomad, have family and friends on both sides of the ocean and never sure where “home” really is.
Currently we live in the South, which I have a very hard time adjusting to (the seemingly perpetual heat for one, and the severe weather so often as well) and now that both my husband and I work from home, we are trying to save up to move back to the Pacific Northwest. My husband is the exact opposite, no idea how we can actually make this work, but he is borderline hoarder. I do not get him and he does not get my view on owning less, but both realized it is impossible to swing the other over. So I live in something like a Jekyl-Hyde setting. :) Most of the home is under my control, and rather minimalistic and clean. But you will know his favorite spots and easily identify which of the home offices belongs to whom. (Yes, in my case the smaller house approach will not quite work, I refuse to share an office with him and will always want ONE room in a house that is solely mine where clutter will never have a chance.) :)
So while my current geographical location may not be truly “home”, when I am inside my four walls it is home. When I go overseas and visit family, it is as if I never left and again, as if I were coming home. True, the passport control is often an awakening, but since my passport lists where I was born, they do not give me any troubles. But it is nice to go thru US immigration and hear “Welcome home.”
So my long-wound answer to your question would be that I came to the conclusion that home is not truly a location, but a feeling, generated by a certain setting, certain people around you.
Keep up the great work with your enlightening and interesting stories!
Tori
Hooray!
I was just thinking about home this morning. I have lived in the same Kansas town since I was five. My family moved here from another close-by city in which I was born, and I have been here for 18 years, even though my parents have both moved to different towns. I just graduated from college here and got a full-time job right away, and so it looks like I will be here for some time longer. While I love this town and do call it my home, I am craving adventure and to be a foreigner somewhere. I guess you could say I’m overly comfortable in my home and want to experience NOT being at home for a while. Then maybe find a new place to call home.
Really interesting post and quite well timed for me. I’m an American expat living in Austrslia and I’m about to return to the States for about 9 months – the longest I’ve been back in 7 years is 1 month. I’m not sure how I feel about my ‘home’, it will be something to reflect on over the next few months.
I’m with A. If I have to pick one home, it’s where I am, unless I’m traveling, in which case it’s where my other stuff is.
But all the places I’ve lived in are a little bit home-like to me. In fact, some places I’ve never been are a little bit home-like to me, too, just because someone I care about lives there or has lived there. I’d even say that some fictional places are a bit home-like.
And, back to that one place I’ve called home, which changes whenever I move. Some of them are better homes than others. Some feel alien for a long time; some feel like home right away. So I currently live in my favorite place (lots of friends, good spring and winter and fall weather, good library system, good literacy and education level, good diversity tolerance, good ballroom dance community, good wildflowers). But I also miss some things about other places I’ve lived (good mass transit, good walkability, nice accents, greener plants, good autumn color, good summer weather).
And when I move to a new place, one of the first things I do (after unpacking the toilet paper, of course) is to put up pictures, even if I’m not quite sure of the final locations yet, and to unpack the books. These do not help me live a nice life, but they do help a place feel like mine and feel like I belong.
So I guess home is a place where I get to relax and be myself and live my life. And who “myself” is is based partly on all the different people and places I’ve known.
Delighted to have you back :)
I’ve lived a lot of places–and each one has been wonderful. It’s sad to say goodbye to the last place, but in the new place I always meet new friends and have interesting new experiences. All these moves have taught me that home is where my family and friends are (especially my husband.)
But…my “roots” are in Utah. I’m from a pioneer family that settled Utah generations ago, and I was raised there. So every time I fly into Salt Lake City, or drive into Utah Valley after a long absence, I get a tingly feeling in my stomach that I can’t explain. (I don’t get the same feeling when I visit, say, Seattle, where I lived for a few years.) Utah will always be my homecoming place.
Yay! You’re back. I have really missed your posts, although I have of course really enjoyed the new Real Life Minimalists.
As a Brit I’m always so jealous of the stories American’s tell about being welcomed home by their border control. Our guys are just surly to everyone. Over the last few years I’ve had consciously tried to elicit a smile from one of them by being as smiley and friendly as possible to them. No luck yet. On my first trip to the States a couple of years ago I loved how I was given a friendly welcme into the country at passport control.
What is home to me? Definitely England. Sadly also London where I was born and raised and still live. I don’t like it as I’m not a city person at heart but we feel trapped by family commitments and employment. Having said that I like that I live in the same area where I grew up – fairly rare amongst most people I come accross in London. I like the familiarity and the security, and I enjoy bonding with other people I come accross who have also not strayed far and have a lifetime of memories about the place. I even ended up with two people from my year at school living on the same road as me.
I would love to move to the country or the coast some time, and I definitely feel more “at home” in that kind of surrounding, but I do sometimes wonder if I would ever feel at home somewhere that I chose to live in the same way that I do in my birthplace, even if I felt more at happy and at ease there?
Totally agree with those sentiments, CJ. I commented above that I’m back in my home town. It’s one of the “new towns” built in Scotland after the Second World War and it is, in many ways, fairly dire. A core of ex-council housing surrounded by unplanned private suburbs. Terrible shops (which suits me and my minimalist tendencies) and very little “entertainment” as such. (Plenty parks, greenery and decent nurseries, though.) I don’t always relate to the majority of people living here.
I have visited so many beautiful parts of Scotland (Highlands, west coat, Neuk of Fife) and interesting cities (Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth) and wondered about living there. We are not tied here by work – we could live anywhere.
So why did we choose to return here? Family, that feeling of knowing our way around, the pleasure (mostly) of recognising many faces in town…
So, I get where you are coming from. Severing the umbilical with the home town isn’t always easy.
:-)
Karen
(Scotland)
Welcome Home !
And what beautiful, comforting words !
For me, Home is a place we feel Secure, Loved and Relaxed. Where we can exhale & Be our Authentic Selves ! Home really is in our Hearts & Souls, ~ and then extends from there, out into our physical surroundings. The Comforts of Home need only be the person (people) & animals we Love & Cherish. We bring our Energy & Vibration everywhere we go, so in time we are able to feel at Home in many places!
* HOME, it’s so great to be there !!! *
What a special blog ~ Thank you for reminding me to think about what Home REALLY means !!!
Many Blessings& Thanks to You
I lived abroad in Trinidad and Tobago for a few months, and it was hard on me. The first time I came back to the U.S. for a visit, the passport agent said the same thing to me – Welcome Home. It was an emotional moment; it felt so good to be back in my native country, in a familiar place. I felt a rush of joy and relief. Although I love travelling, the U.S. now holds a special place in my heart – it is my home.
I realized over the last few months after becoming mom to a six month old that ‘home’ to me is simply a place where I am closest to my near and dear ones. For that closeness I could give up all kinds of material possessions. Nothing replaces the closeness to your mum for instance, not even minimalism.
It’s so good to have you back!! Yaaaaayyyyy!!
What’s home? That’s a tough one; I think there are varying degrees of “home.” There’s the home as in the building where you live and where you feel comfortable in your space after going through an initial adjustment. I’ve had homes in places where I didn’t feel AT home, though, because I didn’t belong. Now, I have a home with my husband and kids in a place where I know this is the most at home I’ll ever feel, and it feels great. This is truly home because I know I belong.
Welcome back!!
To me, “home” is where I feel comfortable, where I can sleep easily at night, and where I can breathe. There are only a few places I have ever lived where I have felt that sense of peace: going back to my parents’ house (the same and only house I grew up in), my nana’s old house in Santa Fe, and my aunt’s ranch in the hill country of Texas. My current home, our first purchased house, does not feel like home. I’m not sure it ever will.
I hope you’re enjoying coming home, and I can’t wait to see what’s next!
The first time I went through U.S. passport control after being out of the states and they said “Welcome Home,” I nearly burst out in tears, it made me so happy.
CJ, when I visited London, I had a very nice experience at passport control. The gentleman there was very friendly and chatted for several minutes. I guess it just depends on the person and what kind of day they’re having.
Welcome back!! Home to me is where my family and loved ones (and my kitty) are. My parents just moved out of my childhood home (I’m 29 years old!!!) and it was bittersweet. I think becoming a minimalist prior to this move really helped me in knowing that material things don’t make us happy in the long run and what really matters are our personal relationships with others. I’d be happy living in a hut if I knew I was with those I loved.
Fantastic to hear from you again. We too are making a similar change. After nearly 26 years in Belize, we are returning to the USA a week from today. I am American … but after 26 years, I certainly am “Belizean-ized,” no doubt about it Am wondering whether the USA will feel like home or not, whether I can adapt and actually, how much I really WANT to adapt. I like my Belizean-ized self.
Hi Miss Minimalist,
I am so glad to have the opportunity to read new posts from you again – I am always inspired by your writing.
In my 16 years of marriage, we have moved half a dozen times and each new dwelling has had it’s pros & it’s cons. I have found that as long as I have my husband, kids and pets near me, the space is not all that important. We hope to make a big move to Vancouver, BC (my husband’s hometown) within the next year. For a born and raised Southerner, it’s an exciting proposition to not only move to another country but to be moving to the West Coast where the pace and lifestyle seem much different than what I’m used to. That move is the reason I began following your blog – we have years of accumulated stuff that I have no interest in dragging across the country. I look forward to the whole adventure; the preparation, the move itself and the prospect of exciting discoveries we’ll make in our new home.
Welcome back, Francine!! Or I should say, Welcome Home.
Glad you will be posting actively again. Yours is one of my favorite blogs.
As a minimalist, I still like the idea of having a home base. The US will alwsys me home to me and I’ll probably always keep a place here to come back to. But I envy you your time in England. I lived there for a summer but I’d love to spend more time there. It was fun living vicariously through your posts. I look forward to your future adventures back in the US!
indeed, welcome home!
as cheesy as it sounds, home is with my husband. i’m in the process of immigrating so there are things here that are still foreign to me and my paperwork isn’t permanent yet, but the place i share with my husband is home even if the world outside is still unfamiliar. and although i have no intentions of living in the US again, i always feel a sense of safety and comfort when the board guard returns my passport with a “welcome home”.
Welcome back to us and our nice community! I miss your posts! can’t wait to hear for the next surprises!!!
I have lots of homes. I can tell by the different places I mean when I say, “I’m going home.” One is where I spent my childhood–not the houses which are gone but the friends and family that still live in that area. One is the metropolitan area where I spent most of my life–the one where I know what alternate routes to take when the traffic is backed up. One was the RV we lived in for a few years while traveling around this great country seeing some of what it has to offer. And now it is the apartment we have settled into where my husband feels comfortable because he knows the local stores and parks–the place I will come back to after snowbirding each year.
Because I’m in a different state (being a native Michigander all my life), I’m still terribly homesick. So Michigan is my home. It’s not necessarily family, it’s the flora and fauna, the geography, the vibe. I am making plans to go home someday but that’s “home” to me. You can read more here about my thoughts on this: http://goo.gl/cegfk
BTW, welcome back! :)
So glad to have you back!
Welcome back. I have missed reading your posts. Am looking forward to finding out the other big surprises.
glad to see you back. :) I have been faithfully reading your blog. It has been a continual support and reminder. I still have a long way to go but having shed some material goods, I have begun to feel lighter. Keep up the good work on your blog and hopefully, I will always have a place to turn for support and inspiration.
Francine: As soon as I saw your post, (and knew it wasn’t time for “Real Life Minimalists) I thought in my mind, “Welcome back!” By the time I got to the end, I came to realize how appropriate that sentiment was! Welcome back and welcome home! Can’t wait for the next couple of surprises.
Welcome back Francine!! Missed your wonderful writing!
Welcome HOME, Francine!
Nice to have back, in US and on the blog. Can’t wait to read, where your life is taking you now? Good luck with everything …
Welcome Back!
Home is where you make it. Simple as that. Keeping it all simple makes this easy. Looking forward to more great posts. Best!
Welcome home! I just discovered your blog this past week and have been devouring the archives. Last night and today I read The Joy of Less. Let’s just say I’ve got a whole new perspective and am excited to jump in and PURGE.
By the time I started college, my family had lived in six states, Saudi Arabia and Canada. I left the U.S. in 7th grade and, aside from time in the summers to visit family, didn’t live here again until I went to college. It gave me a whole new perspective on what it means to be an American and how grateful I am to live here. I attended four different high schools, which means I went to college and put down roots. I have no desire to move again. My husband was born in a small East Texas town and lived there until he went to college (where we met). We enjoy traveling, but are always happy to return home to Dallas.
Welcome back, I’ve been so looking forward to reading your posts again :-)
Home is England in many ways, but mostly by culture, even though I only lived there for 5 years as a child and 2 as a teenager. Since I was 8 I have mostly lived in Switzerland, first in the French-speaking area and now, for the last 30 years in the German-speaking area and with my husband, daughters and grandchildren, so I also feel very much at home here, too. Fortunately for me, I am bilingual, so that helps. But it will be strange when my grandmother dies and we lose our British Midlands outpost. (Border control: what is the purpose of your visit? holiday. oh, whereabouts? West Bromwich. laughter… who goes on holiday there?! Especially when I travel on a Swiss passport!).
I am interested to see if you will include your broader perspective in future posts, having lived in England and experienced more of the world than most Americans. Many blogs seem far too focussed on the US for my liking!
Nice to see you back, anyway…
Welcome back from a (mostly) lurker. I missed your wonderful writing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about where my soul feels at home – I’ve decided it’s not so much a place, but a proximity to my husband, friends, the outdoors, and the ability to help others.
I was so pleased when I found your blog a couple of months ago. I was so overwhelmed with how my life had become and where my life was going!
A couple of years ago, I lost my memory and when I came home from the hospital I was so overwhelmed by all the “stuff” in my home. It was too much! I had to relearn where everything was and my brain could only take in so much.
I basically retreated to my little office, where this became my haven and I only had the minimal things that I needed. Many things happened over the next 2 years.
Recently, I had many health problems and in the midst of all the health problems we got a 30 day notice to vacate the home we had lived in for 10 years. I was again, so overwhelmed! What to do with all the stuff.
As I have followed you, I have rid my life (and my daughters) of anything we don’t truly need. I am still working on this every day. My husband on the other hand grew up on a farm and his mentality is “I might need this, and I don’t want to have to run into town to buy a new one, so I better keep it”. I’ve been trying to be an example, but I don’t know if he’ll come around.
Making my life simple, with few things to see and think about, and fill my mind with, has helped in my healing process. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart! I still have much work to do, but I am definitely headed in the right direction!
2 years ago I had a big purge prior to moving abroad to work.
Now after nearly 2.5 years I’m purging the little I have here in preparation to go ‘home’ to the UK. : )
And I know that when I get home and start unpacking the things I put in storage with family members there’ll be more donations to the charity shop.
Less is more – especially as I’m not opposed to having another stint working overseas should the opportunity arise.
I’ve never commented before on your blog, though I’ve been reading your posts for over 2 years. I just had to say…I’m SO glad you’re back! Welcome home indeed!