Why we're done with the “forever home”

The day we bought out first home in Durham, NC

With our dog Louis in our beloved Chicago apartment

Our oldest daughter’s nursery, days before we brought her home from the hospital

Our (still new-to-us) home in Winston-Salem

If you’ve ever been house shopping (God bless your soul), you’ve been asked “So are you looking for your ‘forever home’?” Implying: 1) you can see into your future 2) you need a house for today’s life season…and every future one, too 3) and if it’s not a life-long commitment, it’s probably not worth doing much to do it.

Of course American homes have never been harder to buy, often requiring some combination of inherited wealth, luck, and the ability to stomach bidding wars. The chance that what you buy checks every box is unlikely, and the whole experience becomes an exercise in expectation adjustment. And even if you root down a bit longer raising kids, you’ll likely downsize as empty nesters. We just can’t and shouldn’t expect a single house to hold us through all of life’s chapters.

But my biggest beef with the phrase is that it suggests we only have one home worth *really* living in, worth waiting for to feel satisfied. And if your current home isn’t *that* one, there’s no need to really invest (financially, visually, emotionally).

What if we lived like every home is our forever home?

The more you surround yourself with things you love, the more you’ll feel at peace. Build shelves, hang wallpaper, paint your trim, get weird and creative and childlike. Fill your rooms with character and the next dweller will feel all the life, love, and laughter inside (just don’t display that sign, mk?).

Because your perfect pie-in-the-sky house might not ever come. You may fall in love with exactly where you are for longer than you think, or you might get uprooted because of [enter a million reasons why]. Finding contentment in your current place should be your only goal, forever.