Home is wherever we are together…

It was Spring break week and 78 days away from the start of our journey around the world. These were all good incentives to finally tackle the walls in our home!

In two weeks our home will officially be on the market and we have to get it ready for staging. We have to make it look beautiful, depersonalizing it from being ours and make it perfect for someone else.

Our home

We bought our home in 2010 after a lot of looking and a few unaccepted offers. When my husband and I walked in this house, we looked at each other and knew right away. This was going to be our happy place, our little nest where our kids were going to grow up.

Emma learned how to crawl and walk here. Cosimo learned how to walk and eventually run down the stairs, he learned how to speak English, telling us what everything was in this new language!

They both learned how to go on their bikes, swim, play all over the backyard. They have been through every upgrade we have done, every change. Luca was born in this house, he learned to crawl, walk and run here as well.

This house has our heart. It is the container of 8 years of beautiful memories and our walls reveal this. My passion for photography has brought me to fill our walls with photos of trips, simple memories, little achievements, crazy adventures, our kids art and anything that I felt could make this OUR HOME.

It is messy, there are toys everywhere, my photography props and equipment are in many corners. The books fill every possible shelf (many we haven’t even read!), the only tidy person the house is Mass! This mess is us, it shows who we are, where we come from and how we have grown in the years. It is a real chaos, but it is our happy chaos!

Who wants to buy someone else’s mess though?! No one!!!

Taking everything down

I was dreading and postponing for weeks the moment when I would have to take our memories down and store them in a box. I finally did it, I slowly took down all our meaningful pieces. I got terribly nostalgic with each photo, each object, each piece of decor that was on our walls. They all have a special meaning connected to our family.

It was rough, specially when my oldest son told me “Mom it feels like we are leaving our house tomorrow, it is so empty”. It is incredible how much wall art and photos can fill your house and give it a personality. However once it is all gone it makes it feel so empty.

I have realized that it has been more painful to take down all our family pictures than the idea of actually selling the house. This confirms what I keep on reminding my kids. “We are the ones that make our home, not the 4 walls that we live in or the things we own, just our love, our family, the memories we share and the life we built together. So as long as we are together what else do we need?”

My grandmother used to tell me “Never give your heart to a house”.  I have lived in a few different ones in my life and a part of me as always had a hard time letting go, also if I was moving towards something new and better. This time that my heart should really be glued to this house, I really understand the meaning of those words. My home is the beautiful people who make it, not the physical structure. So wherever we will go, wherever we will be, we will always be home because we are together.