I have an adult house. Not in a sex swing, domination dungeon sort of way, but in a kid-unfriendly, don’t touch that, be careful sort of way. Remember when you were a kid and your mother dragged you along to some bridal shower or Tupperware party and you were at a house with no children, no toys, and lots of breakable stuff? That happened to me a lot.
My mother always lectured me in the car to be on my best behavior. Maybe Iwas allowed to bring one toy from home to keep me occupied. Maybe the annoyed and nervous hostess would pull out some broken down crappy toys from the back of a closet for me to play with while figuring out how to protect her display of Precious Moments figurines from my inherent childish destructiveness. I was always bored. It was never any fun, and I always wondered what was wrong with these people. The concept of a house with no toys, no playroom, and lots of breakable stuff was foreign to me, unnatural.
This is my house.
How did this happen? Of course there is the obvious lack of children to blame, but my house seems more kid unfriendly than most childless homes I have been to. Maybe a lack of nieces or nephews or friends with children is to blame too?
When I married my husband, he lived in a 900 square foot condo and I moved in. Actually I had lived there for a year already, but whatever. We also rented two storage units on opposite sides of town filled with furniture from my apartment, wedding gifts, and off-season wardrobes. Eventually we couldn’t take the tight quarters and condo drama anymore (our neighbor had a bad habit of sleeping with people’s boyfriends, and as a result had been the victim of vandalism more than once). We started looking for a new home. This was difficult financially, as my husband was in graduate school and not working at the time. Thank you, sub-prime lending market, for making my dream of home ownership possible.
We had a difficult time deciding where to live. Should we move to a row house in the city for a few years, and then move to a good school district once our unborn children reached school age? (Our city schools are currently not accredited.) Or should we move to the suburbs and start to settle in to suburban family life? I was very pro-city-move. Even an outbreak of violent home invasions in the city neighborhood I wanted to move to didn’t dissuade me. It wasn’t until we witnessed a domestic violence attack on the way to an open house that I caved: suburbs it would be.
We intentionally purchased a home that would allow us to grow a family, 2200 square feet and four bedrooms. Due to our budget constraints, we purchased an older home that needed work. We sacrificed things like new construction, a large lot, a fabulous kitchen, and luxurious bathrooms. We moved in our furniture and for the first year we continued to live a 900 square foot life in our 2200 square foot house, existing mostly in three rooms; our bedroom, the kitchen, and the family room. The rest of the house was comprised of empty rooms, literally.
If we had had children “on plan,” these empty rooms would have been taken over by kid things and kid activities. The formal living room and dining room space would have remained empty and become a make shift playroom filled with toys. Instead, these rooms are now a non-kid friendly formal living roomand dining room filled with “don’t spill on this” type furniture. The family room’s built-in shelves would have held children’s books, black and white candid photos of our children, and perhaps more toys. Instead, they are filled with interesting arrangements of potentially kid-dangerous, “don’t put your eyes out,” flea market antique finds. The extra bedrooms would belongto a toddler and a baby, but have instead morphed into a well-appointed guest room and a relaxing reading room.
The only room we have for a child in the “too big” house we bought for the purpose of procreation is a small bedroom reserved as a nursery. There is no playroom. I cannot visualize how toys will fit into our family room. I don’t know where it is safe for a toddler to crawl. The thought of fingerprints on my newly painted walls makes me cringe.
Obviously, all these things can and will change if we have a child, but decorating these rooms has been “my baby” for the past two years. Looking back to the kid free homes I visited as a child, I can’t believe that I am here. I am that person. There is not one toy in my home. I do not own any Disney DVDs. There is no place for children to roam and feel free to be children. What happened?
“Real mothers” would probably disagree, but decorating a home requires many of the same qualities and resources as raising a child; time, patience, discipline, money, nurturing, consistency, care, attention to detail. When I was a little girl, I dreamt of being a mommy to a human baby. I did not dreamof finding the perfect “coordinating but not matching” throw pillows for my new sofa.
I mother my home because I have nothing else to mother.
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Megan is a professional accountant and an amateur at just about everything else. In her free time she crafts, travels, spends time with her husband Tony, and gets vaginal ultrasounds. She and Tony are still trying to conceive their first child after one miscarriage and two cancelled IVF cycles. She blogs at Bottoms Off and On the Table.