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Angel
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I just got back from a trip to my parents' house, and I'm reflecting on all the "little things" that seem important to me in making a house feel like a home. I noticed that there were many things about my parents' house lacking in my own that made me feel more like I was "home" there and sort of "surviving" here. (Of course, they've been in their house for 30 years and we've been in ours a year, but... anyway...)
One of the little things that makes me feel at home is having enough kitchen towels. And also, juice glasses. My kids drink out of mugs -- we have a lot of mugs -- but it always makes me feel a little funny, because in my mind you drink hot drinks from mugs, not water or milk or juice. On the other hand, mugs don't get broken as easily.
What are some of the little things that make you feel "at home"?
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Angela
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lapazfarm
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Some of the things that make me feel at home, that my mom always had for us growing up and I make it a point to have here in my home:
Always having a bowl full of fruit available, free-choice, any time.
Always milk in the fridge. (If I am out of milk I feel like a bad, bad mom!LOL!)
The smell of Comet and PineSol. Smells like "clean" to me.
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Theresa
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Erin
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Angela
Do you mean 'make you feel at home' because they represent a homey feeling to you as they speak that way to you, or 'make you feel at home' because they remind you of your childhood home in some way?
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Angel
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Erin wrote:
Angela
Do you mean 'make you feel at home' because they represent a homey feeling to you as they speak that way to you, or 'make you feel at home' because they remind you of your childhood home in some way? |
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Oops, sorry... I mean "represent a homey feeling". For instance, we are constantly running out of kitchen towels at our house; I don't where they go! Over the weekend, I discovered that having a plentiful supply of kitchen towels makes me feel much more settled, like I am not always living on the edge. Constantly running out of kitchen towels, or making due with the bare minimum, makes me feel as if I am just in a house, making due. An adequate supply of kitchen towels -- neatly folded in the drawer and available whenever I need one -- would make me feel more as if I had it together, as if I belonged in the place, as if I was "home". Does that say something weird about me that so much hinges on a few pieces of cloth? 
Anyway, I was just thinking that it's often not the big things, like whether the oven is in the right place or if the walls are painted the right shade, but something as simple as if the drawer is full of cheerful kitchen towels.
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Angela
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Erin
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Thanks, just wanted to be on the same page with you.
Having a tablecloth on the table represents homey for me. That I can manage.
So have you dug out your tea towels yet?
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guitarnan
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Things I like:
Lots of clean dishtowels
Plenty of food on hand in case an unexpected guest turns up (rare, but it does happen)
CLEAN bathrooms 
A pretty, properly-set table at dinnertime
(Weird alert!) Promptly-washed dishes after every meal...I was not like this until I became a daycare provider. Now I can't stand to see dishes in the sink.
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lapazfarm
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guitarnan wrote:
(Weird alert!) Promptly-washed dishes after every meal...I was not like this until I became a daycare provider. Now I can't stand to see dishes in the sink. |
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Well, I guess that makes me weird, too!LOL! I cannot stand dirty dishes in the sink and I cannot cook dinner if there are any. I have to cook in a clean kitchen. 
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Theresa
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Mackfam
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This thread makes me think of Maureen O'Hara's line in the movie, Quiet Man, where Mary Kate talks about how important it is for her to have her things about her. 
So, I suppose it wouldn't be so little for me either. I'd want to have "my things about me."
I like having my pretty white milk glass vases out and available for wildflowers.
I would want my collection of favorite cookbooks and my little recipe basket out.
I like my pantry stocked.
Coffee maker in a place of esteem on the counter with my pretty cobalt blue glass canister full of Community coffee and ready to brew. (Big home memories there!!! Growing up, the smell of fresh Community Coffee brewing evokes such feelings of warmth and sunny mornings full of potential!)
Clean sink.
Pretty aprons.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Angel
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Community Coffee is good. I have some in my cup right now. I'm such a creature of habit; I like to use the same cup every day, too. It has a picture of several different breeds of birds on a wire, from hummingbird to Blue Jays. I think it was supposed to technically be my dd's.
I like a clean sink, too, but -- tough in this house!! Plants in the kitchen are another thing for me, and I love having vases of flowers around... must make more of an effort to have them on a regular basis.
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Angela
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SallyT
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Having the table set nicely for dinner is a huge one for me. My mother has always set not a formal table, necessarily, but a pretty one, with lovely old china (again, not formal, but old English ironstone that she's collected, and I also have collected in spurts), a tablecloth or nice placemats, and wildflowers in old blue bottles or some other easy, casual, seasonal thing. That makes dinner a real dinner for me. I don't always do the flowers, and as often as not my kids are the ones setting the table, so sometimes it looks wonky, but we always use a tablecloth, and I always put some effort into choosing, or helping them to choose, dishes that will look pretty together, even if they don't necessarily match.
And yes, a clean kitchen. I can't stand leftover dishes when I'm ready to cook. We eat most meals in the kitchen, so that's a double incentive to make sure that our surroundings are clean and tidy.
A general sense of order: milk, fruit for snacking, at least the makings of dinner (ever since we got back from taking the big girl to college, I've been really hand-to-mouth with meal planning, and need to get back on the wagon), bathroom tidy and stocked with supplies, beds made, people's stuff put away. My mother keeps an extremely orderly house -- for one person, whereas we're keeping house for six, so one has to be realistic! But every time I go home, I realize how at peace her orderly-but-not-sterile house makes me feel.
And I love that she puts flowers in creative little containers and has nice houseplants in virtually every room, and they're actually not dead, which gives the room an automatic cared-for look. In my house, things tend to be dead before I even remember that they're there, which imparts to the room a certain "this woman is not paying attention" ambiance which I think we could really do without.
Great thread, Angela!
Sally
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Becky Parker
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Mackfam wrote:
This thread makes me think of Maureen O'Hara's line in the movie, Quiet Man, where Mary Kate talks about how important it is for her to have her things about her.
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Love that movie!!
I never really thought about how it makes me feel "homey" but now that you mention it, having plenty of clean kitchen towels is very important. I buy them frequently and retire the really sad looking ones to the "rag bag".
A table cloth on the table is a must around here.
My blue and white dishes on the china hutch.
Glasses! I love juice glasses and water glasses! But, ya know what? I only have 4 of each. Everything else is plastic. Not very pretty but with 5 boys it's more practical.
Pretty china that rarely gets used but always available for special occasions.
The Christmas dishes that were passed down to me. They only come out at Christmas time but we all love them. Last year with the baby being born on December 11, I just completely forgot to get them out. Christmas day, first thing in the morning, instead of heading for the Christmas presents the kids all checked the dining room table and were totally dismayed that the Christmas dishes were not out! (I always thought they were only important to me, but I guess I was wrong about that.)
Clean, line dried sheets in the summer. There's nothing better than crawling into a freshly made bed when the sheets have been dried on the line!
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SallyT
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My mother irons her sheets, and I love the way they feel, but I haven't aspired to that level yet myself!
Sally
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DianaC
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For me, the attribute that makes me feel the most at home is a good smell. It can either be just a freshly cleaned house or dinner cooking, but if it is a good smell, I'm very settled.
It's funny that you mention juice glasses. We have had ours for years and are down to only 3 now. I've been looking for over a year for replacements, but noone seems to sell them any more - of any pattern. Has anyone seen any?
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Chris V
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I love this thread! I love hearing about other people's homes and what's important to them 
SallyT wrote:
| My mother irons her sheets, and I love the way they feel, but I haven't aspired to that level yet myself! |
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Wow. Just WOW. I don't even iron my husband's work-shirts.
lapazfarm wrote:
| I cannot stand dirty dishes in the sink and I cannot cook dinner if there are any. I have to cook in a clean kitchen. |
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Me too! I can't even begin to prepare a meal until I have a clean orderly kitchen to begin working in.
I am a very visual person, so the appearance of my home is very important to me - not only from a neat and tidy perspective, but from a decor perspective too.
When I come home, I always enter my house through the door inside the garage. That door leads immediately to the laundry room; so I always have a beautiful looking laundry room (because it can immediately make me grumpy if I walk into my house and see a mess before me, ugh.) So... some flowers on the window sill, beautiful candle sitting adjacent the flowers are always there. The clothes don't necessarily have to all be put away upstairs, but they must be folded and tidy (again, it's a visual thing). And certainly no dirty clothes to be seen, they can rest in the wicker-laundry basket under the cabinets (it's not as though I have to SEE the dirty laundry to remind me it needs to be done, I'm well aware that my laundry basket is rarely empty).
I do love candles, so having fresh candles to burn (yes, I actually LIGHT my candles nearly every day), once they start to look a little too used and lose their fragrance, I promptly swap them out.
Pretty pillows on the sofa. Love my sofa pillows
Hot water for tea at a moment's notice.
Plenty of honey in the honey pot. 
My girls usually chose the table centerpiece each week, but recently I found a delightful decorative wood box that is perfect for housing crayons, so for the last couple of months we've had a small stack of fresh paper and the new pretty wood box full of crayons as our table centerpiece. I love it ! Of course, my girls still bring in whatever goodies they've found or picked from the yard to adorn the table, but I've left the stack of paper and crayons there each day as a more permanent fixture.
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Chris V
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...It's funny, all the talk of juice glasses that people have. Way, way, way before kids, my husband and I couldn't settle on what plates we liked, glasses we wanted, cutlery, etc (we didn't formally register when we got married, so we started all from scratch with those things). So we began keeping our salad dressing jars, old jam jars, honey jars, and the like, for our drinking glasses. Fast forward 14 years, we still use those to drink out of, and have never ever bothered to actually buy "real" drinking glasses. We've had people compliment us on our collection (thinking that we were being intentional about our eclectic flare), but I assure you, it's really out of laziness more than anything , and now we're just too cheap to replace them!
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Mackfam
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DianaC wrote:
| It's funny that you mention juice glasses. We have had ours for years and are down to only 3 now. I've been looking for over a year for replacements, but noone seems to sell them any more - of any pattern. Has anyone seen any? |
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I find useful and pretty glasses of all sizes at the thrift store.
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MicheleQ
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Yes, tons at thrift stores! I recently bought nice drinking glasses at Dollar General and have bought sets at K-Mart as recently as a year ago.
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SallyT
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Chris, I'm not much for ironing in general, either. Occasionally when the kids need something to do, I give them the job of ironing napkins, which they love for some reason, so sometimes my napkins look really lovely. But then, sometimes not.
And we use jars for glassware, too. Once all our nice glasses broke, we had to do something, and here were all these Mason jars in our life . . .
Sally
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Trinity
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SallyT wrote:
My mother irons her sheets, and I love the way they feel, but I haven't aspired to that level yet myself!
Sally |
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Oh goodness, my grandmother used to iron everything. Even the underwear!
I like our home to be reasonably clean and tidy. As much as one can with children and pets. I think what makes it feel like home is all the little things together: lace curtains, pretty tablecloths, books in each room, the family altar, crucifixes in each bedroom and one in the living room, religious pictures and family photos hanging on the walls, the smell of something good cooking and just having everyone gathered together.
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Pilgrim
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We use Mason jars for glasses a lot to. We have quite the conglomeration (sp?) of drinking ware, from mason jars, to actual clear drinking glasses, to favorite mugs that get used for hot or cold.
~What makes it homey for me is having the couch cleared so we can all sit on it together for Family Prayers.
~I love hanging sheets on to lines to!!! Bring back great memories of childhood. Unfotunately for a good portion of the year I can't hang stuff on the line due to dh and ds's allergies. 
~Having the lawn mowed makes it feel nice and homey. Don't know why.
~Nice, neatly folded laundry.
~ Clean smells.
~ A clean living room... a rare thing with so much LIVING going on in it.
~ A clean kitchen.
~Organized kitchen cupboards.
~Freshly cleaned windows.
~ A bed made up with fresh sheets, made to my gradmother's perfection.
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: little things
