There's no place like home

This weekend marks one whole year of living in our ‘new’ house. I’ll admit, I wasn’t always sure about moving to Uddingston. I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life living in a large town, desperate to move to the city. When I did finally relocate to Glasgow, I never thought I’d leave. I loved the buzz and convenience of living amid the hustle and bustle, but I knew it would never make a feasible family home. Moving back to a town meant finally accepting the end of my youth as I knew it. I’d come full circle, and it was a bit scary.

I needn’t have worried. A year down the line, I’m absolutely in love with the place. I haven’t always had the most stable home life, so it was important to me that when we finally did settle down, it would be in a place where we could establish roots. It was to be a forever home. And so on 19 September 2014, the day after the Scottish independence referendum (having had next to no sleep and only an Egg McMuffin for sustenance), Neil put down our deposit for what would be known over the next eleven months as ‘plot 12.’

We had to trample through bushes to catch the first glimpse of our half-built house, and only then did it start to feel real. 

However, it would be another four months before we were finally handed the keys, having never stepped inside. I fell in love instantly, and that feeling has only grown over the past year as we’ve added the finishing touches to turn an empty shell of a house into a much-loved home.

We have a new weekend ritual now. Every Saturday morning, we clean. And despite moaning about it, those few hours hoovering up cat hair and scrubbing the toilets make me feel very content. Because I know that I am very lucky indeed. Not to have such a beautiful house - it wasn’t luck that paid for that - but to have a home where I can be happy being me. That is a gift that not everyone can know.

To some, home may mean the place they grew up, or the place where their ‘things’ are. But to me, home is not a place, but a feeling. It’s relief when I step through the doorway after a long day at the office, and it’s safety when I lock the door behind me. It’s comfort when I dive into bed at night (or more often discomfort when the cat jumps in beside me.) It’s belonging when the neighbours say hello, or warmth when I snuggle up in my favourite chair to read. It is my sanctuary. My soft place to land.  And above all, a place where I can take off my bra. It’s just… home. And as Dorothy so eloquently put it, there’s no place like it.