Looking at the fire thread made me wonder. Are you emotionally attached to your house? Let’s say that you had temporarily removed all of your belongings because you were going to remodel and it was destroyed - would it be terribly upsetting to you or would you shrug your shoulders and move on?
I’m not saying that there is a right or wrong answer, just curious.
For us. We built this house 23 years ago. I did a fair bit of the work myself, with my father helping. When we laid the tile in the kids bedroom closets, we left one tile out and put their hand-prints and name in the mortar.
If something happened to it, I would be pretty upset. But we’ve talked about selling and moving, so I could move on a bit easier than my wife.
Do you have an emotional attachment to your house? If so/not - why?
Only been in our house for about 3 years, so no, not really. Wife has done some projects to improve it but nothing that I would imagine she would be devastated to lose. In fact, I think she’d probably enjoy the blank slate in a new home to do those projects again but with even better results.
But at this point I think we both regret not buying something a little bigger and I especially wish we had a bigger yard.
But our interest rate is so low it makes it hard to realistically consider moving until we can somehow save up enough for a down payment to buy a second house to then rent this one out.
I think the emotional attachments are multi-faceted, not just the house itself.
It’s the possessions in the house that matter/hurt most – photos, trophies, medals, . . . IM pics(?)…, etc. Especially if irreplaceable. (e.g. Gary Hall Jr.'s olympic medals are gone).
Then there’s the emotional attachment to the place - neighbors, friends,
Then there’s the house itself - especially if custom home, or recently remodeled to one’s tastes, etc.
For me, it’s the first that would suck/hurt the most. The rest can be rebuilt.
Yes and no.
I’ve put a LOT of sweat equity in to our place. We bought our 1958 home in 2015 and the first thing I did was rip out the basement and put a suite in (rents are very high here). I spent the better part of a year’s worth of evenings and weekends working on it like an absolute dog - I gave myself one weekend day off a month - I worked on it through the bulk of my wife’s first pregnancy and finished two weeks before the baby’s due date.
Over the next few years I chipped away at building other things. A large deck, some landscaping etc. Then a couple of years ago, coincidentally during our next pregnancy, we moved in to the basement suite for 7 months while I gutted the main floor, including ripping out the entire masonry chimney. This was a lot less stressful as at this point I had my own construction crew, but still did an insane amount of work myself.
I feel like I have touched and worked on every single inch of this house. We raised our family here, got our dog when we moved in, and so on, so there are a lot of great and intense memories here. On the other hand, I know it’s just a piece of property and nobody else cares or values it the same way I do. I’ll be sad to close the chapter on this place at some point.
I went through the exercise of taking a car load of belongings from our ski condo when we were placed on pre-evac status a number of years ago. It wasn’t even our primary home- but it was a really strange thing to do. It is my happy place.
I grabbed my mtn bike - because nobody makes good cross country bikes anymore and the cost of replacing it would be ridiculous vs. it’s actual value.
A painting and photos of a community service project we did. My favorite trucker hat and hoodie. A framed poster my parents gave me before they passed.
It’s really weird having time and thinking do I care more about this object than replacement value?
Yes, huge. It’s old (>100 years old), full of character and is the only home my 3 kids remember. We did a ton of renovations when we moved in and will be working on the house constantly till we die (which I expect to be before we leave). The thought of losing the house is horrible to me, and we’ve only been here 10 years.
My apartment building in Chamonix burnt down. Wed had it for a few years. Spent large amounts of time there. Had close ties but no personal valuables in it.
It was annoying.
If my house burnt down, beyond my family and a handful of personal belongings I’m pretty ambivalent
It would suck to lose our art and books but the rest of it I feel less attached to
We’ve lived in our house for about 28 years. However, except for some personal items like photos, etc., I wouldn’t miss most of it. On our dead end street in the development we live in, there are 6 other homes of the same model as ours. Although over the years we have worked to do things to differentiate our house, it’s basically the same as many others. The neighborhood has deteriorated over the years. We live in an area with a high concentration of military families and there is a high turnover rate. As a result, many of the yards are poorly maintained. Because our neighbors have changed quite often, we really don’t have much of a relationship with any of them.
The house is also now bigger than we need. When we first moved in, our 3 kids were all here. Now the 5 bedroom, 4 bath home is not being fully utilized. We’d probably move except my wife’s parents and one of the kids live nearby. Plus, the home is fully paid for.
We keep a “go” bag and a fire safe with important papers we could take quickly in an emergency. Of course, that’s assuming we’re at home. We travel in our motorhome 3-4 months a year. We were out of town a few years ago when 100+ mph winds blew through our area. Fortunately no fires, but many trees were uprooted in the neighborhood, fences blown down and roofs damaged. Only very minor damage at our house.
Yes and no. We had our house built exactly to our specs in 2007. I did not have them do anything outside other than the septic, front and back steps, and a gravel driveway. On the inside we kept things pretty basic and did a lot of the upgrades ourselves.
Everything outside the house is there because I put it there. After they got done building it was a moonscape. Between house excavation and septic there was barely anything besides bare dirt. So every garden and tree beside a couple along a drainage easement in the front and a thin strip of woods along the back I did. Over 100 trees and bushes, and every garden area.
Inside the house we have never stopped adding and improving. We made a list a while back and it was stupid long. Some small like replacing wire shelves in a couple closets with wood shelving. Some big like casing the windows and replacing all the trim and baseboards, or laying 1400 sq ft of hardwood floor. And everything in between.
I am very proud of the work we have done.
But there are 3 or 4 places in the world I would move to tomorrow if the wife agreed and only occasionally look back.
No, not even really attached to the stuff in it either. Sure it would be a pain in the ass to replace stuff but not going to shed a tear over losing it.
The house itself? No. Frankly, it would be nice to be shot of some of it.
Possessions? Yes, to some extent. I could probably gather up what I really care about in one or two armfuls though. (Not so for my wife - she has a lot of fixation on physical possessions.)
The stress on my wife and kid of losing the safe place they consider home? And having to find a new one, that still fits our needs in terms of education for the kid, work opportunities, etc.? Yeah, that’s a huge thing.
interesting no one spoke of their surroundings… We have a 150+ old house we have basically gutted bit by bit. I am not terribly attached to the house, there are of course items that could never be replaced like photos etc, but truthfully if a fire came through and devastated the acres of wood next to our house and around our property (100’s of acres), that would be really hard to deal with. If the house only burned and we could get the important things out meh. Most of what is great about where we live is “where we live”. not what we line in.
To play it out is interesting though, especially given the LA horrorscape. I’m attached to my house and my community. If my house burned down and I could rebuild it like for like on my property I would do so. But what if your house burns, or even survives, but everything around it is gone and will be gone for years?
You bring up an interesting point. When Hurricane Michael hit us, I lost my pole barn, shop, greenhouse, pump house and a metal shed. We had some damage to the house, but what upset us the most was the loss of several large oak trees near the house. One had a triple trunk and was beautiful.
Exactly we were hit by a freak hurricane/ post tropical storm, and it took down a huge linden tree in front of the house that was probably nearly the age of the house (150 or so). Somehow it just grazed the house and did no real damage. We lost probably a hundred trees around our property and in particular what is consider a hedge row along the highway… we now see car lights at night which never happened before the storm. This brought home the feeling of what we had and what we lost. Those mature trees will not come back in our life time.