This house has held every version of us.
The birthdays.
The bad days.
The muddy shoes.
The quiet mornings.
The arguments.
The laughter.
The people who came in and never quite left.
It has held children growing taller against the doorframe, washing that is never quite finished, flowers returning each spring, and things broken but never properly fixed.
It has held the details nobody else would notice.
The pine floors worn smooth by footsteps.
The crooked family photographs.
The junk drawer full of things nobody can quite throw away.
The blankets left in a heap on the couch.
The bath toys that survived long after bath time became showers.
The smell of toast and apricot jam in the morning.
The traces of family gathering in every room.
This House is a collection of short vignettes about the ordinary details that turn a house into a home.
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The story behind the book
I have always loved houses.
When I was little, my dad and I visited display homes and open houses on weekends just for fun.
I would walk through them imagining where everything would go: which room would be mine, which would belong to my sister, and where I’d put my bed, pinball machine, and inflatable furniture (well it was the ‘90s!).
Then I would go home and design my own.
I built houses out of cardboard and paper, drew floor plans, rearranged rooms, and dreamed about them.
For a while, I couldn’t decide what kind of house I wanted.
Sometimes it was clean, white, and bright.
Sometimes it was dark, moody, and completely maximalist.
I swung between the two, designing one imaginary house after another.
Now I think I know what I was really dreaming about.
Not houses.
Homes.
Because these days, I don’t particularly care if a house is perfectly designed.
I just want it filled with happiness.
Our house isn’t simply somewhere we live.
It is where we raise our children, celebrate, and go when someone needs somewhere to be.
It is where we laugh, cry, argue, and make up.
Where birthday candles are blown out.
Where bad days are recovered from.
Where children know they are safe.
Where we go when the outside world has been a bit too much.
It is our safe house.
Our recharge house.
Our family house.
In many ways, it feels like a fifth member of our family, with its own personality, noises, smells, and rhythms.
I wanted to write about the quiet life inside a home: how a house gathers the people who live in it, holds their traces, and changes as they do.
After enough birthdays, winters, summer afternoons, and ordinary Tuesdays, you look around and realise the walls aren’t just holding your life, they are part of it.
This House is my love letter to the place we call home.
Because a house isn’t just a house.
It is our home.