Home Is Where The Heart Is - What Does Home Mean?

Home is where the heart is may seem a simple statement but the older I get the more I feel it. Not only that, the more I appreciate it and feel for those who don’t have a safe haven at the end of the day.

On reflecting on that, I wondered what does home mean? To me, it is somewhere safe, cosy and warm where I get to unwind from the everyday stresses of life. Where I get to explore my hobbies of crochet, reading, cooking, gardening and writing. It’s also a space to spend time with family, which is super important to me and my priority over everything.

I used to travel a lot with work and always felt a pull to home at the end of the trip and glad to be home. I can’t really put into words but the feeling of a plane landing on the runway made me so happy to be coming home. Don’t get me wrong, I was so lucky to be in a job where I got to see so many amazing places that I perhaps wouldn’t have seen on holidays. But I loved coming home and I am also glad that I did the travelling at a young age and now don’t need to go away. Coming through the front door and being welcomed back into the home is a feeling I will never forget.

What our homes are to us has changed over the last few years as well. To many they have become our place of work, if we’re fortunate to work in a role that can be done from anywhere. It is very important to remember to make a line between work and home so that at the end of the day, work finishes and home life begins.

With home being so important to me, it is no surprise that I do love some DIY and gardening. A house is never done, there is always something else to decorate, repair, maintain, tidy, clean and generally make it the welcoming place we call home and all of that takes time. It’s not easy to balance staying on top of all of that when we’re all so busy with everything else going on in our lives. So, in some respects you actually have to enjoy doing it or it gets neglected and before you know it there is a massive list of tasks to get through and some things just never get done.  

I find nothing more frustrating than looking out the window at a lovely sunny day thinking it would be ideal to work on some garden tidying or weeding but knowing I can’t because work gets in the way. Even more annoying is knowing the weekend forecast is rain and those tasks get pushed down the road again and become a bigger job than they should be. If only we had consistent and prolonged sunshine. Anyone else feeling that frustration?

What else makes a home. To me, it is a dog. Well not just any dog. Our beloved Lhasa Apso, Arnie. His cheeky character, his wagging tail, his excitement to see us when we come home and the cuddles and snuggles with the fur ball. He's supper cute and thinks he owns the house but there is nothing better than coming in after a long day at work to have him leap up for cuddles and show how happy he is to have me home.

So, as I ramble along in my musings of my happy home life I’ll go back to the point of starting this discussion. What does home mean?

I think I can best sum it up by saying that to me home is a feeling. Home is what is important to every individual. No two homes are the same just as no two people are the same. Home keeps me busy but also makes me slow down. Home is family so ultimately, home is love so if we’re lucky then, by extension, home truly is where the heart is.