Ideal Home?

After nine years my home – a private-rented property – is finally meeting my needs. Which is very important when you spend so much time in it!

I moved into my home nine years ago but only now, nine years later, can I start to enjoy it the way I always thought I could. I feel happy, content and relaxed for the first time. Achieving (almost) ideal home status took a great deal of back-breaking work – and the realisation that I needed to be something that does not come easy to me – selfish.

Why? Well, primarily because I decided some months ago that I should be selfish. I should lay out my home to suit me and not guests or visitors. It is unlike me to be selfish, and it took a while to settle on a few facts that pointed inexorably in that direction. I am a single person living on my own. I spend all day most days at home, due primarily to limitations imposed by living on a pension. I have a bad habit of spending money when I leave home. I am unable to change fixtures or fittings – flooring, kitchen, bathroom, heating system and so forth – because my home is a rented property. Whilst the internal layout is not ideal the home is perfectly adequate, if not actually quite pleasant.

For most of my life I have been a tenant, growing up in my parents council house, living in generally awful private rented property – and even a B&B – in various parts of London, and finally gaining a 10th. floor council flat in a tower block in south London – where I was happy for 22 years – before moving back to Devon. I feel I have earned a bit of satisfaction; a bit of luxury even. 

Don’t get me wrong: my first choice of accommodation right now would be a council house, but my chance of getting the keys to one are about as remote as renting a flat on the moon, should one be built before I die. Not having access to council housing saddens me, especially as my local authority is only now building homes to Passivhaus Plus standard right smack in the middle of town where the old Devon General bus garage used to be. For the last 30 years I have dreamed of one day living in a Passivhaus; I would truly have made it – and be as happy as the pig in the proverbial shit.

So, setting aside the council-rented dream home that will never be mine, I have been engaged in back-breaking work for some three weeks now. The guest bed found its way to the Heart Foundation furniture shop, freeing up the space I needed to move the desk out and the hi-fi in, along with my LP and CD collections. I now have a music room! I can listen to music without disturbing the neighbours, which effectively means I can listen to music! Around half of all of my furniture (and rugs) have been moved at least once.

No more pretending that I will have visitors stay over. It hardly ever happened, but I like to be prepared just in case. No more. What’s the point I said to myself; I need to get the home right for me. I effectively now have three ‘reception’ rooms – that hackneyed estate-agent term always amused me. Receiving what? Next thing you know they’ll be bringing back Withdrawing Rooms or, given the modern proclivity for shortening things, ‘Drawing Rooms.

I love watching films, I love listening to music and I love reading books and studying. I now have a room for each! I cannot believe how lucky I am!! Each room has the furniture and the technology I purchased in the months after moving in – when I was earning a reasonable wage. I made mistakes but now that I am well into retirement I am learning to live with them – I will certainly never be able to replace anything, so live with them I must.

The outcome is positive for me. For the first time in nine years I feel happy about my home. More than that: I feel contented. It is a very good feeling for a house-proud and home-loving person like me. I would like to think I could continue living – and living here – for another 20 years, by which time I shall be celebrating my 90th. birthday. And that also makes me feel good.