"The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." - Maya Angelou
One of my favorite things about working in real estate, besides helping people build lives and wealth, is the fact that I get to time travel.
Seriously. Time travel.
Some homes we walk into are less "updated open concept" and more "perfectly preserved shrine to 1986", and I love it! There is magic in stepping into a space that has not yet bowed to modern trends or HGTV pressures. It's like flipping through a photo album or listening to your favorite old school playlist - but with all five senses.
The other day, I walked into a house with green and yellow rocking chairs and bam - I was a kid again, in my grandparents' living room, curled up after downing an entire plate of Ritz crackers, cheez whiz, and summer sausage - begging to go downstairs and watch Old Yeller or Troop Beverly Hills on their giant wood console TV (that, I believe, is still in my dad's basement).
Or the wood-burning fireplaces. Ahhh, that smell! Straight portal to Christmas mornings at my grandparents' - four generations under one roof, wrapping paper everywhere, the tree glowing, and grandmothers cooking, turning the whole house into a slow-simmering love letter.
Then there are the little things. The phone on the wall. You know, THE phone. The one with the tangled cord long enough to lasso a small animal (or a little brother), where I spent countless hours in my early teens talking to friends about absolutely nothing. Or crushes. Or both. Highly likely, it was both.
Framed photos all over the hallway - none of them filtered, none of them curated for social media. Just real, slightly crooked snapshots of life as - it - happened. Awkward school photos, Birthday parties in the basement, vacations where everyone is squinting into the sun. No retouching, no staging - just life.
Get this! Some homes still have ironing boards left out like it's a thing people do regularly.
And strangely enough, it gets me. Something is comforting about it, like a quiet nod to routines that once mattered.
So, forewarning: If you're house-hunting with me, know that I will point out the vintage wallpaper that reminds me of my grandma's kitchen. I will pause at the avocado green bathroom like I've just seen a ghost. And I might get quiet for a second because a smell or a lamp or a dish towel transported me back to a version of myself I didn't know I needed to remember.
Homes are so much more than structures! They are memory machines and I am incredibly lucky to get to walk through them for a living.
