If your home could write you a letter, what would it say to you? Find out what your home wants — for itself, for you and your family. You may change how you view your house.
This letter was found in an antique Good Housekeeping magazine. It was written by Arnold Rosenthal in 1922. It’s written in such a manner that you get a real feel for what your house might want from you … what it desires … how it wants to be used … what’s important to it. Perhaps reading it will help you to prioritize and simplify the way that you view your house. Ultimately it just wants to be your home!
Enjoy the letter!
“I am the unbuilt house.
Build me, therefore, into a home.
Build me with loving hands, with eager heart, and build me for eternity. For as you build, so shall I stand – over you, ever protecting, day after day, under the sun and rain, in the long nights of snow and whirling wind.
Build me to last. For I shall be your haven and your children’s haven and the haven of your children’s children. Build me strong – and beautiful. Let me set back from the road, a figure of repose, reflecting character without presumption, dignity without restraint. Let me express the good taste and integrity united in you who dwell inside.
Clothe me in color that is in harmony with my surroundings. And let nature breathe its goodness wherever it may reach. The protection of trees, the affection of vines, and the warm smile of flowers – these things I need in abundance.
And then, let the friendly welcome of the latch-string trace its joyous way through the line and color of every room. Let me have sunshine and light and laughter.
Build me to live in. Make of me no museum for carefully guarded antiquities. Let my furniture be used: no furniture can be beautiful or good without being useful. And do not fill me up at once. There is time; there is always the future.
Arrange each room, rather, around a few pieces of fine furniture, adding gradually with the advance of years. And so, no piece of furniture need ever be dumped on the trash heap or relegated shamefully to the attic. Such furniture will grow old gracefully. It will become a prized possession to be handed down, like me, to future generations in the secure knowledge that it will prove a magnificent legacy.
I will influence you. I will stimulate you. I will help you to be successful. I will bring out the best that is in you. I will be your home. Your children will be born here, will grow up here, will live their happy days with me. I will be an inviolate possession; beyond my doors no one can come save those you desire. I will be an inextricable part of your memories, swinging with you along the arc of time.
Build me now while the years are young – while we both can be happy and useful members of a fine community. Build me for your own good, for the good of your family, for the good of the nation.”
Wow! Amazing, huh? Did it give you something to think about? Do you have a new perspective on your house? I certainly did!
Take a few moments to pause and consider any changes that you’ll make in your day to day time in your home. How and where you spend your time … what’s important for the long term and not necessarily just the “today”.
Next time life gets crazy, take a moment to think about what your house might say!
Blessings,
Heidi
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