What makes a home?

I've been pondering this question for about a week. We have been living in our new home for just over a year and for both Lynn and I, the place still does not feel like home. My thinking is that it is mostly because the place it about twice the size as the last one. We have had quite a few unexpected issues and more than a few projects that we did not plan on doing.

I spent most of last week ripping out most of the plants in the flower bed off the porch. Why? Simply because it was overgrown, had too many green plants and it was not filled with flowers. It was not our style. Every time that I saw the flower bed, I was reminded that I wouldn't have planted anything that was in the flower bed except for the aspens. It bugged me so much that nearly everything is gone.

It is not a homey home. I think for my part, it feels that way because there are too many rooms. In the old house, we lived in the living room and on the patio. The home was open and this one is not as open. There was no finished basement, no separate dining room, no library and no extra rooms to hang out in at the last home.

The funny thing is now that we have this big house, I sort of miss the old one. It was less maintenance, a smaller mortgage and easier to live with. In this home, I find myself constantly thinking that I should be cleaning. Having so many bathrooms is driving me crazy. Smaller in many ways seems better now that we are living larger.

Yeah, I know. I could hire a maid. But, that doesn't work for me. I was one of those people that cleaned up the night before the maid came over at the old home. I removed sentimental things from our shelves worrying that something could get broke. It was stressful and the cleaning never justified the price. The house was not much cleaner than when I cleaned, so I dropped the service.

I live with a messier home. I've been dropping hints to the guys to help out more and do better. I even threatened to go on strike and stop cleaning, doing laundry, etc. The funny thing is that I could not live like that. I doubt that they would even notice the difference. What bugs me the most is that someone is constantly peeing on the toilet seat downstairs. I yell and complain and yet, I am the one that ends up cleaning it up. Harley can't do simple daily chores without me nagging him about whether he completed them. I'm sure that if a reward was up for grabs, he would have no problem remembering.

What I have discovered the most is that I love my front porch. Most of the time, it is quite and peaceful. I can sit, read, do nothing and/or just hang out listening to the birds. I have found myself in the past week literally doing much of nothing and have been hanging out on the porch often. The funny thing is that the Cotton, our dog is just as anxious to go out as me, but she won't sit still enough. She can't get into the yard and has such little room to roam, yet she is included and that seems to be enough for her.