A house has a spirit

Musings on ownership, love, and scrubbing the floors

A gorgeous hallway with warm woods on the walls and floors, lit by angled sunlight. Photo by 1920scraftsman on IG

Much like many other millennials, I dream of owning a house one day. There’s such a different energy between renting and owning things, especially in terms of the actual place that I live in. I’ve noticed in myself something that I initially labeled as immaturity—and there probably is a component of immaturity in it as well—but I notice a difference in myself when it comes to how I take care of my living space when I’m renting it from a faceless, exploitative corporation, essentially, versus living in a home that has been owned by my family for four generations. There’s a difference when I live in the basement unit of a home that I can tell has been loved and cared for for decades, even by a family that’s not my own, and I can feel the amount of love put into the home, which then makes me want to put more love into the home as well.

There’s almost an undertone of resentment for me when I am tending to my space in some boxy apartment that I don’t care about, I don’t feel emotionally attached to, I don’t love, and I also am being charged way too much to live in. I’m being exploited just to live in the space, so it doesn’t feel as nurturing to take care of that space. It’s done out of sheer necessity, leading me to a militaristic view of the daily drudge of home maintenance. The relationship between me and my dwelling is forever contentious, through no fault of either one of us.

Even though I’ve never been a homeowner, that feeling of ownership does fluctuate based on where I’m living and the energy put into a home—the care, the time, the history, the memories. There’s a difference there.

What are the components of ownership? Legal ownership is about deeds and titles and other notarized pieces of paper. The sensation of ownership is about care and time: being able to inhabit a place & care for that place long enough to feel ownership over it. That makes a difference too, but I also have lived in an apartment for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else and never experienced a sense of ownership in that place. So time & care can’t be the only components.