The Squares: Leaving a Well-Loved Home

My husband and I recently made some rather impulsive adult decisions. A couple of months ago, we started talking about me quitting my job in favor of staying home (my dream!) and not much after that we started casually discussing moving closer to his office in the next county over, which is about a 30 minute commute.

Like I said, our decisions have been a bit impulsive. Two weeks ago was my last day in the corporate world and, while we weren’t planning on acting quickly, we recently had an offer accepted on a house and now we’re moving closer to my husband’s work. A number of things factored into these decisions and, ultimately, we believe they’re in the best interest of our nuclear family, but this doesn’t make the process any easier.

I love our home and moving from it will be incredibly difficult. When we first purchased it, we bought with the intention of forever. We didn’t buy the starter home that we could easily afford; our home is modest, but it’s in the neighborhood that we wanted, we have a big backyard, and we’re close to my parents and the schools of our choosing.

When we first toured our current house, I was instantly in love — it felt like home. As I walked from room to room, I could envision our future family and was redesigning each room to our tastes. After our offer was accepted, we spent the next several weeks, ironing out all of the details and carefully selecting colors for each of the spaces. We arrived at the loan closing with several gallons of paint in our car and went right to work afterward.

Within the first few days of moving, our entire home was transformed into a new place — we even painted the inside of our cupboards (something my husband swears he’ll never do again, but I believe it was absolutely worth the work). As part of our final touches, we needed to complete one more thing that I’d envisioned: the squares.

The squares were the last bit of decor needed to tie all of our rooms together; to create a divide between the black and white art in our stairwell and the black and white art in our dining room; and to expand the “frame” so that the small, single piece in our dining room would take up the whole wall.

The squares themselves aren’t the point in this story. They could easily be recreated. My point — my heartbreak — stems from this: I don’t see squares in our soon-to-be home. The squares are our signature in our current home. They’re definitely not something everyone has and they help make our boring ranch style a one-of-a-kind.

The house we’ve purchased is lovely. It was built in the late 1960s and has blonde hardwoods throughout. There are enough rooms for us to have a guest room and a craft room — both above grade. Perhaps it’s because our new house isn’t desperately screaming for a decor upgrade, perhaps it’s because it’s not a single story ranch, maybe it’s because this slightly impulsive decision has just shocked the hell out of me, or maybe I’m still too in love with our current home, but I’m struggling to see our signature in our newest purchase. 

I’m going to miss our squares and hope that the new owners can appreciate their presence. In the meantime though, I hope those little boxes will serve as a source of inspiration as we make our new house a home in the coming weeks and as we transition our family to a new community and norm.

Help inspire me! What’s your signature in your home? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

— Funky Crunchy Mama