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A House Used to Own Me

I used to own a house. Or, rather, a house owned me. A three- bedroom, 1.75-bath, mid-century modern home on a ridge in Los Angeles, Calif. with views that fed the soul. From the first moment we stepped through the front door, I belonged to this house.

Now? Well, now I sit on a couch in a basement surrounded by our stuff—what’s left of it. Piles of folded clothes, garbage bags stuffed with hats and purses and shoes, sleeping bags and electronic equipment. Books and boxes. My laptop. In my lap. This basement belongs to my mom and stepdad. It is located in Barrington, Ill., 2,014 miles away from the place we called home for the last seven years until we, narrowly avoiding foreclosure, sold everything and hit the road. I am 34 and I, with my husband, our pug dog and what is left of our belongings, have moved back in with my parents

This is not a sad story. This is anything but.

“No matter what, let’s promise each other we’ll never become attached to material possessions,” I said as we sat cross-legged on the floor staring into each others’ eyes, feeling each others’ wedding bands as we held hands. The year was 2003. I was 27, he was 29 and we were newlyweds.

“I would be happy living in a cardboard box,” I said with such conviction, “as long as I had you!”

We were newly married and first-time property owners, making a home for ourselves in a little one-bedroom condo in a bohemian neighborhood in Los Angeles. We agreed that we wouldn’t get attached to material possessions. We would be free spirits. We’d travel, see the world, live passionate lives, and never fall into the drone of a routine.

“Let’s keep our overhead low,” I would say. I wrote during the day and worked nights to feed my writing passion while he worked insane hours and drove further than any human should have to drive to get to a desk every day.

One day I came up with an idea to sell everything and travel around the world. As soon as I managed to talk my husband into my wild plan, I got scared. Could we really live like that? When I really thought about it, my answer was no. So instead did the exact opposite. We bought a house. We “leapfrogged” from the condo to our dream house. Instead of “keeping our overhead low,” we nested and put lots of time and all of our money into the house. It sucked us dry and we let it. We got, you could say, carried away. Until we were no longer determining our own future. The house was.

Now it was my husband’s turn to suggest selling everything. The year was 2009. I was 33, he was 35 and we were in pre-foreclosure trying to reconcile ourselves to the fact that there was nothing more we could do to keep the house. This time at the suggestion of selling everything—all my books, our flea market finds, the comfy green chair, the hand-knotted Persian rug, the mid-century modern wall unit, our dining room set, our Scandinavian platform bed with floating end tables, dishes, vases, linens, flatware…. I said, “No! Absolutely not. No way. No can do. Nope. It’s hard enough losing the house,” I explained, “I can’t lose everything in it, too.”

Our house, at this point, had been on the market for nine months—eight months longer and three price reductions more than we had anticipated. Our new combined salaries didn’t come anywhere close to covering our $5,000 mortgage, not to mention our other debts. We were doggie paddling in the middle of the ocean, sharks circling, no land in sight.

“Think how free we’ll feel,” he said as I wiped the dust off my prized hard cover copy of The Fountainhead.

At some point it finally occurred to me that I belonged to the house. I was one of its parts. It’s possession. Wandering its spaces like a ghost refusing to just let go. And I listened to my husband when he told me that every day he felt as though he was carrying this house around on his back. I heard the quiver in his voice when he described what that felt like. I saw the ache in his eyes.

And it finally hit me. He was right. I looked at it as a challenge. And as penance, in a way, for my mistakes—errors in judgment. For having wandered so far off course. Let’s always be free spirits. This was our chance. A way to force myself into a new paradigm. Break the bond between my possessions and me. It was challenging, yes. But eventually, during the sorting and pricing and tagging of every dish, every mug, every vase, our possessions became…just things. No longer vessels for memories. Things we owned that we were selling. To set ourselves free. To let go. To move on. To no longer be possessed by something other than our own free will ever again.

Stephanie Walker is a playwright, blogger and freelance writer who faced foreclosure and lived to tell the tale on her Love in the Time of Foreclosure blog, featured in NPR’S Planet Money, The Huffington Post, Apartment Therapy, Chicago Magazine and Business Week. A born optimist, she loves “triumph in the face of adversity stories” and is determined to live her own. After a stint living with her generous family near Chicago, she and her husband will house-sit a lovely home in the San Juan Islands, living rent-free for two years.

Tags: personal perspective, real estate