A-Z CHALLENGES: H IS FOR HOME
Hapless House Hunting and Hopeless Home Hopping
I’ve lived in a lot of different places in many types of homes!
I have lived in six countries on three continents, more if you consider the slow travel journeys I’ve been on since 2021.
With any move comes the need to find a place to live, and as such, I‘ve lived in a fairly unique range of homes over the last thirty years.
Hallowed Split-Level Homes
I grew up in a Spanish-style split-level home in South Africa.
My father, who worked for a builder’s merchant for forty years, had this split-level home built when I was four months old. It was my childhood home and I spent the first twenty-one years of my life wandering these hallowed halls.
This home is where I took my first steps, said my first words, and I haven’t stopped moving or talking since.
It remains hallowed for me due to the significance it played in my life and the memories it still holds.
Hurdling Hardship in Owned Homes
A few years after moving to Cape Town, I bought my first home.
Homeownership is a lot more complicated than we realize and this little gem required me to moonlight in order to make the loan payments.
I loved this cozy pad nestled neatly into a quiet crescent in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, but an unsure future meant that I didn’t own it for very long.
I emigrated to New Zealand after only eighteen months as a homeowner.
Harnessing Heat in Hardly Habitable Kit Homes
The first place that we rented in Wellington, New Zealand, was a Lockwood home, in other words, a kit home, and what a sh!tshow that was!
Wellington, New Zealand is where heat goes to die. The sun is merely an adornment in the sky and provides some warmth for about three weeks every year!
We spent a lot of money on firewood trying to keep ourselves warm from the pitiful wood burner in the living room before we gave up the ghost and effectively lived in the bedroom with an oil fin heater to stave off the frostbite.
The heat seemed to constantly escape through the bad seamwork in the locked wood, cold drafts coming up through the same shoddy workmanship.
Hardy Two-Storey Houses
Our next Kiwi home faired a little better in the heat retention department but was a little upside down.
Coming from South Africa — and in retrospect, most countries — a two-story house normally has bedrooms upstairs and living areas downstairs. Not in the Land of the Long White Cloud!
They like to be different and different they are. With two bedrooms downstairs and a long trek to the third bedroom and only bathroom upstairs, this upside-down house was our first purchase in Aotearoa.
Maybe houses are upside-down to improve the view from one’s living room windows in the hilly city.
Happy and Hopeful Villas
Moving to Australia was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Perth, Western Australia, is filled with little villa complexes. There is always an adjoining wall to connect it to the next home but not significantly enough to be considered a duplex.
This lovely villa was my first rental in Australia, and my boys (cats) and I made friends, threw lovely outdoor barbecues, and settled into City of Light, hopeful of a new life.
With glorious sunshine, an active social life, and this happy home, we embarked on ten glorious years as Perthites.
Humble Hilltop Caravans
Fast forward six years later and you can find me studying full-time at university whilst working two jobs part-time and needing an interim place to stay between room rentals.
A friend offered me this caravan parked on her boyfriend’s property in the hills of Western Australia. I had never lived in anything but a house or a villa at this point in my life and thus this experience was new.
For three months I learned how to use the water and sewage systems that come with the camper lifestyle as I navigated final exams and a little downtime.
Whilst I did enjoy my relative solitude in the tin can, I also enjoyed some first-world ablutions when my time there came to an end.
Hasty and Hurried Room Rentals
Yet another room rental followed my caravaning experience, and this one came with its own separate entrance.
Jaime and I shared a bathroom and study with the occupants but kept mainly to our room, conveniently with its own deck outside the double French doors.
The room was large enough to accommodate my little bar fridge and coffee machine as well as my dresser draws topped with a TV plus a folding chair in the corner. Apart from evening dashes to the kitchen to cook dinner and my human need to use the bathroom, I could imagine that we lived in our own little apartment.
This helped tremendously as I did my best to avoid my super grumpy housemate and her monologues of misery.
Housed in Heavenly Apartments
And heavenly it was, not because of the location or the décor, but because it was the first place Jaime and I had had to ourselves after many months of cohabiting.
Whilst the day of moving in didn’t go quite as planned, this apartment holds some of the loveliest memories I have.
I was in a country I’d been wanting to live in for many years, making good friends and having great experiences despite being terrified of not finding a job and having to leave whilst rapidly running out of funds.
Unfortunately, this little gem only lasted four months until I all but ran out of money and had to move to…
Hauling Hay to Hungry Horses in Handy Ranch Homes
The ranch was twenty minutes south of downtown San Antonio.
This home saved my proverbial bacon as Jaime and I were three days from living in Melissa, the SUV that was sold to me by Jesus.
From the time I was a little itty bitty girl, I had dreams of living on a ranch with horses and for one glorious year, I was able to get my wish fulfilled.
I am still chasing that dream again even now.
Heinous and Horrid Ghetto “Apartments”
As my dreams of ranch life came crashing to a halt, my experience of living in the ghetto began.
With only a part-time income in San José, Costa Rica, my options for good and affordable housing were slim and the “hole” was within my price range. I only managed to last two-and-a-half months in this ghetto “apartment” before going back to a room rental situation in a gated suburb.
I had adjusted to ghetto living pretty well but my greedy and not particularly nice landlady was trying to squeeze more and more from me. She didn’t know who she was dealing with and after being more than fair with the notice I gave her, she tried to threaten me with legal action.
No contract had ever been signed and she had lied about the rental price when we first met.
I left on a Sunday afternoon in a cab bound for my new accommodation, leaving the keys on the counter in the “hole” and a short WhatsApp message to let her know I’d gone.
Hearing Hurricanes in Studio Apartments
Whilst hanging out in Mexico and awaiting Covid-19 restrictions to abate so I could return to Canada, I rented a few Airbnb studio apartments in Playa Del Carmen.
Hurricane Grace made an appearance in August of 2021, making landfall in the wee hours of a Thursday morning and knocking out our power for thirteen hours.
Living in studio apartments was a new experience for me as was the hurricane that came beating about my door.
Whilst Grace was only a Cat 1 hurricane, basically a severe tropical storm, she did manage to fill Playa Del Carmen’s streets with debris and plenty of water.
Homecoming to Heartwarming Basement Apartments
In September 2019 I found my way to the only place I currently call home, my little basement apartment in London, Ontario, Canada.
This was the first time I had set foot in a basement apartment, let alone lived in one.
It is here that I found a home. It is here that I found some hope for a brighter future. It is here that I found a country and culture that I love.
Due to visa restrictions, I need to leave my lovely little home every six months, but the homecoming is sweeter than you could possibly imagine.
As I sit here in Cancún, Mexico, I smile in genuine happiness and gratitude that I get to return home soon.
Check out Rhonda Carrier’s H contribution and her tales of the incredible shrinking grandparents.
Carol Labuzzetta has some gorgeous gorges to show us.
Barb Dalton takes a lovely jaunt through her Es.
