Housing values revisited
Sunday, February 28, 2016 at 06:59AM Over the past two weeks I've found myself choked up on a regular basis. After being on the market for nearly two years, the house on the lake in the rural Mankato area in which we've lived for 16 years finally sold and we are moving to the Minneapolis/St Paul area. Boxes fill the rooms. Bags of clothing to be donated line the garage. No longer wanted items regularly appear at the end of the driveway with a "Free" sign taped to them - and usually soon disappear. I am sad to be leaving.
In a blog post from 2009 called Housing Values, I described my love of this place:
Our house sits on one of Minnesota's 15,000 lakes and its screened-in deck provides a lovely view. Middle Jefferson's not the best lake in the state by any measure - shallow, mud-bottomed, and weedy until early July. But it is quiet and a refuge for pelicans, muskrats, ducks, leaping fish, herons, turtles, egrets, and the occasional eagle. The sunsets are glorious. Could be worse.
What got me thinking about the house was a story on public radio yesterday about how the "net worth" of so many Americans is completely tied up in their houses. And how the uncertainty in home values (your house is worth nothing if you can't sell it) is causing great unease among lots of people.
And here I naively thought we bought homes for the quality of life they provide, not simply as a financial investment tool. As a nest rather than a nest egg. Were I to sell this house at a loss, I believe I still would come out ahead considering the wonderful events it's hosted - holiday meals for the masses, fishing and boating with the grandsons, graduation parties, quiet evenings with friends, and even summer department meetings. It's a congenial place that's value lies less in land, paint, and shingles than in memories and pleasant hours spent.
So the question that keeps coming to mind is "will I ever find a place I love as much as I love this one?"
So one tenet I am trying to follow as I begin packing is minimalism. While I may never be able to pare my wardrobe down to 37 items, I am asking myself how much stuff I really do need. And I've started to look at not what do I get rid of, but what do I really want to keep. I have identified only a few things that are essential:
- Photos. These I am digitizing. I am pulling many from frames and photo albums and putting them in folders.
- Mementos from my travels. Each statue or painting or framed curio has a location and story behind it. Each time I look at the work, it evokes an experience.
- Family history. Scrapbooks, letters from relative, artwork from grandchildren are saved. One day, I hope, I can organize and make some meaning of these things.
Yes, I'll be taking some beloved books with me, but a fraction of those I moved in. What book cannot be replaced?, I ask, as I handle each one separately.
I will be moving my work office twice this summer. Should I be practicing minimalism at work as well? Having always been a big fan of weeding library collections, tossing the no longer relevant, not longer needed, no longer useful, has never been a big problem for me.
Perhaps moving is as much a psychological task as it is a physical one - or more. I will let you, my readers, figure that out.
I'm getting too choked up to write.
Reader Comments (6)
Hello Doug,
I believe places, like people, have the power to etch deep meaning into our souls. It seems to me minimalism simplifies things. But hard as I try, the special moments experienced in special places are impossible to recreate. Keep tossing and keep living!
Bob
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate your observations and advice.
Doug
I apologize Doug,
I should have added a bit of context to my comment. I spent a good percentage of my childhood, and many summer months at my grandparents lake home in Detroit Lakes, MN. Time passed, my grandparents passed, and eventually the cabin on the lake also passed. Your pictures look so similar to those I have from our days at the lake.
I think of a scene from "Field of Dreams" where Ray's father asks Ray, "Is this heaven?" After pondering the question, Ray says, "No, it's Iowa". The point being Ray could have easily answered yes. https://youtu.be/izF0LoBkhZY
I just wanted you to know that I've felt your pain, and agree with you - special places, home to special people and special memories, are very difficult to let go of since they are interwoven into our life fabric. Don't toss everything - keep and share the good stuff!
Bob
Doug
The pictures from this post helped me make a decision on whether or not to pursue an opportunity out of state. The shot of you and your grandson on the boat reminded me of my oldest with my dad. Good memories all around!
nathan
Hi Nathan,
Good to be helpful. I constantly am reminding myself, that it's not the place but the people who make life joyful.
Doug​
Doug thanks for sharing your story, and always stories like this bring out nostalgia in our lives, and you are right that people make the life and not the place, but the places is brings memories flooding back and can a bring smile or two of days of old where its a happy place and no worries.