Dear LPG, 

I am interested to know how many other readers started this year thinking that it is a personal year of significance. 

As I am writing we get to the fourteenth day of 2022, which feels fairly near the beginning of it, but I think that, for me, this New Year’s strongest consequence is one about the milestones I have passed rather than what is to come.  

It occurs to me that my husband and I have lived in our present home for 50 years this year although it often feels more like ten, if that.  I moved to this house of ours as a thirty-year-old mother with a husband who spent too much time working to pay for it, a toddler and a baby, and I often remember wondering what it would be like when my three-month old baby got old enough to wear real shoes and I felt that they were old enough for me to not spend every waking moment with them.  

I vividly remember the transitions as I built my career and worked full time for at least thirty-five years while they were growing up.  Then predictably they both left home, but somehow, the look of the house did not really change that much although I admit to it being a little more cluttered these days.  

I lived through every one of those years and some were hard and seemed like they would never come to an end.  I have also watched grandchildren grow up, and I retired over twenty years ago but one thing has not changed in our house.

When I go into what were my children’s bedrooms, to all intents and purposes, very little has changed.  I use one of them for ironing, but the same curtains still go up and come down for washing and the bed linen still goes in and out of the washing machine.  

On the odd occasions when people come to stay, I have always had a couple of spare beds to accommodate them but, apart from the fact that the chests of drawers, wardrobes and cupboards in those rooms now contain as many of our clothes as theirs, when I walk into either room I take a step back in time to before they left.  

It must be a bit of a surreal experience when they come to stay too.  My son lives abroad now and the last time his family came to visit for a few days, he confided that sleeping in his old unchanged room reminded him that no matter how old he is, there are rules to be observed. 
 

I thought that we had to be just a bit odd to have done so little with so much space over the years, but I found an internet article which tells that some 30% of us are the same.  We often think of how lucky we are to own our house and be able to do such things without the whole ‘spare room tax’ issues hovering over us but once you have paid that mortgage, provided you are able to stay at home, there is something very special about being able to please yourself. 

VP, Ladywell.