What makes a place feel like home?

Start small. Put things in your domicile (house, apartment, pup tent, yurt) that you love, that you think are beautiful and that connect you to your emotional life.

Plant some flowers, even if only in a few small pots.

Get to know the town (if it s a small one) or your immediate neighborhood if you live in a city.

Find a pub, coffee house, gym, park, café or hang-out place where people are friendly and “everyone knows your name,” eventually.

Volunteer for something; you will meet like-minded people. Or if you have a school-aged child, you will be able to meet the other parents.

“Only connect.” (The epigraph fro EM Forster’s Howard’s End.)

Home is where the heart it. It’s where you want to be. It might also be a house.

Cats. Gotta have cats.

@gailcalled

I have always wanted a Yurt..got really into looking at them a few years ago when I was contemplating a little place in Taos N M.

I also want to build an indian sweat lodge…oh, California dreamin’...lol

Owning it!

I agree with ETpro. owning a home is where its at. since all the kids are grown and gone, i can now walk nude from the bathroom to the bedroom to dress myself. now, this is what makes a house a home!

@john65pennington I used to be able to urinate off the porch. I miss living in the woods…

Jerv, only a person that has lived in the woods would ever understand your answer. been there, done that.

@Coloma: What are you (and your geese and the gang) living in now? There are wonderful possibilities with the new green technologies, like building the north or back end of your house into the side of a hill, or using straw for walls, or having a garden on your roof.

I saw a beautiful yurt years ago inside at an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. Of course, it had been stolen from someone in Mongolia.

Family is what makes where ever we are home. We’ve moved a few times already and have a few more moves ahead of us, but as long as we are together, where ever we are will be home.

@gailcalled

Oh yeah, lots of possibilities, I almost bought a rice straw bale house a few years ago, my little place is not mega green, it is very efficiant, but the land it’s on is very ‘green’. :-)

You.

A home is what you make of it. If you are content and happy, it is home.

To me, a home is my place of refuge…steeped in peace and all which creates a place where I can think and create.

A home is an extension of its inhabitants…
an oasis for the soul.

Something anything that needs your attention when you open the door. Pets, plants, musical instruments, cold beer, S/O, heck even the TV if that is what makes you unlock the door faster.

flowers and a dog

A dog.

In my house, it’s books and collections. They are my most prized possessions! As for a city/town… I’d have to say favorite places (library, antique store, whatever) and friends. I’ve lived in this town for about 6 years, now, and it still doesn’t feel like “my” town. I love my house, but I miss my old town terribly.

A city or house is homey to me if I’ve lived there a long time. That’s the major criterion for me. Time. Secondly, a house is a home much faster if it’s out by itself. With lots of privacy. Thirdly, it would be how it’s decorated. Books, throws, pillows, a fireplace. Especially if it’s a woodburning fireplace.

Yep, my house is super cozy and creatively decorated, I always have people tell me they feel they are in another country when they come into my house. lol

I have a country place, farmey and woodsy outside, asian, african, chinese and modern on the inside.

The most striking feature is my huge Odabashian persian rug…it is 9×12 and impossible for one person to move on their own, must weigh about 150 lbs. rolled up.
I always joke about it being a two body rug, lol

It is so cushy that you can sleep on the floor and it hardly feels like a floor.

I have an antique chinese cabinent with beautfiul gold temples painted on it and a real temple gong made of teakwood with little carved monks squating on the top of the frame. The gong itself is the size of a large trash can lid and boy does it resonate.

I also have 3 screens in different parts of the living room for effect, one is a silk tapestry with black frame, the other a black & white paper Shinto and the 3rd a solid wood stained black with a carved gold tiger design. Lots of interesting lamps from bamboo to clay to modern and black pier one tables and my huge modern painting with an oceanic theme that is 5×5 and takes up an entire wall.

I am about to paint one wall a metallic gold and think it’ll look really cool.

My home is my haven, and the two cats, a himalayan and a siamese are part of the decor, Temple cats! lol

@Coloma, Your temple cats do not find your Persian rug an irresistible scratching pad?

The whole combo sounds really lovely.

@gailcalled

No, I have been lucky with the no scratching the furniture, rug thing.
I have a cat tree in the garage and they can scratch on a big wicker trunk that is indestructable, but it doesn’t happen very often.

The new kitty does go through a bout of running amok through the house once or twice a day, but so far she is showing no signs of destructo kitty behavior. ( fingers X’d ) :-)

If anyone has seen Joan Rivers’ house that’s my idea of perfection.

Home to me isn’t a place; it’s where ever he is.

For me, home is where my heart is happy which means it could be a teeny room rented in a house with others, a whole apartment or house. Home is where I can have my friends visit in comfort. Everything else is a closet I keep things in and use as a base to get away from as often as possible.