Home sweet home

Thanks, Ms. 12-hours-to-bedtime, for poking me about taking up my blog again... It's been over a year!

Much has changed, much has stayed the same. But our family is ready for some big changes soon. In August, the lease on our apartment ends. Which means we have to look for a new place to live. Sounds like fun, hey? Well, let me tell you, as much "fun" as it is anywhere else on the planet, Vancouver adds it's own little quirks to the process. Yet, the search for a place to live, has given me a lot of insight in how I have changed over the years I have lived in Canada. That's right. I'm talking about the journey of life here. Brace yourself, I'm going all life lessons on y'all.

Let me take you back to the person I was when we went looking for our first proper house, back in the Netherlands. Back in the days when it was impossible to rent a place in Amsterdam, as it probably still is. Looking for a place to start our family, we found an 1184 sqfeet upper level apartment in Haarlem. It was huge! We spent ages painting all the rooms different colours. Collected a nice set of coordinated furniture. It was bright and sunny...and yet it always felt too small and never quite like home. The floor was too creaky. Only 2 bedrooms with 2 kids already. Too many stairs... I always seemed dissatisfied with the way our house looked and felt, in comparison to other people's houses. I always felt like they did a much better job at house-owning than we did. Although I think most of it had to do with the fact that owning a house is a little too much responsibility for a couple like us.

Fast forward to moving to Vancouver. Before we left Holland, we knew a 2-bedroom apartment was waiting for us. At around 850 sqfeet, quite a bit smaller than what we are used to. Now, picture a huffy, arrogant little European girl walking into our apartment. I am not talking about Jura. I'm talking about how I walked into our little nook after a transatlantic flight, took one look at the kitchen and decided to start looking for another place to live. Asap!

Luckily, I'm married to Menno. And Menno told me to sit tight and see how we did in this house. What a smart idea! Turns out, Canadian dollars run out before you can say "groceries" in our household. And the house, although it is still as pleasing to the eye as a cheap roll of bathroom tissue, has grown on us tremendously! As it turns out, a 2-bedroom easily fits 5 people. True, we could do with some more storage. And some natural light would not go amiss, too. And, the biggest issue obviously for the XX-individuals in our household, we can't keep a pet here. But still, once I accepted the bog roll look-and-feel of our place, we became good friends.

But, all good things come to an end. UBC changed our building from faculty into student housing and is shoving us out...right into the arms of the UBC-sponsored real estate agency that rents out the homes to almost everyone working for the university. True, style-wise these apartments are a big improvement to what we live in now. Better carpets, better lighting, better appliances. Shining countertops and gleaming laminated woodwork. Oh yes, and generally less square footage, too! Even more so, because of our family size, they do not allow us to apply for a 2 bedroom apartment. So, if we want to rent an apartment on campus, our dollars will basically have run out before you can say "rent".

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we decided it may be worth looking into moving off campus. Even though that means we will be moving outside of the catchment area of Jura and Nori's school, which means we have to apply for a cross-boundary-whatever to keep them in their current school. Which is why we wanted to stay on campus in the first place. But a quick scan of the suites available for rent off campus, showed us quickly how much more square footage you can get for less money off campus. My best friend on campus, who knows stuff, even informed me that the subsidized university housing is prices above market value!

So, we have started our search for a new place. We decided not to wait until the very last moment. Obviously, this is a clear indicator of the  mature and responsible person I have become over the last couple of years. And boy, what a journey it has been so far! Because we feel uncertain as to whether our financial situation will significantly improve over the next year, we decide to look for the cheapest places out there. Admittedly, when the price is low, there usually is a skeleton, or two, in the closet.

The first place we looked at was a basement suite. The place looked like crap. Really. It was small, and the kitchen cupboards showed signs of blistering from some stove-mishaps over the years. The location was amazing, though! We could still ride our bikes to campus. There was a nice big yard. The family upstairs was really, really nice, with 2 big labradors that we could take for walks. They had 2 adult sons living at home, both diagnosed with high spectrum autism. The landlady informed me that we would sometimes hear her boy stomp off to his room and she would sometimes yell at her kids. I replied that as far as the yelling-to-kids was concerned, we could have a little contest ;-) It was actually a nice feeling not to feel too self-conscious about the racket we produce as a family.

Unfortunately, as much as we liked the family and they liked us, someone offered to take the suite right away. And we had to keep on looking. And as much as that wrecks my nerves, because I am scared we will never find a place to live, that first experience taught me a very important lesson, too. With its cracked shower walls, crummy carpets and minimal amount of living space, it could not be farther from our house we bought in Holland. And yet I felt much more comfortable moving into this house than into our "own" house.

I think I have finally come to realize that it does not matter how big a house is or what it looks like, but rather what it feels like. As long as we, as a family, feel it is the right place, it does not matter if we have to sleep 3-kids-to-a-room. Actually, our kids seem to prefer it that way. Our house is no longer part of our social status, it's just a place we call home. And taking off that pressure feels quite exhilarating!