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Blog: Organizing for Boomers
 There's No Place Like HOME
Dorothy said it right, "There's no place like home". Sometimes it takes a disaster like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz or like our firestorms in San Diego to help us realize what home means to us.
As many of us have returned to our routines, our schedules, our homes we do so with a deeper sense of fondness for them. Fondness not just for our homes but for those routines we missed the week before. Not everyone was so lucky.
Over 1,600 homes were destroyed in San Diego County alone and those folks are aching to find any small sliver of memento as they sift through the ashes. The simple things, whether it be a child's toy, a soiled teacup or a photo in a frame, they are searching and salvaging anything that connects them to the life they once had.
With over a half million people evacuating their homes last week, there was the whole gamut of prized possessions taken, from the iguanas and llamas to the lady who left the "important papers" but grabbed rolls of toilet paper. Under stress our minds do work in strange ways.
For those who lost their homes the rebuilding process, the mountains of paperwork and the endless get-togethers with various agencies will task their energy, their resolve, and their patience. Temporary housing for them will take those routines and schedules-that sameness of daily living from them for some time.
Anything to replicate what they had before, from the commute route to reading the daily paper, to the kids being able to play with the next door neighbors' kids can go a long way to start to put some small sameness back into their lives.
The rest of us who did not lose our homes have a wonderful opportunity around us. Besides helping those who lost so much, we have been given a gift to view our homes through the eyes of Dorothy.
Our house may not be perfect. It may not be our dream house. We may have viewed it as a "stopover place" on our way to something better. And like a "temporary boyfriend" we might not have been treating it so well, figuring we would move on to something better in the future.
Today let's open our eyes and see all the good in our homes. We have the familiar, the past as well as the present, here. How lucky we are.
Even if you have never had to evacuate your home, look at it today through new eyes.
Can you take pleasure in the aspects of it that are working for you?
What drew you to this home in the first place? Was it the location? The size? The commute? The schools?
Was it the fireplace or the view out the window? The number of bedrooms?
Just for today, relish in the fact that you have a home-a home you selected at one point to live in. It may not be perfect; it may not be all the things you wanted; it may not be as organized as you would like, or as decorated as you had hoped, but it is your home.
Dorothy did say it best, "There's no place like home."
As one San Diego senior citizen remarked when she was finally able to get back in her house, "This dump looks pretty good to me today."
Making Your Space a Special Place...
Sue Crum
the R.E.D. team – Reinventing Everyday Designs
posted on: 11/2/2007 12:30:00 PM by Sue Crum
category: Special Populations
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