Image from the Flickr Commons
Home is where you do your laundry.
I have yet to see this phrase on any of those distressed wooden boards painted with cheery slogans, so ubiquitous in shabby-chic home décor shops. In my homeland of Texas, the signs often say “Home is where you hang your hat,” adorned with a cowboy hat (or boots). I love the variation I saw on a pillow last year: “sweet home sweet,” a four-year-old’s variation on “home sweet home.” And for the last few years, my husband and I have quoted the line from folk band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes: “Home is wherever I’m with you.” We often feel like foreigners in our suburb south of Boston, but we have chosen, and keep choosing, to make a home together, wherever we are.
There are no signs on my walls about laundry, or washing dishes, or my other daily and weekly chores. But after nearly a decade of washing and spinning and hanging clothes to dry, in half a dozen houses on both sides of the Atlantic, I’ve come to believe that laundry is a quiet but essential part of the way I make a home.
I’m back at the the Art House America blog today, musing about laundry and how it helps ground me. Head over there to read more.
cakes, tea and dreams 
I spent a long time perusing Art House America last night after you linked to your last post. It might be one of my new favorite sites.
Katie, nice to meet you. I like your writing and intend to browse your blog. I smiled too—England is a passion of mine, I lived there two years, and my just-started novel begins in Oxford, then moves to the Cotswolds. I can’t wait to go back to England again to visit friends in March next year. And I knit—great stress management, until you have to unknit rows! Lastly, here’s a book/author recommendation for you: Liz Curtis Higgs, “Here Burns my Candle” and “Mine is the Night”. Set in 18th c. Scotland. Lovely.
I enjoyed this post. Through our various moves within Texas and most recently Puerto Rico, I never thought of it this way. Thank you for sharing.