5/19/10

How Well is your Home Built?

Do you live in or have you lived in a house or apartment that is built like a complete piece of crap?

I’ve lived in both well built and sketchy. I grew up in a farmhouse that was close to a few hundred years old. It felt quite solid the whole time we lived there which you soon find out living in Canada when winds, storms or tornados pass through. When the house was demolished, the beams were exposed and they seemed originally hand-chiseled by what I think was an axe. They had all these magnificent grooves in them and the ends were Roman numerals to number them all. But even this old beauty had its faults. The twenty rooms of the giant sat on support beams that were dangerously close to collapsing from powder beetles taking over. The cost of fixing it would have been too much for any rural family. (that wasn’t why it was demolished though, a car plant took over eventually)

I’ve had my share of apartment living where everything breaks constantly and you have to fight with a landlord to get just one percentage of it fixed.

I have also lived in subdivision housing. The builders smack up as many houses as they can in order to turn a quick profit, but man, are they constructed like garbage. A small wind becomes terrifying and you are driven to the basement for fear you are going to be flattened.

I think of how much money I spent on putty and filler for cracks. I bet everyone who lives in newer housing can look at the top of one of their doorways and see cracks from "the foundation settling". It’s mostly because there is no time to let anything settle and even then, the materials simply can’t handle gravity. ;)

After all of my experiences, I am determined to find a home someday where at least the foundation is solid. We spend more money on paint, drywall and the ‘fixings’ when really all that is happening is ESTHETIC MANIPULATION.

We as individuals do this too. We put cheap crappy food in our body and spend too much on hair-coloring, make-up and tanning sessions. Drinking water, exercising, eating well and getting ample sleep are really a far superior way to have the glow you are looking for.

But all esthetics aside, the biggest thing most of us forget to concentrate on is the building of our character. Character is something you can’t see as a physical form, so it goes unattended and unfortunately gets ignored. It’s easy for the powder beetles to eat away at our spirit but if nobody else sees it, why fix it, right?

I have to remind myself DAILY to work on my insides in the hopes I will feel better all over.

Investing in your own character costs very little (sometimes nothing but time) and is perhaps the best investment one could ever make. I think most people would agree, we just need these reminders. ;)

Spend some time with you doing something you love!
Karen :)

"Decorate yourself from the inside out." ~Terri Guillemets

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