Don’t you miss your home?

As Melanie and I traveled around the U.K. over the last two and a half months, many people, after we tell them we’ve sold everything and are traveling the world, have said things like:

“That is so cool!”

“I wish I could do that.”

Most people have had quite positive reactions.

But occasionally someone will ask, “Don’t you miss your home?”

To that question, our short answer is “No.”

We don’t miss mowing the lawn

We don’t miss mowing the acre-and-a-half of lawn, or the constant accumulation of downed branches, prunings and other detritus that grows into shoulder-high burn piles on a regular basis.

We don’t miss the ongoing battle to keep the blackberries from encroaching on the yard, the flower gardens, the driveway, even the house.

We don’t miss climbing a ladder to clean out the gutters, hauling the garbage can out to the road before dawn each Thursday, or changing the silt filter on our well pump every month.

And we certainly don’t miss the unexpected home repair projects that always pop up at the worst possible time. (Is there ever a good time for something to break down?)

We don’t miss our mortgage payment, property taxes, phone and power bills.

Nor do we miss our satellite TV bill that seemed to only provide a mind-numbing parade of “reality” shows, infomercials and home shopping channels. Even the movies we wanted to see were rendered nearly unwatchable with marathon commercial breaks inserted every few minutes.

If we miss anything about our former home, it would probably be its rural location, surrounded by agricultural lands, with forests, rivers and the Puget Sound close by.

We might also miss our property’s landscaping, with its dozens of flowering rhododendrons, massive laurel hedge, Austrian pines, hazelnuts, Japanese maples and other assorted trees, most of which we planted ourselves during the nearly 25 years we lived on the 4-acre place.

We might miss our orchard

We might miss our organic orchard, which included nearly a dozen-and-a-half mature fruit trees providing Bartlett, Orca and Asian pears; two kinds of plums; and several kinds of apples – so much more than we could possibly eat that we gave away hundreds of pounds of fresh organic fruit each year.

Oh, and we might miss our strawberries, blueberries and raspberries; and yes, even those blackberries with which we waged constant battle over the years (they sure do make a delicious pie).

That said, during our journey around Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland, where we’ve traveled through some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable, I don’t think either of us has ever said, “I miss our home.”

There have certainly been a couple of times, however, when one or the other of us has said, “You know, since we left Stanwood, I haven’t once thought about our house or all the stuff we used to have.”

So, do we miss our home?

We both have fond memories of our house and property, and all the good (and bad) times we had there. And we have plenty of photos stored in “the cloud” for whenever we might want to look back and reminisce.

Since leaving behind our house in Stanwood (and even before), we’ve realized that “home” for us is not so much about the place as it is about the two of us sharing experiences together.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months; traveling to places we’ve never been to see “what’s over there,” and sharing the experience.

‘Home’ is wherever we are

Going forward, as we continue our chosen life as nomads traveling the world, “home” for us will be wherever we are at the time.

So how could we possibly miss “home” when that’s where we are right now?