So…for all of you out there who have left the home you grew up in…here is a question…did your parents leave your room as it was when you left or did they turn it into something else…like a guest room, office, or even a personal theater (okay I doubt anyone out there had their room turned into that….I would LOVE to have a room like that). And if your room is still the same how do you feel about it?
Me…well this is how I looked at my hometown…I wanted out of there probably shortly after we moved there during the middle of third grade. Not that the place is bad…nor the people….I just wanted out. Out for what? Its been so long…not sure.
I…okay…was not your typical teenage girl…I did not have posters of the boy hair bands or lets see…Tom Cruise. (great actor…ahem) Towards the end of grade school, I had posters of animals….was thinking at that time I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then the posters of jet fighters went up….lots of them. I had a HUGE poster of a F-14 Tomcat (sadly mothballed now and no longer in service) on one of my walls. Same plane Cruise flew in Top Gun. I actually wrote the big aircraft manufacturers for the letter size “hand-out” posters of several different fighters. I spose today kids can just email for that same stuff or just print out a downloaded picture from the net. Coincidentally, I ended up fixing planes in the military…loved it in fact. Still love planes…especially the fighters.
So when I was preparing to leave the nest, I think I had all of my stuff paced in boxes….not sure what I did with that huge poster….kept a few of the other “hand-outs”…the one given to me from my Uncle when he flew F-16’s for the Montana Air Guard…and of course the F-15 Eagle ones….I worked on those planes so the pictures are special. I probably had like five or six boxes. Probably two of them were just stuffed animals. What is with girls and stuffed animals? I don’t have any of those animals anymore. Didn’t feel the need to keep them. And I moved too much.
I think I have a medium size box…well maybe even smaller of stuff. High school yearbook…okay…I only have one. One out of three years. Funny…doesn’t seem to have really affected me much. I have some stories from grade school, junior high yearbooks…some pictures….not much really.
When I packed all my stuff and asked my Mom to hold onto it…she seemed a little upset. I was the first to leave home…I had told her probably I wasn’t coming back…that was not the plan…although I did end up “home” for like a year and a half back in 2005….long story there…future blog material.
The house I grew up in…or at least from third grade was sold shorty after I left for the service. My parents moved…and since them my Mom divorced my stepfather and has been married now for 10 years to her present husband. Different house now too…and that house just doesn’t feel like home. So I wonder blogosphere….did your childhood room transform? I can’t see keeping my kids room the same…they have a few years until they leave the house…but no….guestrooms eventually. The plan is to raise them into adults who contribute to society…not keeping a kids room and time-warping them or me back to childhood. They won’t be kids forever…I wasn’t.
~Liz
I moved out when I was 18 still had a bedroom at my mums for about 2 years after that but since then I have to sleep in guestrooms or other places. I don’t feel sad a bout it but I do sometimes wonder what happened to a few of my childhood toys. Some I occasionally see in my nieces bedroom others seem to have disappeared into the world, moved on just like me :-). And like you I am good at purging when I need too, have moved too often to hang on to to many things, except the really important ones
its quite the experience to go “home” now…although really it is not home. Home for me is pretty much where I live now. Should have named my blog the ramblings of a gypsy. 🙂 But back to my point…ya know…at my Mom’s now there aren’t like any family photos hanging on the walls…I think she may have a few of the grandkids…a few….Mom isn’t exactly too fond of my son…that is more blog material for another day….I dunno…I think its weird. My living situation is a bit unique…so I don’t have a lot of “me” stuff…but pictures of my kids….um…without question. 🙂
When I moved out, my room stayed the same for a long time. As the years pass, Dad and his partner have made it sort of a guest room. I’m pretty territorial about my space, even if it’s not been lived in properly for years. Just how I am. But I don’t say anything about it. And besides, there have been no radical changed, just newer paint and a nicer duvet….it’s when the boxes of storage, linens, towels and stuff get pushed in there that I get a bit irked. 😉
I WISH my Mom had some of my stuff at her house….I think that would make it feel more like home. 🙂 or…maybe at least I would feel welcome there…ha ha ha
My stuff is in a couple of boxes in the closet – My Little Ponies, my old typewriter and some books and photos. Otherwise the room now has no real “me” touches on it anymore. Funny how that can change a feel of a room, and a home, even. But it does, doesn’t it?
changes alot….yup. Guess it goes with growing up eh? 😉
I miss my childhood home, not my room, but my home as a whole. The moment I moved out, my mom made it a guest bedroom, and I was ok with that. When she was selling the house she asked me if there was anything I wanted. There wasn’t any THING I physically could take, but I did walk around and soak in memories.
🙂 There is one thing I would like from my Mom’s house…it is a pencil drawing of me when I was proably 7 or 8….well…maybe older…need to see the date to see where we were living….well…I must have been like 9…but Mom took us three kids to this craft fair and this wonderful artist drew all three of us kids on separate canvases…I would love to have that drawing. Its pretty cool. Would be interesting to see if either of my kids look like me when they were that same age 🙂
When I moved out just over 4 years ago my mother told me my stuff moves out with me. My childhood bits and pieces were already boxed and now live under the house or in the shed I believe, but all of my room stuff had to be schlepped across the country with me (although some of it came a few months later).
Then my sister moved into my room and now I go back there I stay in the guest bedroom. Unless there’s actual guests there, then I sleep on one of the couches or in my sisters bed.