Listen: I know that it’s HGTV’s fault and everyone else is just behaving like sheep, but can I get something straight?
If you live in a freestanding structure that even pretended to be up to code at the time you bought it, then you live in a house. You can call it a house. You can have a housewarming party, and on weekends you can invite people over to your house.
If, on the other hand, you live in an apartment or a condo and you are ashamed of the fact, then you can invite people to your home, hoping that they don’t notice your social inferiority. I’d have a lot more respect for you if you faced facts and invited them to your *apartment * or your condo and were proud of it, but I know that in America at least a lot of us really want a house. Still, saying home grates on my nerves. Are you also hankering for a frosty beverage? Did you just purchase that new suit? No. You want a cold drink. You bought the suit. Stop sounding like a two-bit corporate presentation!
Sigh. This is definitely not pit material, I just wanted to finally share with the world that this choice of word really bugs me. You live in a house. Call it a house. Yes, I know that you decorated it and your kids were born in it and it’s the sacred altar of your family life (until you sell it and buy a bigger one in three years). It’s still a house.
I’m not sure where you are getting all this because it isn’t right. A house is a structure. It can refer to your own or to an abandoned one down the street. “Home” is a concept and has always been with us (“Home is where the heart is” or “homesick” or “There’s no place like home” for example.) Saying that you should use “home” only for apartments and condos is just plain incorrect and I have never heard it before. Turning a house into a home is an abstract concept and it means that a person bonds with the place and things that happen there in their heart.
No, I honor you immensely. It takes an exceptionally fine specimen of a person to refer to their apartment as their house. It’s the best way to go about things.
And I’m saying that I reject the kind of McSentimentality that that entails. You go ahead and be very, very fond of your house. I just bought one, and I intend to be very, very fond of it. Build memories there. Pass it down through eight generations. Become impoverished gentry rather than sell up, because it means that much. You should still refer to it as your house. “Home” is used in constructions such as:
I’m at home
I’m going home
I’m leaving home
Make yourself at home
These phrases shouldn’t, in my worldview, necessarily have anything to do with the physical structure. They’re about your family and your stuff, and the freedom to do whatever you want. And because of that, you cannot buy a home. You cannot welcome strangers to your home because they are not part of the home. You can’t throw a homewarming party, because there is no one moment when you can say “aha! Now I have a home! I’d better invite people over so they’ll give me a lot of new stuff for my home!” because the new stuff is going to take a long, long time to become part of the home.
I remember saying to a old landlord who was annoyed that we weren’t more accomodating to the estate agents who were selling the house out from under the tenants (me). “Yes you’re selling your House, but you’re selling my Home”
The following is from the style guide I wrote for the planners I work with:
House: freestanding one or two family house.
Residence: any dwelling unit, including houses, apartments, townhouses, and so on.
Dwelling unit: same as “residence.” Avoid in general use; it sounds too technical. Okay in tables, charts and other references to statistical data or inventories.
Home: avoid in context of “house” and “residence”. Okay for general use where it would make a sentence sound less awkward; for example:
Yes: “Residents have long commutes home.”
Awkward: “Residents have long commutesto their (houses/residences/dwelling units).”
No, not really. My home was a true colonial built before 1760 that was largely uninhabitable when we bought it and remained that way for about the first 18 months that we lived here (no kitchen for example; I mean that the place that the kitchen was before was a giant pit in the middle of the house that you couldn’t walk around). Six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later and the place reeks of our blood, sweat, and tears earned through thousands of hours of labor on our part not to mention the contractors and construction crews. It is a part of history and a big part of our lives. We just can’t replace it and the house is a big part of who we are.
I didn’t start calling it home until about the 3rd year when I really meant it. Houses aren’t easily exchangeable commodities to me unlike some people that live in condos or suburban tract houses. Our house is an integral part of the family and helps me teach my daughters about hard-work, investing for the future, and American history. I don’t consider myself an owner as much as a caretakers and that type of things has led to some hard decisions to protect aspects of the house when other actions might have been easier. I can’t speak for you or anyone else but my house has earned the distinction of a home and can’t be replaced.
I have to go house just does not sound right. :dubious:
Or in baseball how would this sound "The runner is rounding third, and headed for house.
:rolleyes:
A ‘home’ is what people make; a house is the building they live in. There’s a large tract, not too far from where I live, called “HomeWorld”. It’s full of empty project ‘homes’ which people wander through trying to decide which one they want to have building on their particular block of land. It has always irritated the (can I say 'crap’in MPSIMS?) out of me. They are a bunch of empty buildings. They are houses. They most certainly are not ‘homes’.
But a home is so much friendlier than a house. I asked a musician friend of mine what the difference between a violin and a fiddle was, and he explained it like this: “it’s a fiddle if I’m buying it and a violin if I’m selling it.”