Were you proud or embarrassed of your home growing up?

[MrsDuck]

I love my childhood home but it was nothing fancy compared to my classmates houses which sometimes embarrassed me.

 

[Skippy918]

Embarrassed mostly after I moved away to college cause we rented and lived in an apartment in the city and most of my college friends grew up in the burbs and had houses.

 

[DumboDash2006]

I don't think I thought strongly either way. It was a house and pretty average for where we lived. We didn't have many big/fancy houses.

The house we lived in until dd was 17 was tiny, old and not run down, but definitely outdated in many ways. I think she was a tiny bit bothered by it, but not hugely. We live in a smallish town with a good number of large houses and large/nice houses on the many area lakes, but also many older houses and lots of average subdivision houses In kindegarten she had a new friend over once who was amazed by how small (1,050 sq feet) our house was an that it wasn't new. I heard her asking dd about it who said people had lived in it before us and her friend replied "so you garage saled your house?". Said friend lived in 5,000 sq footish McMansion.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

All of my friends and family lived in the exact same kind of home, a small South Philly rowhouse. So, there was nothing to be either proud or embarrassed about. We were all the same. In my neighborhood it was more about the people who lived in the the houses, whether or not they were embarrassing to their relatives or whatever.

 

[nicolita3]

I wasn't exactly embarrassed, but I didn't have friends over either. Both my parents worked a lot and I was left alone to watch my brother a lot. So our house was not exactly the cleanest or decorated the nicest. We also did not have any snacks or kids food in the house. When I went to my friends houses they had snacks and sodas and juice and we never had any of that.

 

[Adelle Dazeem]

I wasn't embarrassed! - we had the only pool in the neighborhood. I was about 7 when we had it put in - built in with a slide, diving rocks and it was very "innovative" at the time with the natural stone planters, free form shape, seating nooks in the planter area, etc.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Our house was mostly larger than many of my friends.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

My house was absolutely average for my hometown, so nothing to be proud or ashamed about. Besides, the kids I grew up with didn't compete with their houses, it was all about boats. Basically everyone in my town owned a boat, and size definitely mattered.

 

[tvguy]

It was home. Big back yard, nothing fancy. Other than the flooring in the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room and family room, EXACTLY as it was when my parents bought it new, as when I sold it 53 years later. The reality when I put it up for sale that odds were 50-50 it would be torn down. It wasn't It was remodeled, modernized by the investors and it sat on the market for a year. The reality was, they would have been better off tearing it down and building a McMansion on the half acre lot

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

My dad worked for the US Forest Service, so we moved around a lot as he moved up the Forest Service ladder. Some of the houses we lived in were Forest Service Compound houses (like military base housing). I lived in 8 different houses growing up. The first was a FS Compound house in Northern California on the Mendocino National Forest. Next was a rental house near the Angeles National Forest in Southern California; then my mom found a cute little cottage with a huge yard for sale in the next town over. My parents bought it and fixed it up. My mom was reallly good at decorating and gardening, so our houses, no matter what the size, were always beautiful. Then my dad got transferred again, and we lived in another FS Compound house on the Shasta Trinity National Forest in Northern California where my dad was the Ranger while my parents built their own larger house adjacent to the Compound. It was a mail order house from Cap Homes. It was a pretty neat ranch style house, and we were all super proud of it because every single one of us kids helped build it (even if we just painted or handed my dad shingles and nails). Then he got transferred again back to the Angeles National Forest. They bought a 1950s Brady Bunch like house that had pink stucco, an orangish rock roof and a totally pink kitchen (tile and appliances). By this time it was the early 80s, and I was in middle school/high school. They reroofed the house and painted it right away. It was much better after that. The yard and layout were really nice, and all the interior finishes the previous owners put in were really high end. After a few years, we moved again - this time back East to the Washington DC office. We built my family’s largest and all time favorite house in Virginia. It was a colonial, so different from the California style houses we were used to. We all loved the hard wood floors, the staircase and the huge deck my dad built. We were there for 3 years. Then my dad was transferred back to Southern California to the Cleveland National Forest as Forest Supervisor where they built the Spanish style house in San Diego where they still Iive today. He did get transferred one last time back to the Angeles as the Forest Supervisor, but he stayed at my grandmother’s house during the week and went home to San Diego on the weekends. He was 5 years away from retirement, and my parents wanted to retire in San Diego, so they kept their SD house.

 

[Hikergirl]

Definitely embarrassed. I grew up in a poor neighborhood and I was able to go to school in a nicer area where people had more money and nicer houses than I had. I never invited friends over.

 

[MonorailPrincess]

My home was embarrassed of me.

 

[RogueX]

The longest I had stayed in any place growing up was 3 years, so I didn't get attached to where I lived. It wasn't until my early 30s that I finally found roots with my husband and I having bought our house. It's small but we've had so many great times with our daughter, making memories.

 

[bobbiwoz]

It was a two family house, my parents were the owners. Some of my friends rented, some had single family homes, not many of those. It was good!

 

[TavieP]

Embarrassed. My parents rented their whole lives and my dad’s a hoarder and my mom was too exhausted from being the breadwinner and raising the children to do much housework so it was always a mess. We rarely had friends over and when we did I was ashamed.

The apartments weren’t in slums or anything, decent buildings in middle-class NYC neighborhoods, they started out fine, but it didn’t take long for them to end up a dusty, messy wreck. Not a fun way to grow up.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

Proud, but mostly because my parents kept up on the aesthetics. They worked in the yard CONSTANTLY to keep things looking nice.
We lived in a middle to upper middle class house, certainly nothing extravagant. We did have an in ground pool, which was not too common at the time.

 

[Patience]

We lived in a nice, averaged sized home (around 2000 square feet). My parents were obsessed with the yard and my mom was (and still is) very OCD about organization and house cleaning. Our house was decorated more nicely than the homes of all of my friends and it absolutely was the cleanest and most organized (think alphabetized spices in the cabinet and color coordinated clothing in the closets). I'm not sure I would say that I was proud of it exactly. It was nice but my sisters and I weren't allowed to sit on our beds in our rooms which were made up the minute we got out of bed, we weren't allowed to hang posters on our walls or have any say in the decorations in our rooms, and we were required to vacuum the carpets twice a day in the summer (morning and afternoon) and once a day during the school year (in the afternoon when we came home from school). We had one closet under the stairs where we were required to keep our toys and games organized on shelves. No toys allowed in our bedrooms. We spent all day on Saturdays doing yard work and we also did house work like scrubbing the grout in the bathrooms with a toothbrush and bleach every weekend. It was hard to explain to friends who came over that they weren't allowed to sit on the bed in our rooms and if they used the bathroom, my mom would always run in there the minute they were done to wipe out the sink and empty the trash can if they put a tissue in it. I keep a clean, neat house and I despise clutter of any sort but I am definitely more relaxed about my home than my mom was. And I don't do yard work at all. We hire someone to do it.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

I should have been embarrassed, but I don't believe I was either embarrassed or proud.

 

[NMBCFangirl]

The house was nice, but the people in it were really not so I rarely had friends over. Too embarrassed that they may witness a parental tantrum.

 

[TippyThomas]

Growing up I lived in some less than desirable foster home situations, so when I was adopted and moved in with my parents it is truly one of the proudest moments of my life. I finally found a home. I could care less what it looked like or how big or small it was. I was home and loved. Couldn't ask for anything more.