Mitchell Stroud

ARCH 3013

Blog Assignment 1

My Parent’s House

I thought I would start these blogs off pretty easy by starting with my parent’s house. They have had the house over 25 years, and they bought it as a fixer upper. The two things I always hear them say about the house when talking with friends or new people are that the house was one of the first California contemporary homes in Oklahoma and how there was purple shag carpet in the bathroom.

Of course, there is the obvious meaning of this house being my childhood home, but beyond that it functions as a mental time capsule so to speak. Now that all three of their kids have moved out of the house, whenever we all visit it takes me back to when I was a little pest and my older brothers would pick on me. Whenever I go home, I feel like I can completely be myself. I do not have to maintain a façade of having my life together or act neighborly. I see my parent’s house as a sort of vacation. Although when I am there it is usually breaks from school and some weekends, but I feel like I can fade away from the real world and float in a suspended state of relaxation and good times. Unlike many aspects of my life, my parent’s house is the only place where I only think of happy memories. The good memories always shine through when I’m thinking about their house, whereas other parts of my life I have to remind myself to see the positive instead of dwell on the negative.

Overall, from the purple shag carpets my parents removed while renovating it, to the loving memories that its wall elicit, my parent’s house functions as so much more than the wood, glass, sheetrock, and concrete that it is made of.