The people who fill it do.
As our home for the past 2 years got listed on the market, we didn’t feel any strong attachment to it. I felt a strong attachment to other homes in the past.
In my early 20’s, I lived with 5 other guys in a townhome. It was a bachelor pad of guys straight out of college with part time jobs. There were rare days where we were the only people there. We had an open door policy where guests were always welcome and hanging out, and it filled that place with laughter.
In my mid twenties, I lived with 2 other guys in another townhome. We were mere minutes away from our church, so our house became the central meeting point for our young adult community. Again, people were welcome at anytime and friends were always over. Leaving that house was in a way the end of another era of special friendships.
When Betsy and I got married, we moved into an apartment in the same neighborhood as my previous home. So we were still fairly central to our group of friends and had many dinner dates and parties at our place. I think we both teared up as we closed the doors on that apartment.
Then we had Emerson and bought our current house. It’s a beautiful home, but I can count on my hands the number of times we’ve had people over. Having a baby was a big part it, because you just have no time to hang out. A lot of our friends were also moving into different stages of life, so it just got harder to stay connected. We made friends with people in our life stage at our church community, but we’re about 45 minutes away (over an hour on weekdays), so it made it difficult to connect.
Though our current house is great, it lacked the people we wanted to fill it with due to location and life stage. So that’s why we’re moving. We want a place that’s close to the people we love so we can fill it with the people we love. That’s what gives a place meaning.