One Saturday night my wife and I were sitting around our rather worn living room with some old friends 
when one of them started trying to remember how long we’d lived there.
“Since 1952,” I said. “We paid off the money we owed on the house eight years ago.”
“If you don’t owe money on the house,” he said, “the house isn’t as valuable.”
I’m in no way clever with money except when it comes to spending it. These words made me unhappy.
“To whom is it not as valuable?” I asked him in a voice that was louder than necessary for him to hear what I was saying. “Not to me, and I’m the one who lives here. As a matter of fact, I like it much more than I did when the bank owned part of it.”
“What did you pay for it?” he asked.
“We paid $29,500 in 1952.”
My friend nodded and thought a minute.
“I’m sure,” he said, “that you could get $85,000 for it today . . . you should ask for $95,000.”
I don’t know why this is such a popular subject of conversation these days, but our house is not for sale. Our house is not a temporary investment. It is not a tent in which to spend the night before we rise in the morning to go on to some other place. Our house is our home. We live there. It is the place we go to when we don’t feel like going anywhere.
We do not plan to move.
Recent research shows that forty million Americans move every year. One out of every five of the American population packs up his things and goes to live somewhere else.
Where is everyone moving to? Why are they moving there? Is it really better somewhere else?
If people want a better house, why don’t they fix the one they have?
If the boss says their job is being moved to a new town, why don’t they get another job? Jobs are easier to come by than a home. I can’t imagine giving up my home because my job was moving.
I have put up twenty-nine Christmas trees near the window of the living-room, each a little too tall. There are marks on the ceiling to prove it.
Behind the curtain of the window nearest my wife’s desk, there is a section of wall which is four inches wide. It has missed the last four coats of paint so that the little chalk marks with dates opposite them would not be lost. If we moved, someone would certainly paint that section of the wall. How would we know how tall our children were when they were four years old?
When you own a house you learn to live with its problems. If something doesn’t work quite right, the carpet is worn, the toilet or bathroom basin leaks, or you have a bad neighbor, you get used to them and, like your own shortcomings, you find ways to ignore them.
Our house provides me with a simple pleasure every time I come home to it. I am welcomed by familiar furniture when I enter, and I’m warmed by everything in our house which may merely be dust, but it is our dust and I like it.
The talk of moving came up at dinner one night ten years ago. My son was only half listening, but at one point he looked up from his plate, and asked, “We’re settled here. Why would we want to move away from home?”
When anyone asks me how much I think our house is worth, I just smile. The house is not for sale.
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