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We moved a lot so I lived in a number of houses/apartments growing up. I don't think any of us kids thought much about the houses one way or the other.
I do remember a kid we knew that was embarrassed about his house. When we moved into that neighborhood a friend of ours was telling us about a kid down the street that had a buddy spend the night at his house and the buddy ran home screaming in the middle of the night. I asked why, and he told us that the house was infested with giant cockroaches and that they crawled all over his friend while he was sleeping on the floor.
I had always thought our friend was exaggerating until one night I was over there watching TV with the kid and while I was sitting in a recliner felt something on my neck. I thought it was the cord for the blinds brushing up against me until I reached behind my neck and grabbed it.
It was the biggest cockroach I ever saw. Because of all these stories about his cockroaches, he was reluctant to bring friends into his house, even his dog preferred to sleep in the back yard, less bugs out there.
I grew up in the late 40's, 50's and early 60's. I don't remember thinking about it much. Some friends had very fancy houses and some lived in horrible places. We were somewhere in the middle.
What I do remember is that my friends liked to hang out at our house. My mother was a good housekeeper but she wasn't hysterical about it. The living room wasn't off limits. The dining room was available for games and projects. The kitchen was always open. We were free to open the refrigerator and eat anything that wasn't being saved to make dinner with. If nothing else, there was always cheese and crackers or peanut butter, jelly and Wonder Bread. There was always a jug of Koolaid in the fridge. Everyone was welcome. All she asked was that we straightened up after ourselves if we made a mess. We weren't very good at that, though....
I remember a friend whose mother had a living room with white carpet and pale blue upholstered furniture. Nobody, but nobody was allowed in there. The bedrooms were off limits during the day and the kitchen had to kept spotless at all times. Heaven forbid that anything was done on the dining room table except to eat on Sundays and Thanksgiving.
I knew I never wanted a house that served as a showroom only.
We did only have one bathroom, though, for seven females and my poor father. I did envy people who had two bathrooms.
It is a suburban apartment, which combines the worst of apartments and suburbs. We were at suburban distance from everything and we didn't have our own outdoor space, garage, or shed. We stored our bikes in the living room. Now people are buying condos like that.
I grew up mainly in a couple of solid, ‘50s California Ranch style homes with developed large yards; small orchards, track-like concrete paths around lawns, play/tree house, swimming pool- and one fantastic, very large Victorian Farmhouse that stood sentry over the charming small mining town in the foothills. Also grew up with a mostly intact, close, kind of Wonder Years-like (TV show) family so there was stability, support, playfulness and comfort therein. I felt extremely lucky, proud and psychologically bonded with each one as a kid, having dreams to this day still about them, some 50 years later.
I’m a house kind of guy, architect, so I think my awareness of each house and the qualities they possessed were more acute than most even at a very young age.
I grew up in a 5 bedroom Dutch colonial in a leafy suburb of New Jersey. It was pretty normal for the neighborhood but I remember this one kid who came over asked if it was a two-family house. I sometimes wish I had bought it from my parents when they retired.
Still, my father had the kitchen dismantled literally for years from when I was about 10 to maybe 14, while he remodeled it himself. It's not like money was an issue, he just had this years-long project going and it put a damper on me having friends over and also on us having company over in general.
I was proud of it as a kid, was somewhat unique and in one of the nicest neighborhoods in my hometown, backed up to hundreds of acres of woods with trails to roam. Had a nice view and some interesting 80s contemporary design features.
As an adult, looking back on it, the house was only slightly better than average just happened to be in a less than average town.
Never really gave it any thought. In my neighborhood, all the houses were built in the 50s and they all looked exactly the same. My mother kept it clean and father kept it well maintained.
Same, except the neighborhood where I spent the majority of my childhood was built in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. My family’s house looked like everybody else’s, so comparison was mostly pointless.
I was somewhat embarrassed though there was no reason to be. We lived in a working class neighborhood and had a small 3BR ranch built in the 1950s that my dad later added on to with a new kitchen, FR and garage. Our place was well taken care of and the house was always immaculate inside, but the neighborhood was mixed. We were near two military bases and there were a lot of rentals. I probably had more classmates living in neighborhoods similar to mine than nicer neighborhoods, but I still had house envy.
I was totally embarrassed not only of the crap hole filthy run down nightmare I grew up in but of my alcoholic parents as well. I used to love going to my friends houses as a teenager. That's when I realized that I wasn't living in a normal, healthy environment.
I inherited that mess in the early 90's. Both of my parents died young and my emotionally crippled piece of crap brother couldn't buy me out of the property. He had no job because he lived off of our mother up until the day she died.
John and I knew nothing about home repair or being landlords, but we put it back together and it was a huge money making success. We sold it in 2018, one of the happiest days of my life, but it wasn't the same house I inherited. It was pretty nice, and the family that bought it loved it.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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The first was embarrassing, until about age 10. It was two bedrooms, 1 bath but there were 5 kids. The 4 of us boys slept in one bedroom, or sister in the other. Our parents slept in the dining room. The city was near the airport, noisy and windy.
When we moved we were proud of the new home. It was much bigger with 4 bedrooms, only 1.5 baths, but the yard was 1/2 acre, in a great city/neighborhood with swimming pools next door on both sides of us.
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