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Original poster

When did your new home feel like home?

29 replies

Awayfromhome12 · 23/02/2025 17:08

its my first night in my new home, and i miss my old home so much. I feel like I need to go home and then realise this is my home now. It smells, feels and even sounds different. I’m jumping at every sound because I don’t recognise it. Worrying the neighbours are going to be noisy. Doesn’t help we haven’t got internet yet so no Netflix. I just want to go home and feel sad, even a bit sick. Is this normal? I wanted somewhere bigger, now I’ve got it and I want my dingy but very cosy flat back.

OP posts:

mindutopia · 23/02/2025 18:03

It’s normal. We moved into our much longed for home and I definitely felt like I was in a holiday let for about 3 months. I didn’t want to go back to our old one so much as it just felt like staying in someone else’s home. Feels like we’ve always lived here now, but it takes time.

Mingenious · 23/02/2025 18:05

I felt at home here from the very first moment.

Pickingmyselfup · 23/02/2025 18:17

Awful!! We moved here from our first rental house and I thought because it was properly ours and bigger it would feel like home.

I was so so wrong.

Took me a few weeks to settle in, everytime I came back it felt wrong, nothing felt like home and all I wanted to do was go back to our rental house. I've moved a lot so it was a bit of a shock to feel like that.

Eventually once we started to put our mark on it, it started to feel like home. I think because the house previous was our first house together it was all exciting, the previous ones were only a temporary fix until I moved on again so it was never "mine"

10 years later it definitely feels like home and I'm really debating if we should move again.

FedupMumof10YearOld · 23/02/2025 18:20

You're in that weird period of adjustment phase. You don't quite belong in either place...yet. You definitely will - give it time!

Littletreefrog · 23/02/2025 18:24

I've been in my new house 6 weeks and it's just starting to feel like home. Even though everything about this house is better than my last house and we left the last house for very good reasons I spent the first few days wishing I could go back. I think it's just a normal reaction to a huge change

Attictroll · 23/02/2025 18:31

About 3 months... I remember my bedroom didn't really feel like mine until I had a week in bed with bad flu 😂

MargaretThursday · 23/02/2025 18:58

Took me about 6 months.

But it was really when we started making it look like ours not theirs that probably made the difference.

Whataninterestinglookingpotato · 23/02/2025 19:01

After 3 months staying in an over crowded situation with my in laws the house I now live in felt like to immediately!! I was so glad to finally have our own space.

when we moved into our old house (the one I had to sell to buy this one, which was then delayed, hence the stay with the in-laws) it took a couple of weeks to feel like home.

cramptramp · 23/02/2025 19:02

I've moved house so often any new house feels like home immediately. If you haven't moved very often OP, that's maybe why you feel the way you do.

NormasArse · 23/02/2025 19:07

About 6 years. I love it here now though.

I think my expectations were unrealistic. I thought it would be super quiet and it wasn’t. I tied myself up in knots for several years about noise in the area.

AlexandraJJ · 23/02/2025 19:18

I’m 2.5yrs in and it still doesn’t. I miss my old house 🫤

Diningtableornot · 23/02/2025 19:20

It's normal for me. I hate moving so much I've never stayed less than 10 years in each place.
It does get better. I find I am somewhat better after 3 weeks, much better after 6 months and absolutely at home after a year. Hopefully you'll be quicker than that.

Bluevelvetsofa · 23/02/2025 19:21

Four months nearly and I’m getting there. I don’t want to go back to the old house though.

CuteEasterBunny · 23/02/2025 19:23

A few weeks but I’ve been here 1 year and it still seems like a dream that this is my new house but I feel at home.

Destiny123 · 23/02/2025 19:24

3 years but tis cos needed so much diy

LubyLoo · 23/02/2025 19:27

It has varied with each house. Our first home it took a couple of months but it was a big change of location, type of area and jobs. Our second home we lived in for nine years and it never felt like home. Our third home felt like home instantly even when we were still surrounded by boxes.

Tarkan · 23/02/2025 19:30

Where we are now I knew it was home as soon as we went to view it. But I had never felt fully at home in our last place so that was maybe part of it.

Chipsahoy · 23/02/2025 19:35

Oh god I hated my new home. My previous one was perfect, I adored it but location wasn’t what we wanted.
We moved to a reno project. Arrived to a power cut after storm Arwen. We had no carpets, no power, no heat and no water. It was horrific.
Three years on and still renovating but it’s been home for the majority of that time. Give it a few weeks. It does take time to familiarise yourself with noises and smells etc.

terracottatrees · 23/02/2025 19:37

Gosh my first home didn't feel like home for the first two or so years until we put our stamp on it

PollyPeeves · 23/02/2025 19:38

Immediately. Although my current house is new build so I'm not sure if that "fresh"/"no one has ever lived here before" knowledge helped.

saltandvinegarchipsticks · 23/02/2025 19:40

It took a few months to decorate and get all my things where I wanted them. First night there it felt bare and echoey and cold, but now it’s home.

LostMyLanyard · 23/02/2025 19:49

Since the day I moved in...and every day since, I still get a thrill when I walk in. I bloody love my home 💖

peudhrk · 23/02/2025 19:49

Ahh OP don't worry, it'll be home soon. I really don't know if I can put a figure on it, it wasn't so much the house but the location for us, but it wasn't long until it was home.

I often think, for me at least, it really starts to feel like home when you've been there for a year and you have memories of the previous season if that makes sense, so you remember the last Christmas, spring etc. But that said it definitely didn't take a year to feel like home! I am very nostalgic about property so I do still look back fondly on all my previous homes, but nothing beats my current one, and I'm sure you'll feel like that soon too.

Mittens67 · 23/02/2025 20:05

Took about 5 years. I had to move here after a very traumatic divorce and it was quite a down size. My old home had been mine pre marriage so as well as missing it I was very angry and upset that my scrounging ex husband had forced me into selling. For the first few years I could never even bring myself to call my new place home. I would say I am going back instead I’m of going home.
It is actually a lovely place. Quiet, detached, near friends. I really like it now.

Gingercatlover · 23/02/2025 20:52

After about a year, when we had painted every room in the colours we wanted and changed the carpets in every room too.

Before that it felt like we were living someone else's life, strange feeling.

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