I spent a lovely, quiet afternoon yesterday, visiting with a dear friend. We had a cup of cocoa and chatted, and the time simply flew by unannounced. It being a tad too cold for my liking, our customary long walks have bee curtailed. In this weather, we couldn't (by which I mean *I* couldn't) have spent more than 90 minutes wandering outside before it got too chilly. At her place, we spent almost four hours talking and looking through old books and things.

I got to thinking, on my way there, how exciting it was to go. As I said to my friend while she was making our cuppa, her apartment is, as the kids say, #goals. By which I don't mean it's particularly large or grandiose. It's not stacked with expensive furniture or lavish decorations. It's just, well, a proper *home*.

Many of the cafes we typically frequent together have wonderful atmospheres, are cozy, nicely decorated etc, and of course, to an extent, that justifies the higher price of the coffee. You pay for atmosphere (as with stores, restaurants, and anything else, really). Logically, a personal visit ought to be a notch down in terms of atmosphere. Obviously, all home visits counter with intimacy and budget-friendliness and all sorts of little such details. But many homes won't be as lavish, shall we say, as a fancy coffee shop.

Hers is, though.

![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmUZ9ddQMbLeKVkdokCpBhaBs9fYwcUa6xjfoyUdKCipYt/image.png)

And again, it's not a luxury thing, but a home thing. Every last tiny decoration and minute detail in my friend's house bespeaks her. It's a fragment of her wonderful essence and a reflection of the things that matter to her. When you walk into the door, the first thing you see is a sea of green. She gets the green thumb from her mother who is a miracle worker with plants and has a huge garden herself. 

For me, a house without plants just feels so naked and bare.

And that's no wonder. There have been several studies that reflect the positive effects of plants in the workplace and so on, an effect that many seek to capture with the use of fake potted plants (an abomination, if you ask me). I still remember another friend had come to visit me when I first moved, and she kept tugging absent-mindedly on the leaf of a plant on my table. I stared at her with a rather miffed expression, until she exclaimed, rather shocked, *this is real?!*
I said of course, what else would it be? 

But I guess it's no surprise many people resort to fake plants, or no plants at all, when they barely have the reserves to take care of themselves (and no, I don't mean financial, even though plants can become quite an expensive habit).

**Books.** That's another must in a home for me, and I have a bad habit of closely examining other people's bookshelves, something of course my friend didn't mind, and was even kindly enough to loan me an Alain de Botton book. I'd like to say I don't judge, but it's in my nature, and I've decided not to fight it.

When I go into a house and it's book-less, I do judge very much. Not in a bitter or snappy way. Just in a disappointed way. It tells me I can't possibly have very much in common with the person living here. What  a shame. Not to say people who show off fancy, high-brow books in glass cases are much better. I typically don't have much in common with them, either.

![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmc2jMBYe2NiN3d86oLhJpd6xeW1hxLb7h9N28KTmAT26F/image.png)

**The things that speak of you.**

Perhaps due to renting (or perhaps due to not having very developed personalities), many people's homes are quite bare. They have the essentials, often mismatched or your basic ugly store furniture all lumped together. They have an overwhelmingly large TV, but they have no little mementos and things. Their houses lack that certain something that denotes someone actually living there.

It's quite bizarre. I'm not sure I'm explaining it well.

I was talking about this yesterday with this friend, and she said that not everyone has such a strong relationship with the space. Some people need to feel good where they live, to have items there that are uniquely *theirs*. Items that, though mismatched, somehow fit together through that person's personality, which unites them. I don't mean a chair. Everyone needs a chair (though what type of chair, again, can tell a story). I mean trinkets and things and pictures and mementos stolen from a cafe in Amsterdam, or a coaster from your first date with your husband. Stuff like that, you know?

And a lot of people don't have those. You go into their house, and it looks like it could've easily been arranged by a quick stage-manager half an hour before you walked through the door. Although it lacks none of the bare necessities, it has no personality.

And that's because many people actually don't.

I find one's house to be an excellent predictor of their personality. And again, this isn't about wealth. You can live in a cramped apartment with three other people and still make it uniquely your own. Generally, the people with houses that you can *exist* in tend to have bare, under-developed personalities. People with houses that are colorful and personalized in subtle, discrete ways are usually a joy to get to know.

And we know that, as visitors. Stepping through the door of my friend's apartment for the first time, I remember thinking very highly of her precisely because it was such a lived-in personalized home. It's the sort of home that tells you the person living here is happy *living* here, carrying out mundane tasks, or staying in on a cold day, not just *existing*. It's the sort of apartment that, once discovered, makes you wanna know this person better, because you've been searching so long for a place you can live, not just exist in.

*Pictures, of course, from my own home since it's not considered very good manners to go photographing other people's.*

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