Quirky Military Homes and the Reasons I Love Them

My family has moved many times in the last twenty years, in the country and out, from base to base to base. There is an unbeatable camaraderie among military families, for a plethora of reasons, but I find the laughter (and frustration) over our homes to be a special connection. Living transitory lives in different places yields a certain attitude about houses and a funny quirkiness in our spaces that entertains me. Our homes tell an eclectic, sometimes humorous story and represent so many aspects of the military life.

Here are TEN REASONS I LOVE MILITARY HOMES:

1) Lifestyle constraints make us low-maintenance. While normal families might spend months finding the perfect house, military families must be quick to find shelter and beggars can’t be choosers. We are moving in six weeks?? Alrighty… A house on base that looks exactly like every other house on the block? Okay. A rental house across the country that we must reserve, site-unseen, because the market moves so quickly? And it has a granny bathtub and a kitchen the size of a dollhouse? That’s fine. Or moving to a small town and finding only ten houses for sale within the school boundaries, none of which were the kind of house we had in mind? Okay, I guess this one will do. And since we might only be there for two years, we focus on the small things, ignore the big things (like the bright yellow hallway tile we want to jackhammer) and accept our imperfect houses until we fly away to our next nest.

2) Military homes keep us humble. In a world of dream homes, HGTV, and the need to keep up with the Jones’, many military families grab a bag of popcorn and watch from the sidelines. Our houses are often not worth bragging about (see above) but exist for practical purposes. They do the job, they give us shelter, they provide a temporary space for our family and we make them work. If your house has a toilet 12” from the front of the washing machine (a scenario which takes multi-tasking to an ENTIRELY new level) you can’t feel too haughty #truestory. If your downstairs doesn’t have any heating vents or your kitchen has only four cabinets or two microwaves installed next to each other, you aren’t calling “House Beautiful” and asking for a magazine spread. You are calling your friends and saying “My new house has lime green walls. It’s fine, my kid will sleep there.”

3) Furniture is often eclectic and tells a story. Those who have been stationed in Europe usually have large antiques, often filled with Polish Pottery. (I miss you, Trocs.) People who have been stationed in Japan often have Tansu Chests against their wall, showcasing their souvenirs from East Asia.

Sadly, many of these pieces have battle scars from the moving process- broken table legs forced back together with superglue or large scratches across the surface from when Joe the Mover decided to place the lawn mower on top. (Way to go, man.) Normal people might replace their flawed furniture but military families think of future moves and future damage, place a tablecloth over the top and tell their friends “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

4) Furniture often doesn’t fit right. While normal families choose the perfect sofa for the perfect living room, we shoot in the dark, hoping that what we buy will be transferrable in two years. It’s all a gamble! When we downsize from a 4,000 sq ft Texas mansion to a 1600 sq ft home in Washington DC, we will curse our large sectionals that now fill every inch of space in our tiny living room. But…we paid MONEY for that big sofa and we aren’t divorcing it quite yet. It will do.

Sometimes our furniture has to go suddenly, like when my friend moved to England and couldn’t get her King size mattress in the front door! Oops. New mattress please!

5) Furniture is often repurposed. When spaces change, so do the lives of our possessions. My friends’ nightstands, which are too wide for her new bedroom, now reside next to her front door as side tables. My other friend’s kitchen buffet table now sits in her living room. The file cabinet that matches the office desk sometimes doubles as a TV stand. The rug I purchased for my front entry now lives in my master bedroom because our new house doesn’t have space by the front door. (Does it match my bedroom linens? Nope. But someday I might have a foyer again so the rug stays.)

6) Home decor often goes through a lengthy consideration process. Normal families see an item they like and buy it. Done. Shopping is not that simple for us. We see something at a store and think Do I have a place for that? Is it likely that I would have a place for it in another house? What are the chances that it will survive our next move? Is it too fragile? How would movers actually load that onto a truck? If I buy a glass coffee table, will it be destroyed within two years? Wood it is. Sometimes we buy things we love (like the couches mentioned above) and deal with the spaces as they come. Sometimes we win and sometimes… well… we live tightly.

7) Sometimes we look like hoarders. That 4,000 sq ft mansion reduced to 1600 sq ft might mean a mountain of possessions inside our walls. When we move to a house that suddenly has zero closets and no garage, the bikes might live in the dining room. Or we may live in the desert but fill our closets with bins of snowgear in case our next duty station has cold winters (because that stuff is an INVESTMENT). We might have one room with three mismatched couches or European antiques shoved in the corner of our children’s bedrooms #truestoryagain. With unclear futures and unknown spaces ahead of us, hoarding can easily happen.

8) Unexpected souvenirs abound everywhere. We hail from all corners of America and have lived in a variety of places so our decorating style can be random but special. My Georgian friend lives in Virginia but has a Washington State highway sign on her wall. My Louisiana-born friend has a collection of Japanese souvenirs on her shelf. Another friend of mine has a couch full of British pillows. My living room displays a random black elephant from Hong Kong sitting next to a photo of the Pacific Northwest. That’s how we roll- converging our home states with our places of residence and our worldly souvenirs.

9) Military houses help design future dreams. Every house teaches us a lesson and adds mental bricks to our “forever homes”, those castles in the sky which military families so often reference. We dream of a future home of our choosing, in which we finally have control over our space and the location. Our forever houses will have this… we always say in conversation. One house taught us that white tile always looks dirty. Other houses have taught us that front porches prevent soggy packages, black countertops show crumbs, fewer bathrooms mean fewer spaces to clean, and again, let’s not put a toilet next to the washing machine. Essentially, military families have the opportunity to test-drive different shapes and sizes of houses and fine-tune our future abodes. It is an unexpected gift of this nomadic life!

And what I love MOST about military homes is…

10) They represent the essence of our military journey. We are a collection of memories and battle scars. We load ourselves into trucks and transport ourselves across the country (or the ocean) to serve where we are needed. We smash ourselves into corners, cover our wounds and look out the window at the new scenery. We reinvent ourselves every time, putting forth new energy into our new purpose. We might not look pretty, we might not fit exactly into our new space but we awkwardly try. With every move we look a little more worn (and maybe a little more quirky) but don’t let the outside fool you. We are STRONG, STURDY and ABLE to get the job done. 🙂

To all the military families who are moving this year: may the force be with you, may the movers be gentle with your furniture and may your new nest have neutral paint colors and normal toilets. Godspeed.

Has your military family lived in a quirky home? I would love to hear your stories! ❤️

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