Recently, I moved the boxes of building blocks, Playmobil figures and Lincoln Logs from an alcove in my apartment’s living room to the spacious kitchen, where the grandkids would have more room to build their castles and towns when they visit. I then rearranged some living room furniture to make the room more attractive to the eye – not just to any eye, but to my own. Given the oriental carpet, the large, heavy table that seats six, and the dark-wood shelves with their books, pictures, and mementos, the room could pass as a small, quaint library.

Apply a rigorous aesthetic, and in no way would this room qualify as beautiful. One wall begs for a large painting or at least several photographs. The paintings and reproductions I own stand atop bookshelves and the mantle of an out-of-commission fireplace so as to avoid peppering the walls with nail holes. The lacquered pinewood floor is marred with stains, scratches, and blotches of paint. The La-Z-Boy in one corner compliments the light green paint of the walls, but is too large for the room, and even a casual observer might wonder why, snug against the window in the other small alcove, there’s a battered desk made of particleboard and metal supports accompanied by a rolling office chair.

Yet this is the place of all places on this earth that I love right now. This apartment, in particular this room, is my safe haven, my harbor, my cell of retreat. Transport this room to any house or apartment across the country – a hacienda in New Mexico, a Nantucket cottage, a shotgun house in New Orleans, a walkup in Philadelphia – deposit me inside, and I’d be home.

There’s nothing rarified or unusual in this sentiment. Many others have written of home as a refuge, that special place where we can close a door to the outside world and enter surroundings that call us to be ourselves. G. K. Chesterton, for instance, wrote that a man “does not merely want a roof above him and a chair below him; he wants an objective and visible kingdom, a fire at which he can cook what food he likes, a door he can open to what friends he chooses.”

Joining my thoughts on home with Chesterton’s is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s definition that a house “is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life’s storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.” And though offered as an ironic twist to her nose-in-the-air snobbery, Augusta Elton of Jane Austen’s “Emma” speaks for many of us when she says, “Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”

Finally, Proverbs 24:3-4 tells us, “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all pleasant and precious riches.”

In my case, those “pleasant and precious riches” are my books and the other objects of my affection collected over a lifetime, some trivial, some embedded with priceless memories of a loved one or a moment in time.

Despite such wisdom, plenty of Americans are homeless – and they’re not all living under a bridge or begging money on the street. Some, in fact, are quite wealthy, with two, three, and four houses available to them, places designed and used more for camping out than as sanctuaries. Other people I’ve met switch houses frequently, selling and buying to play the market or because they’re easily tempted toward the nomadic life, and so always are in transit, with boxes still unpacked in the bedroom and den. Minimalism – now trending as “warm minimalism” – remains very much in vogue, and can be beautiful or soulless, depending on the tastes of the homeowner, but when soulless, it too fails to turn a house into a home, instead smacking more of a motel sitting area. Still others regard the antiques from their grandma’s house as treasures to be sold rather than cherished.

Different strokes for different folks, as that old saw from the ’60s says. I understand these different folks to an extent – their desire for simplicity, their unwillingness to carry forward pieces of furniture, fine China ware sets, or even Great Aunt Sally’s locket from France. To one set of eyes, a 150-year-old dining room breakfront with a mirror is a treasure, to another trash, unwieldy and too large for practical use. After all, homes aren’t made from antiques, but from love.

Whether it’s a two-bedroom apartment or a mansion, however, and whether we realize it or not, we humans need a place to call home. As philosopher and writer Roger Scruton put it in his essay “Beauty and Desecration”:

We are needy creatures, and our greatest need is for home–the place where we are, where we find protection and love. We achieve this home through representations of our own belonging, not alone but in conjunction with others. All our attempts to make our surroundings look right–through decorating, arranging, creating–are attempts to extend a welcome to ourselves and to those whom we love.

Whatever your circumstances, wherever you’re living, take some time to make that dwelling place a home and extend a welcome to yourself.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

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