Yesterday a co-worker asked me to host a party. I said nah. We have been the go-to party hosts for like 15 years now, and the disappointment and frustration of trying to throw parties during the pandemic has me burnt out on it. If someone wants a party, why don’t they throw it themselves? I suggested to my co-worker that they host it and they said “nahhh, maybe if the weather was nice and we could be out on my deck but it won’t be nice for a while…” I thought maybe they were nervous about their place getting trashed by a rowdy crowd or something (even though that seems like a silly fear at middle age) so I said what about just having people over for a potluck than? My co-worker simply replied, “I can’t.” Now, they have a totally decent house, centrally located, plenty of space, so I’m not sure why they “can’t” have people over. We’re not talking about having a rager here, we’re talking about a dozen or less co-workers having a few drinks together.
Another co-worker overheard this convo and said basically the same as the first co-worker, that if the weather was nice they would be happy to have people over for an outdoor thing, but their house “is no good for hosting parties.” I’m not clear on what that means though because to me, most people just want a place to get drunk and smoke weed. It’s better if the venue is clean and tidy, and even better if it’s got a cool vibe but those aren’t necessary. So really, any house is good for hosting parties, by my standards.
My first thought is that maybe some people are ashamed of their homes, like I have been feeling about the prospect of moving into a mobile (ahem, MANUFACTURED) home. Maybe they know their places are messy, or they haven’t gotten around to patching that hole in the drywall, or they haven’t finished those 4-yr old renovations, stuff like that. Maybe they just think their places look shitty or smell bad, like they will appear poor or something. Anyway, I don’t know if this is necessarily the reason my co-workers didn’t want to host an indoor party but I bet it’s a fairly common reason. I think the other common reasons would be laziness (don’t want to decorate, clean up, have to deal with drunks at the end of the night, etc), fear of their stuff or place getting damaged, and fear of failure, ie hosting a lame party. Those are the things that have prevented me from having parties in the past.
Anyway, I just thought it was interesting to encounter the possibility of other people being embarrassed of their homes right when I’m wrestling with that issue myself. Good timing, universe.
I have a feeling this is going to be a long post. I don’t want it to be, I find long blog posts tend to be boring and annoying, but I have a lot of mixed feelings on this topic that I want to process so just be aware that it might be really boring and annoying from any perspective but my own (and maybe even from my own too).
Jenn and I just put a deposit on a used old mobile home. It’s from the late 70’s, in really good condition, almost entirely original. “But why on Earth would you buy a frigging old mobile home?” you ask, with good reason. This is how we came to the decision.
We wanted a house for our other property. We wanted a recycled home from the start because we like making use of things that are perfectly good, affordable, and cooler than bland new shit.
We found a home we liked that Nickel Bros was selling, and we spent three months getting jerked around by them before that finally fell through. On one hand we were disappointed because we liked the house but on the other hand we were relieved to not have to work with Nickel Bros anymore because they were so shady and unprofessional from the start.
Next we looked at building new, which we weren’t thrilled about to start with, and when we learned how much building new was going to cost, we were flabbergasted. Then we learned that BC has some ridiculously prohibitive building laws now which make building in remote locations both difficult and completely unaffordable.
Then we looked at new prefab and modular homes (ie homes that are built in sections at their home site, then shipped out in those sections, and assembled at your building site) but learned these were just as expensive as traditional building and also subject to the same stupid building laws.
Next we looked into manufactured homes (previously known as mobile homes, way back when), and learned that going this route would allow us to sidestep the prohibitive building laws. Initially we figured we would buy something new but then Jenn stumbled across some very cool-looking old ones for sale nearby so we went and looked, and one of them was in good shape, inexpensive (compared to all other forms of housing, anyway), and full of cool original old features. As soon as we walked into that one, we both felt it was right.
At that point we went for a walk and talked it over. We weighed the pros and cons and decided that with all the new builds, we were going to have pay exorbitant sums of money and fuck around with various trades for something that still wasn’t exactly what we want. This option still isn’t exactly what we want but at least there is lots we love about it, we’ll pay a fraction of the price of a new build, and won’t have to fuck around with as many trades people. It really makes a lot of sense when we break it down.
Despite all the good reasons for going this route, I still have some hangups about it. I think about the cheap, flimsy interior doors with their plastic door knobs, the weird ceiling made of I don’t know what, the thin plywood on the walls that you can accidentally kick a hole through way too easily. The dumb thing about these details is that I also love them because of how quintessentially 70’s they all are, so I’m conflicted there. But I also think about the mobile Riley and Calli grew up in and all the gross cat piss smells (their mom was a cat hoarder), the stains on the ceiling, the soft spots on the floor, how shitty it looked inside and out, and I guess I worry about ours being like that. But this one is in great condition, plus we would be doing lots of work (new roof, gutters, siding, heat pump, deck, hot tub, fix up the few minor things, re-retro the few things that were updated, move all our neat 70’s appliances, light fixtures, and house decor into it), so I think I’m just worrying needlessly — I bet that once it’s all said and done, it will look legitimately 70’s and funky, and very clean and well-looked after.
But it’s funny how sometimes, even when you know you’re worrying needlessly about something, you still can’t stop worrying. I had to stop writing this yesterday, and now it’s the next day and despite all the good reasons I know I shouldn’t worry about this, here I am, still worrying. I guess it might just take some time, a few days maybe.
Random other thoughts on all of this:
What if I someday get sick of 70’s vibes? That would really, really suck if it happened after not only filling a house with 70’s stuff but buying a dang 70’s mobile home and plopping it onto our remote property — that’s real commitment to a vibe. I guess we could just reno everything if that’s what it came to. I can’t imagine that happening but it’s good to consider these things ahead of time.
When I was born, my parents had a 70’s mobile home on their property. It seems nuts to be going back in that direction all these decades later. I mean, my parents did it because they were young, poor, had young kids, and needed something to live in while they built a house on our property. But here I am, middle-aged, no kids, plenty of money, and buying a 45-year old mobile. It feels like a big step backwards on several different levels when I think about it like that.
I don’t like our current house very much but I don’t feel shitty or trashy about that. The windows are all fucked, the drywall is damaged from when the roof leaked long ago, it’s ugly, it’s a terribly inefficient design for heating and cooling, etc, etc yet I’m not embarrassed to have people over here. So why am I worried about having people over at a home that looks cool but is an old mobile? What’s the difference? Maybe it’s not so much that I’m worried about other people not liking it, maybe I’m more worried that I won’t like it, that I will feel like a piece of shit any time I am in it. But when I think about the tour we took of it yesterday and how much I liked everything, that seems like an absurd concern to have — I loved the dang thing.
I guess my big apprehension about this boils down to: am I going to feel like trailer trash? I think that’s a silly concern to have, and one that is entirely in my head — like, if I had never known about mobile homes and bought into the stigma associated with them and was suddenly living in a neat one from the 70’s, I’d probably just be like, “this is amazing.” So I think it’s ridiculous to let such silly concerns bother me, but at the same time I also think it’s important to consider where those concerns are coming from, and why, to work out whether or not they have any real weight to them, or if there are underlying emotional things, triggers or whatever, that I should address. It’s an opportunity to work through some more of my baggage.
Ok, I’m feeling better now. That last random thought feels like the distillation of what this whole post is boiling down to, so that’s good. That’s what I need to focus on and process. Good job, self.
crimson highway 