my place, her place, home, apartment

I have a small flat. A tiny cupboard of an apartment, which to be quite honest is big enough for me alone. Generally I speak about ”my place” or ”my flat” but I do at the end of the day ”go home”. But my place is still just ”my place”.

Over the weekend I visited a friend of mine, who too has a nice apartment. She also has two children. Her place is, like mine, sometimes in a state of disorder, but that is because she prefers the time with her children over to that of organising. My place is often messy and things are rarely where they should be and laundry can be hanging on the drying rack for days if not weeks but that it because I have interest in spending unnecessary time alone in my flat and because I don’t have the time I could spend.

She has an oven and a washing machine. I don’t. They are the two things on my list of things I want. My next place will have an oven and a washing machine. Her washing machine works fulltime. Mine would probably work only part-time but at least it would be occasionally humming in the background.

In her place you can, at the end of the day, curl in the corner of a sofa watch TV or a pre-taped episode from DVD and relax.  In my flat the home entertainment centre consists of my laptop. And despite it being ok for watching things as well it does make you prone to check email or do a bit more work. Using the same piece of high-tech for work and pleasure just doesn’t really work.

In her place there is noise. In my place, well unless the neighbours are fighting loudly, it is quiet. Really really quiet. My fridge was fixed a while back and now even it has stopped making noise.

She has a proper home. From the playground she goes HOME. I go back to mine. Don't get me wrong, I do like my place but it still is just "my place" it just isn't a proper home in the same way.