Our First Day Without a Home

October 15. Our first day without a house—or a home. If “home is where the heart is,” then my heart is metaphorically with my husband, but physically sitting in a modest hotel room. We’re still in the same area we’ve lived in for 30 years, just tucked into a nearby city we’ve grown oddly attached to. This town has been our go-to for everything: groceries, hardware, medical appointments, car repairs. Not because we didn’t love supporting our tiny local shops back home, but because unless you only need milk, bread, or a tube of glue, a 30-mile trip and a full day dedicated to errands was simply part of life.

So here we are, finding refuge in this familiar town for our first night as newly “houseless.” And as the day unfolds, I know we’ll likely stay here more times than expected. It’s amazing how much business must be handled after selling a home you’ve lived in for so long—those everyday systems that run quietly in the background until the moment payment is due or something breaks.

My sleep was far from restful. Not the hotel’s fault, or the guests’, but my own restless brain. What I jokingly call “restless brain syndrome” (RBS) kicked into high gear. It’s the same feeling I get every summer as a teacher when school is about to start: the brain replaying imaginary scenarios, wondering what the year will bring. What’s going to happen now? That question echoed all night. I woke at 3:30 AM, drifted back to sleep an hour later, and was up again by 7:00, my mind already running through the plan for the day… the week… and then the wide-open “and then…?”

By 7:00 AM my stomach finally convinced my brain to take a break, and we headed downstairs for the hotel’s modest breakfast. As we sat there eating, it hit me: we have no schedule. No yard to mow. No animals to feed. No rooms to empty or clean. No place we have to rush back to. We could simply eat breakfast and decide the shape of our day whenever we felt like it.

That freedom lasted about five minutes—because we had a mountain of errands waiting.

First came the utilities: releasing responsibility to the new owners, stopping propane deliveries, trash pickup, mail forwarding. Then the bigger question—what to do with the storage unit full of things we moved out to prepare the house for selling. Do we haul everything across state lines to our new chapter? Donate it? Try to sell it online? What is our time worth?

In the end, donating won. Shelves, desks, tables, TV monitors—most of it went to a local charity. We don’t even know where we’ll be living a year from now. If we truly need something later, we can buy it. Extra clothes, forgotten trinkets, anything without sentimental weight joined the donation pile. Some damaged items went straight to the dump because not everything is worth repairing or rehoming.

We picked up our utility trailer from a friend who kindly stored it for us, emptied the storage unit completely, and managed to avoid future fees. By then the day had moved quickly. We grabbed lunch, picked up a few groceries, and returned to the hotel to extend our stay another night. Even with all we accomplished, we weren’t done yet—and staying in a familiar area just made sense.

And that’s how our first full day ended: voluntarily homeless, unexpectedly free, and carrying more questions about the future than answers—but facing it together.