It seems as if the past two months have been cyclonic. In truth, it has been a long ten months. I’ll backtrack for you, but with some trepidation. If I were reading this as you, I would think, ‘Yeah, but what’s the real story.’ Since I can’t control your reactions, I’ll tell the story as it unfolded for us and let your judgement fall where it may.
Five years ago we packed up our belongings (okay, plants. Lots and lots of plants) and moved from Kansas City, Missouri to northern California. We had no home and didn’t know anyone in the area but my husband, Scott, had the chance at a job transfer so we jumped at the chance to move to a new climate, a new part of the country. Truthfully, a new culture. And let me say, we.have.loved.it!
After living in a hotel for about a month upon arrival as we searched for a place to live, we ran across a house on Craigslist and met with the owner. She was oddly quirky, but everything seemed to line up nicely and we happily moved in on October 1, 2018. We did what we always do – we made our little 70’s rental home our own. We acquired furniture that best suited the house. We planted (admittedly, the wrong) plants in the backyard only to discover that our Midwestern favorites couldn’t survive in the blazing sun of California but we learned and studied and experimented until we found a nice co-existence with Mother Nature. Eventually Scott put in some raised garden beds that provided us with two full cycles of vegetables each year. It was heaven!
Given unlimited time I could list for you the multiple areas in which I fall short in life. But there are a few things I can do well, one of which is making a house a home. Scott and I both love a mid-century vibe and our house was the perfect time-period for that. Modern design is a particular favorite of ours. When we moved in, the walls were all a light gray. (Totally fine) Over time we realized our furniture and design choices conflicted with the gray so we painted the walls white. Again, a rookie Midwestern mistake. Our living area (blessedly!) got a TON of natural light. Because of this it gave the walls a yellowish hue. And everything was too bright (which is saying a lot because I like things REALLY bright with natural light!)
Maybe this is a good place to write out for you what our rental contract said. It is pretty standard in most leases: All alterations/improvements made by or caused to be made by Tenant, with or without the Landlord’s consent, become the property of Landlord upon termination. Landlord may charge Tenant for restoration of the premises to the condition it was in prior to any alterations/improvements. Cool. That was perfect for us. We were not bothered by leaving things behind as long as the house felt homey and ‘us’ while we lived there. And we understood any paint choices we made would have to be reversed when we moved. Cool cool cool.
When our first year contract came to an end, our landlord (who is very serious and rather stern…again, ‘quirky’) told us how happy she’d been with us and that we could go to a month by month lease. We reiterated to her that we were also very happy apart from one thing: the contract said no pets. While on the phone with her we explained that Scott worked evenings for half the year and that I would feel a little more secure if we could get a dog. Something that would bark and at least sound fierce should someone try to break in. Sidenote: I don’t know what you think about the Neighbors app, but it’s too much for me. Our area seemed to be a bunch of petty vendettas being played out over the app (‘So and so left their trashcans out again’) and plus, I didn’t love constantly reading about break-ins. It made me overly paranoid. So a dog seemed to be a nice solution for safety and to keep me company while Scott was at work.
Landlord readily agreed to it. She understood our situation and said we’d been such good tenants that she felt comfortable agreeing to a dog. We were excited and found a goldendoodle from a nearby breeder and forked over the money for a specialty puppy. Tilly was born in February 2020 and we picked her up in April 2020. If you’ve followed me on any social media you may be familiar with Tilly, our black goldendoodle that basically looks like a poodle and is nowhere NEAR a threat to anyone except to love them to death. However, when someone comes to our door, she has a ferocious bark and that’s exactly what we were looking for! She’s perfect in every way.
Fast-forward to Fall of 2022. Our landlord called us about some pea gravel we poured in the sideyard where the water pools and everything dies. We laid a strip of pea gravel and planted some Russian sage that grew beautifully there. Our (did I mention quirky) landlord was convinced someone could trip and fall on any rock that might migrate to the sidewalk. It was a ludicrous statement. The gravel wasn’t near the sidewalk but we assumed she needed to assert some authority of some kind after our 4 years living there. Well, okay. Whatever. We’ll move the rock.
Here are some things she didn’t mention when she called to complain about the rock: the exterior paint we repainted when it began to peel. The landscaped front yard. The new street address sign we replaced (part of it had faded before we moved in so she took a Sharpie marker and tried to color it in…we replaced it with MCM metal numbers.) The rotted blind that was hanging in the garage window (which faced the street) that we replaced with plantation shutters. The front porch light that was way too small for the brick pillar it was on so we replaced it with a size appropriate light. On and on I could go, but okay – we’ll remove the pea gravel.
This was the first we’d heard from her in four years. Every month we left our rent check in her mailbox and that was that. It had all gone very smoothly.
I have a theory that perhaps someone she knew had a horrible rental experience and told her about it, raising her suspicions. Who knows! But in October of 2022 she told us she wanted to do a walk-through of our house since she hadn’t been there in 4 years. Totally legit! I would want to check up on my investment too. We set a date and were excited for her to see all we’d done to improve the space. One of our main goals, after initially moving in, was that our house never look like the ‘rental property’ on the street. I was proud of that. Our house looked well-cared-for and the neighbors commented on it often. I felt sure she would be comforted that everything was in order.
I was sorely mistaken.
She came in and we introduced her to Tilly. “And this is Tilly,” I heard myself say as if introducing a child or human member of the family. I’m so dumb. The landlord fake-smiled at Tilly then immediately began talking about the wall paint (which we’d since painted from the white to a beautiful dark gray that accented the white fireplace.) That’s all she could talk about. The painted walls. She then went outside, Tilly (excited there was another human in the house) was close at her heels. She gasped over the raised gardens. “You didn’t ask permission to make any changes to the house!!” She said this over and over again. “You didn’t get prior approval!” Well, we didn’t because the contract didn’t stipulate that. We knew we would need to repaint the walls when we moved out and we were fine with that. (I’ve said it many times before, but painting walls is the cheapest thing you can do to change up a living space. It can be easily changed at any time for a relatively low cost.) We also knew we’d be leaving the new doorknobs throughout the house, the new bathroom lighting and mirror. Superficial changes we’d made to update the space. She said she needed to talk to her husband, but she was “shocked” at the changes. She left, leaving us feeling confused and frankly, hurt.
Within days we were presented with a new leasing contract that stipulated that we could make no more changes and all changes needed to be returned to the original condition before moving.
If you consider that addendum it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If we needed to change things back to the way they were when we moved, then why could we not make any more changes to the house?? Furthermore, she stated that she wanted to come through our house again and take pictures to insure we didn’t change anything else. I adamantly disagreed.
Let me state again… our home is beautiful. I would dare say ‘exceptionally’ beautiful. What if she had come in and found empty pizza boxes and overflowing ashtrays next to our free-range pet iguana??! She walked into a beautifully manicured and cared for home.
But she kept talking about that pea gravel. She seemed to be unusually fixated on the pea gravel (a two foot wide line of gravel between our house and next door.) The pea gravel, the pea gravel, the pea gravel. We removed it and let the grass die there. I was beginning to give up on the way things looked and was feeling very uncomfortable about being in a legal contract with a sporadic-acting individual.
A few months later, in February, she dropped by our house and knocked on the door. We weren’t home but our Ring doorbell caught it all. She looked in the window by our front door then went around to the front window and looked in. A few hours later we received this text: “I had no idea you had a dog! This is unacceptable!”
????????!!!
2019: talked to her on the phone (BIG mistake!) about buying a dog and received her approval.
October 2022: she walked around our house with Tilly (60lb dog) at her heels.
February 2023: I had no idea you had a dog. You MUST pay a $500 pet deposit!
I suddenly realized nothing was in writing. We took her at her word in 2019 on the phone then the only other encounter was in person. She had us. We had no proof of her consent; we would have to pay the $500.
In May we complained about our lights flickering and the exorbitant price we were paying for A/C in the summer. An electrician and an HVAC contractor came out. Landlord came and followed them around all over the house. The electrician said our electricity was hooked up incorrectly and would need to be replaced. The AC guy charged our unit and said it had been a long time since it had seen any maintenance. Repair charges began pouring in. Each contractor she brought out said it would be a ‘very expensive’ project. After one such visit, she took out her phone and started taking pictures around our house. She walked throughout it, shaking her head. Her last fixation was the floating shelves we put up on the walls. She kept repeating, “You didn’t ask to do this!” Mind you, nowhere did it state we needed approval for any of this. She was incensed though. Irrationally. Completely off the rails. Her voice was shaking she was so upset. Quick, jittery moves, coming and going around the house.
And so, after 10 months of mounting injustice and out of whack behavior, we decided it was best to end our month-to-month lease with her and move on. We have two more years here in California before Scott retires. It did not make financial sense to move somewhere else. We tried everything to make things work. But here is where the crux of the story resides:
She took away my sense of home.
Yes, she’s the owner of the property. And yet we felt surprisingly violated. I’ve never experienced the feeling of ‘home’ being taken away. After her unsubstantiated rants and constant pressure, I felt like I was walking around someone else’s house, not the home we had created over the last several years. And mostly, I was profoundly disappointed.
I felt like a child who poured all their hard work into an art project KNOWING their parents would love their creation only to be told, ‘You did this part wrong.’ No acknowledgement of the other beautiful parts. No recognition for the obvious hard work poured into the project – never noticing the pride on the creator’s face only to be replaced with shock from the unanticipated disapproval.
I could hear people in my head saying, ‘Who CARES what she thinks?! She’s weird and plain and wouldn’t understand style. Don’t give it a second thought.’ And I tried – really hard – to follow those voices. If she’d attacked my math skills, or my cooking skills, or my athletic ability then I would be rebuffed but not left feeling defeated. She came after my home creating skills. She ignored all my hard work and only saw what she assumed would affect her bottom line. She was looking at one ‘tree’ and didn’t see the forest that was all around her. The forest being consistent tenants with style, financial stability, and obvious care for the home.
Not trusting her business acumen, in June we asked her to write a Tenants Residency Letter which states how long we had lived at the property and our payment history. She ignored the email for several days. We persisted. She replied, “I’m sure you have a list of payments you’ve made to me.” We told her we needed the information under her name. She eventually wrote a short paragraph stating the dates of our rental history and that we had paid promptly every month.
That’s all we needed.
We began shopping around for another place to live, knowing we wanted the ease of an apartment for the remaining two years here in California and we wanted to live in Folsom where we usually spent time. We were accepted at all the places we applied but our hearts pulled us to the property where we now live as of July 2023. It was a FAST ordeal of packing and moving but once we’d made up our minds to move, our hearts were closed to the home we’d lived in and loved for five years.
It feels good to now be under a large property management umbrella and not one individual (who may or may not have some health issues arising!) We love our new area and I’m sure there will be many more posts ahead (much shorter posts, I promise!)
Home is an ambiguous term. There are many catchy signs about ‘Home is where…’ etc. I have never experienced the idea of home so viscerally than I have this past year. Despite unsupported complaining from our landlord, nothing physically changed in our living arrangements yet I looked around during the day and felt unmoored. I’ve heard people talk about their home being broken into by theft and feeling such a sense of violation that they had to eventually move. While we certainly didn’t have a break in, our sense of home and coziness was eradicated slowly and then fatally as our home was being photographed like a crime scene. Primarily it is the heavy sense of disappointment that has not let loose of me quickly. It is a cloud over everything these days. But its density is weakening as I process through the grief of losing a place we had settled in for several years and thought we had many more adventures ahead of us there. It will lessen and lessen. Life teaches us that. We rely on the pendulum swing that we know will come. We are working through that swing now and leaning heavily into a busy California summer of fun.
There’s no way anyone has read this far and I must stop typing. If you are still here, wow oh wow do I appreciate your level of interest in our small segment of the world. It is but a blip in our overall lives. Scott and I make memories and home and contentment happen wherever we are. The feeling of home will come again soon. We have been in the throes of packing and sorting and selling and rearranging and unpacking and…we are so tired. But each time we go to the pool or meet our new neighbors or send baked goods down to the office staff, we will feel more and more at home. A word I will never take for granted again. A word that has so many meanings beyond its simple four letters. Home, for us, looks different physically now but the same souls are there. The books and plants are located in different places but the same dumb jokes, the same tv-watching dog, the same hazelnut coffee is brewed in the mornings and the same ‘I love you’s are distributed throughout the day.
A new rhythm.
A new routine.
A new adventure awaits.
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