You really lose the feeling of HOME when you have to pack your family up every few years and move to the next house on the next military base. Whether you get a house on base or off base, you want it to feel like home. Thankfully, there are many ways to make your next military house feel like home, without making permanent changes you just have to leave behind with the next move. 

Fill Your Walls With Memories

This project can be as cheap as you want it to be, to match your style. To make it as inexpensive as possible, you can shop for picture frames at garage sales, GoodWill stores, clearance racks at the dollar stores and Walmart, or even snag hand-me-downs from family and friends. Before shopping for your frames, decide which style you want to go with and dedicate a wall in your house, then fill it full of memories.

Refinish Or Build Your Own Dining Table

The dining table is a place where the whole family gathers at the end of each day to reflect on memories or share dreams of the future. If you ask my family, the dining room is the most important room in the house. Stories of life while eating the “family favorite” meals together, many birthday cakes have sat on top with candles flaming, many homework assignments, school projects, college entry letters, feeding the football team, weekend pizza parties, babies first foods, SO MANY MEMORIES. The dining table serves a big purpose in your life and you may not even have realized that until now. So customize or build your very own table that you get to make memories with in each house you move to. My dining table was the table my husband sat at as a young boy and we refinished it a few years ago when we bought our first home. Very soon after refinishing it, my son wanted to color so of course we went to the table… I now have a few fine red sharpie lines at my seat on the table. At the moment I was not too happy about it, but I'm so thankful for those little sharpie marks, because I often get a glance of that memory and it makes me smile everytime. Get the table and refinish it.

Make Your Own Flower Pots

You may not be able to work in your flower beds at the house on base or you may not want to spend a lot of money on the flower beds, but you still want some color around your house. I think the fun memory of planting flowers together would even make a great photo for your picture frame wall. Find a pottery business nearby OR even better, make it a fun day for the family and everybody make their own pinch pot for the house.. Making pottery, in itself is a memory, but that is just another homie feeling you can add to your base home, until you get to your forever home. Place your hand made memory next to the front door with some pretty followers inside to offer a homie welcoming. Sounds a little more like “home” already.