I Hated My House for Five Years. Here's What That Cost Me as a Leader.

For five years I lived in a house that didn't reflect me. Not disliked. Hated. And I never talked about what that actually did to me: to my creativity, my ability to host, my relationships, my willingness to show up.

This episode is that conversation.

Your home is not separate from your leadership. It's infrastructure for it. And if it's working against you, you are spending energy you don't have to compensate for an environment that quietly drains you every single day.

In this episode:

• The rental years: what five years in a space that didn't fit actually cost me
• Why I didn't join the Junior League until I was under contract on my current house
• How a space that doesn't reflect you will make you shrink back without realizing it
• What started shifting when I finally made one room feel like mine
• Why you don't need your dream home, you need an intentional one

You don't have to wait for the perfect house to start leading well out of your space. But you do have to stop pretending your environment isn't affecting you.

Enjoy the episode, everyone!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, friend, I want to talk about something that I haven't really talked about before. So I just released an episode with somebody in real estate, and we were really talking about your home as a leadership tool. And the whole time I was recording it, I kept thinking about the five years I spent in a house that I genuinely hated. Not disliked. I mean hated with every fiber of my being. And I've realized I've never talked about what that did to me, to my creativity, my ability to host, my ability to show up. Because here's what I know now that I didn't know then that your home is not separate from your leadership. I think it's infrastructure for it. And if it's working against you, then you're spending energy you don't have trying to compensate for an environment that is honestly draining you every single day. So today I'm going to go there and I'm going to tell you about this house. So welcome back to the Well Live Society. I'm your host, Lemon Price, where we talk about leadership development for women. And I talk about it as a whole person. I think it is in your home. I think it's in how you are showing up at the grocery store. It is how you lead in professional settings, volunteering with intention. It really is just a whole person development. And so that's what I get excited to talk about. So I want to talk about the rental years because that kind of killed me. I'm going to be honest. So I, first of all, did not buy a house until two years ago. This August, it'll be two years since we bought our house. So I have rented literally my entire adult life from the time I left for college until two years ago, right? So we bought this house when I was 34, rented. And I've lived in many rentals, usually pretty nice. My first real apartment situation after when I was in college was like a brand new townhouse. I was on the third story of our townhouse. We had our own bathrooms, walk-in closet, and we always had people over. Still had people over. Everything was hunky dory. Then let me backtrack. Glenn is from El Paso. And so I had never been to El Paso. He was like, Do you want to go? We'll spend the summer. Our lease was up on our rental. And we're like, and then we can figure out what we want to do. He was like getting preparing to kind of get out of the military. He knew he was getting out within a year. So he's let's just go, we'll spend the summer, figure out kind of what we want to do. They he could have moved his contract to El Paso. This wouldn't have been a big deal because of Fort Bliss. So this was not, this was not an issue if we wanted to move. So I'm like, okay, so we go and we spend the summer there. I don't love El Paso. I love the food. If you are from that part of Texas, the food is incredible. And if you haven't been, honestly, the breakfast burritos, there's this one place, gosh, I wish I could remember the name of it. It oh, so good. It is, it's so good. And you can get breakfast burritos for like two and three dollars. They're so good and they're amazing. Okay, so the food was amazing. I loved that Glenn had family around and stuff that was great. But I am an East Coast girl through and through. Okay. I have only lived in one of the 13 original colonies. Okay. I am an East Coast girl. My family is from New England. I lived in the mid-Atlantic. Um and always water. Okay. So to for me, being in El Paso was a challenge. It was a challenge. I knew I couldn't stay there. I knew. I would go most places with my husband, and God forbid he got moved. If he had gone back to active duty, there was a whole conversation. If he had ended up at Fort Bliss, fine, I would have dealt with it. But there is no way I would willingly make that choice. No offense if that's your jam. It's just not mine. It's just, it's not for me. And so we were like, okay, we're going back to Georgia. That's all fine and dandy. We found a rental because we weren't ready to buy yet. And so we had called a real estate agent and we're like, hey, we're coming from El Paso. We're getting ready to make this trick. We looked at the pictures. She was like, fine. She was like, but she's, I don't want you to pay a deposit or anything until you guys get here and can actually see it and make sure this works for your family. So I was, I was so dumb. I feel like it was so dumb. I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds good. And it was like fourth of July week. So she's nobody's gonna be in the office. Don't even stress. I'm like, okay, great. So we leave El Paso. I'm in Dallas. Okay. And if you've ever driven across Texas, that is two days alone. Okay. So it took us one day to go from El Paso to Dallas. So I'm in Dallas and Glenn gets a call and she said, it's the real estate agent. She says, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I was like, What, why are you sorry? And she goes, Somebody came in, literally, it was the 4th of July. I will never forget because we could see the fireworks in Dallas. And she goes, Another agent came in and rented the property out today. And I was like, Awesome. I was like, Do you have anything else that is dog friendly and is available in two days? I'm gonna be back in Georgia in two days. And she's no. Okay, okay, awesome. So now Glenn and I are in Dallas, right? Which is on this is so crazy. Dallas is the halfway point basically for us to go from where we are in Georgia to El Paso. Dallas is the halfway point, it's 10-ish hours on either side. And so I was like, okay, okay, what are we gonna do? So we're like, we're just gonna sleep it off. We're gonna deal with this problem tomorrow. So Glenn and I then spent the entire next day while we're driving, because we're still driving toward Georgia. Keep in mind, I have the dogs, we're still trekking. So we make some phone calls and arranged to go see some properties as soon as Saturday morning. And this was, I think, Thursday, right? When we're like making these calls. So we're like, okay, we'll be in Friday night, we'll stay with a friend. No big deal. No big deal. Okay. Glenn and I get up Saturday morning and we look at a dozen houses, and every single person that we talk to said the house either wasn't gonna be available for another two weeks or they don't accept pets. Okay, great. This is I'm I'm stressed. Stressed to the max. I'm like, okay, what do we do? So one last person that we go and see, and y'all, your girl struggled, okay? It is a I've never said this out loud to anybody, okay? This isn't probably the most vulnerable I'm gonna be to get. This was like a single-wide trailer in the woods, and I was like, okay, and because he's military, the landlord's military, and he's in his 80s, Glenn's military, no application, no nothing. He literally looks at us and says, Do you want it? Yeah, we yeah, we don't, I don't have another choice. Yes, yes, I will take it. And so we lived there for five years. Okay. It was small, it was probably half the size of our current home, and my current home is not massive. Okay. I traded big yard for a normal sized house. I think we have 1400-ish square feet plus a garage, but I have two acres. So I'm like, I and I would rather be outside and want the dogs outside, etc. Okay, so I lived in a house about half the size with obviously no yard. There was no, no yard. And I have, again, very large 80 plus pound dogs. And it was it was tight. There was like nowhere for a kitchen table. We barely had any room. Okay. We barely had any room. And so in the beginning, we we had a couple people over, but it wasn't, I didn't feel good, right? Like this was this was not me. I never in a million years have and I got nothing wrong with trailers, prefab homes, stuff like that. But the this was like it was from the 80s, 90s, and nothing had been updated. Nothing, it was not nice. Okay. It was functional, it was clean, but it wasn't nice in any capacity by the 2010s, 2020 standards. Okay. There was no space to cook, there was no space to hold anything. I didn't have, and there was nothing. We literally there was no space whatsoever. And so I struggled. I struggled. It crushed my creativity, it crushed my ability to show up because I didn't feel good. I looked around this house and I was constantly rearranging and cleaning and they just to try to make it work, to try to make it work for family, especially our family was growing. And and I don't mean we were adding children. Children were just getting bigger, they're big. I I have two, Glenn has two boys from a previous relationship, and he's the custodial parent. They're with us all a majority of the time. They're with us. And they're they're big, they get very big very fast. So I was like, I'm running out, I'm running out of space, I'm running out of room. I I was so stressed all the time. And I didn't want to have people over, right? So I couldn't host the way that I wanted to. And because of that, I feel like I really wasted five years building intentional relationships here because I didn't want to have people over. I also didn't join the junior league until I was under contract on my current house because guess what? They send you mail. And I didn't want to put that address down because I was embarrassed of the because it just it didn't reflect me. It didn't reflect me, and maybe that's some work that I have to do on myself, but I struggled for a long time. And Glenn too. Glenn loves to host, and we didn't have anybody, we didn't have anybody over at all. We did, we didn't do things. We I think my in-laws came. I could probably count on one hand the amount of time my in-laws came over. Now they're over constantly. They're over constantly. And so being in a house that did not reflect me, and I'm not saying that my house now is not a it is not my dream home. So I don't want you to hear this and be like, I have to be in my dream home to host and lead. That's not true. I'm not in my dream home by any means at all. But I like this house. This house, I've done enough to make it my own. I've been here now two years. Like I said, in August, it'll be two years. And it's now starting to feel like mine, right? Last summer. I redid our master bedroom. That was like the thing I really wanted to do. I bought us a brand new bed. I painted the walls, I got window treatments, and I changed all of the furniture because all of the furniture that we had came from the rental. And it was a mishmash of Facebook Marketplace and of Glenn's old life and my old life. And we're trying to merge it all together. So nothing matched, nothing was cohesive. And I was like, I just want one space that feels like us. And so I redid our bat our bathroom first, and it was or our bedroom. And it was such a game changer to do our bedroom because I'm like, I feel like I can relax at the end of the day, which also did something for my leadership to be able to feel like there was a space that was me and I felt good in it. But it really did take a toll on me to be in a space that I felt like I couldn't express myself, where I couldn't fully be who I am. And so it did, it I feel like I shrunk back a lot by being in a home that did not reflect me. And maybe you're in that space where you're like, I'm in a home that doesn't reflect me right now. And so it it it drained a lot of me. And so I think when I think about that rental, right? I did a lot to to try to make it ours, right? To try to make it reflect who we were. I was limited, obviously, especially being in rental, but there was small stuff that I could do, right? So the countertops were like that fake brown wood. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. It's cheap wood stuff. And so we called our landlord and I was like, How would you feel if I wrapped the counters? And he was like, Okay, whatever you want to do. So I went and got literally contact paper and wrapped it in vinyl, this a marbly-looking countertop white. It matched the cabinets. The cabinets were all white, so it wasn't off to do that. But I laid that down on the limited counter space that I had. And guess what? It made such a difference. Made such a difference. It made me feel way more like myself because I could post pictures of bread that I was making, or, you know, it didn't feel awkward when there was a photo behind me. And it was such an inexpensive fix. It was, I mean, like maybe 10 bucks at Walmart. Like I didn't spend a lot, but just doing that did something to me. It made me feel more creative. It made me feel more like myself. And so I I want you to know there's a there's a difference between a space that reflects who you are versus who you're trying to become. And I talk about this a lot in like the future you journal that we have. I'll link it in the show notes for you. But it's really taking a look at like, who are you today? Who do you want to become? And then how do we fill in the gap? And for me, like how I love cooking. I love cooking, which is so funny because I didn't grow up with anybody really like cooking around me that was not normal. Maybe people were, but because I was an athlete, like I was always gone. And so I don't feel like we did a ton of nobody was cooking in the capacity that I'm cooking. I'll tell. And I'll not even make any fancy things, like, but nobody was really making dinner the way that I make dinner for my family now. And so I I love being in the kitchen. I love providing good, like fresh, nutritious food. I like making something fun that is enjoyable. Like I remember Wyatt in it was kindergarten, and I got a call from his teacher, Miss Taylor. She's Swedish, she's retired, and she called me and on like, I don't know, like a Friday or something. And she was like, hey, Wyatt's gonna be student of the week next week. You know, we let them bring a snack in one day, you know, usually like the following Friday for like a treat for the class, and it's you know, something special for them. And she's like, most kids, you know, they bring granola bars or like a pack of cookies or something like that. I'm like, okay, perfect, perfect, perfect. So I asked Wyatt, I'm like, Wyatt, what do you want for your snack? And of course, like this kid watches the Food Network with me. Like for his sixth birthday, he told me he wanted bacon wrap fully mighton. I was like, okay, at six. So I asked him, I'm like, what do you want me to bring in for your snack? And I'm really hoping it's gonna be something simple. No, no, no. He says that he wants, he wants vanilla cupcakes that are strawberry filled with a strawberry buttercream. Okay. And I was like, you want like strawberry like buttercream in the middle? Like, what are we talking about here? And he goes, No, I want like strawberries, like I want whole strawberries in there. Okay. So it takes like three days to make these cupcakes that I bring to school. And of course the teacher was floored. She was like, literally, in like the 20 years I've done this, like everybody just brings like granola bars. And I was like, Well, I don't know, this is what he wanted. But it's it's who I am. So even though I was in a space that didn't feel like me, I still had to find ways to express myself to maintain my sanity. And so I really want you to find a way to make your space yours. And so another like prime example here is this house that we bought. I hated the front landscaping. There was nothing wrong with it. I just didn't like it. It wasn't me, didn't feel like me. And so this past October, I ripped all of it out. I we spent a Saturday digging up every single solitary plant and throwing it away. Like I we have a tundra too, and then a trailer, and I filled the entire back of the tundra and the trailer of stuff and took it to the like I ripped literally all the landscaping out. And now we redid the front and it's so good. And it didn't cost me a lot. I haven't put any plants in yet. But what we did do is like I put down like landscape edging, okay, and we changed the way the the front edge actually came out. Like we made them symmetrical now, which I I like it symmetrical. So we we did that. I got landscape edging, which by the way was so much cheaper to get on Amazon than it was at Lowe's for the same. I got two packs of the landscape edging that I wanted for what one pack would have cost me at Lowe's for the same exact stuff. So like I did that, spent a whole Saturday laying out landscape edging, then I put down cardboard to like I pulled up most of the weeds, but then put down cardboard, got mulch. I got mulch so cheap. Again, it was $2 a bag at Lowe's. So like I think I maybe spent like $40, maybe it was like $100 total to like redo the whole like frontage. And it looked, I don't even have plants in yet. And everybody's like, my gosh, it looks so good, it's so clean, it's so nice. I'm like, thank you. And you know the plants I'm putting in, I'm waiting till more of the end of the season just because it's so hot to plant stuff right now. But I had to take ownership of the environment, and I think that is an act of leadership. I think that is an act of leadership. And like, same same thing with my dining room, okay? The dining room wasn't set up the way I wanted to. Like my table came from Facebook Marketplace. Like, don't think I went out and spent a lot. I think we spent $30 on the table. Okay, like we didn't spend a ton. But I then went, I got like a new rug. This one actually came from Lowe's. Got a rug from Lowe's. I went to the restore in Belufton or, you know, like at the Habitat for Humanity store. So good. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, if you're trying to update your space for something inexpensive, please go to a restore. Okay, let me tell you what I bought. I bought a gigantic solid wood, beautiful China cabinet. Beautiful. She's beautiful. I paid $54. $54. Then I wanted a bar because I was taking out one that didn't match my aesthetic anymore. It was fine, but it didn't match my aesthetic. It's now Glenn's like grilled buffet. He has it out with his grill, it's got all of his grilling tools in it. He's very happy. But I bought a bar also, like 70 bucks. Bought a bar, and it's again beautiful. It is beautiful. I am so insanely happy with this thing. You have no idea. My house feels completely, it feels intentional, right? The rug now ties it all together, the woods all match, like it looks so good. And again, I spent what $115 to redo this space. Like to get these two very massive pieces of furniture that would have cost me thousands, go to a restore. And so I'm saying this because I think your house can communicate before you have to say anything. And again, you don't have to have the perfect house. It's not about having the most beautiful home in the block, it's about having an intentional one. Right? So the rental wasn't actually the problem. It was how I felt about it. It was how I felt about it. To be honest, it's how I treated it. I wasted a lot of years resenting this house. I did, I spent so many years resenting the house and not building intentional relationships because of it. Because I was embarrassed to have anybody over, because I was embarrassed to let people get to know me. I didn't get birthday cards. I didn't get anything. I do now. I get handwritten thank you cards. I had a friend randomly send me. Why? Because I'm not I'm not afraid to give out my address anymore. I mean, I'm not going to give it out over the internet, but like I'm not ashamed of where I live anymore. And the only real difference, yes, the how the house is better. It's newer. I have land. I have things now. But it's also like how I feel about it. Like we had people over. Let me tell you. So we closed on our house on a Thursday, which was so fast, by the way. We closed in like three weeks. It was a very fast turnaround. That's a whole other story. I think I did an episode on this like many, maybe like a year and a half ago, about the house and this whole situation with the house. But we we closed on a Thursday and Saturday, so I had people here Friday to set up the internet. We like hooked the TV up, did the whole kit and caboodle. By Saturday, so Saturday morning, people helped us move the rest of our stuff, majority of our stuff. And Saturday afternoon, we had people here watching a Georgia football game. Okay. Because again, if you heard my episode with Kim, you know, like asking people to do anything during an SEC football game is insane. So people literally showed up at my rental like six in the morning to help us move so we could be done in time to watch a Georgia game. And I had literally picked up food from Publix. I like got a catering tray. We had, you know, a ton of beer, like we had stuff going before. Like there was furnace, like they brought the couches in, like, we brought those couches in on Thursday night. We bought new couches again off of Facebook Marketplace, but it reflected us better. They were newer, they were nicer. And so we literally had people here on Saturday. We finished moving and like getting organized on Sunday. And then guess what? I had people here Monday for Labor Day. Well, I hosted twice in one weekend, the same weekend I closed on this house. And so I want you to know that like the shift is in how you start treating your home as something worth stewarding. And I went through like a leadership development program years ago. And Glenn went through the same one while we were in the rental. And there was a a story about, you know, like in a low-income neighborhood, and you, I mean, you could tell the houses were a little run down, houses weren't fixed up. And so there was one house though, where like they did have a flower box, they kept their yard clean, like inexpensive things, but it it was the intentionality, right? That house stood out not because it was drastically nicer than the others, but because there was intentionality, there was stewardship of that home and like care of the home. And so I think that by taking small acts of ownership and intentionality, like you're setting yourself up for success. And so I think that your space will either reinforce your identity or it will work against it. And so even in that rental, right? I again, I had been in that rental for five years. I didn't change the counters again with something so small, like 10, 15 bucks at Walmart. Could have done this the entire time. Could have done it the entire time. But because I I wasn't stewarding well, because I wasn't happy with it, because I had built stories up around this house. I didn't do anything to it. And when I did, my creativity shifted. I started feeling better. Glenn felt better. The kids felt better, like everybody felt better. I wasn't afraid, I wasn't ashamed anymore. Right? I planted a little vegetable garden in front of the house. And we had so many radishes and peppers. The amount of peppers that we were able to grow in that house was absolutely insane. You know, I shifted around the office space that I had in here, and that helped me show up differently. Like there really is a connection between the environment that you're in and your confidence. And it's not, again, from having the nicest, most beautiful home in the neighborhood, but it is the intentionality and care that you steward that home with. And so what I'm what I'm hoping that you take from this episode, okay, is that you're not going to lead your whole life well out of a space that makes you feel small. And I don't care if it's a rental, I don't care if it's a starter home, a house you've been in for 15 years, and you just stop kind of seeing it as something, you know, worth celebrating. I think your home is a leadership tool and we have to start treating it like one. And so it doesn't mean a renovation, right? It just means one intentional thing this week. So maybe it is rearranging the furniture in a way that makes you feel better, or like, I don't know, go check out the restore and see what they have, or change up something that's been bothering you, something so small. It literally like a gallon of paint made a huge difference in how I felt about our bedroom because our whole house is painted cool, like gray, like gray white walls. Okay, that's the color. I am not a cool-toned girl. It doesn't work for me. I don't like it. So, but I can't go super warm because like that's not good for Glen skin tone. Glenn looks good in cool colors. I look good and warm. And so I had to kind of go like a lighter, warm color. So I painted our room this like warmer, it's called oyster shell. The room, like it says technically it's yellow, but it never looks yellow ever. Not one time has it ever looked yellow in our room. But it's warmer and it changed the way I feel about the entirety of our room with one gallon of paint and like one day of painting. It changed how I felt. I was like, oh, this makes a huge difference. Now I want to go paint everything. I literally look at every room and I know what color I want to paint then. You know, it's it's using your china for burgers, right? I want you to set the table like someone who believes her life is worth showing up for because it is. Because it is. And if you want to go deeper on leading your whole life well, not just your career, not just your community, but your home, your table, your rhythms, your presence, like that's what we do at the Well Live Society. So there's more information coming to you in a minute, but I I hope this resonated. I hope this will encourage you to just take one thing from your house, just one thing from your house and start treating it with intentionality. Maybe, maybe it's just getting, I don't know, like two dollar gallon buckets at Lowe's. That's literally what they are. They're two dollars for a gallon-sized bucket and just planting some flowers or I don't know, peppers grow really well. I'm gonna tell you, peppers grow so well. If you like peppers, like we have like 10 of 10 varieties outside right now. Go grow some peppers because my husband's going to make salsa and then I gotta pressure can it. So he has fresh salsa every week. We're literally making like those little mini mason jars, like the tiny ones. I'm making 52 of them so that way he has enough, like fresh salsa every single week for the year, whatever that's saying. So I really, I really want to encourage you to just do something small. It doesn't have to cost a lot, it doesn't have to be a big tremendous dramatic thing. But I do want you to think about like what in your house is not communicating who you are, and how can you take one intentional step to let your home reflect who you are? Because I promise when your home reflects who you are on the inside, when you start making changes. And again, I want to be really clear. I have not changed everything I want to change about this house. My laundry list is very long, it's very long. I have a fence outside that needs to get redone. Guess what? It's like an $18,000 project. I don't know about you, but like I don't usually have an extra $20,000 laying around. So not in this economy. So like it's it's on my to-do list project, but it's not a today project. Would I love to redo my kitchen? Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I mean, I'm not spending $60,000 on a kitchen yet to redo it. I'm just not gonna do it. So I say all that to say, like, you can do small things. You can do small things. You know, I spent $100 redoing the front of my landscaping, made a huge difference. You know what I did too? That was huge. So it was so small. We have like an outdoor patio space, and Glenn wanted to treat it as an outdoor kitchen. We already have a picnic table out there, there's a grill out there, whole kit and caboodles out there. Okay, fine. When we hosted our Labor Day party, that is where we had people. They were all out there. It was great. But, but I also had my glider out there so that way people could hang out and mingle because it made sense for the party. Now, I have plenty of folding chairs that I didn't have before. Like we literally have a foldable couch. Again, so cheap. I got a whole set off season for like 60 bucks, two chairs and a folding couch, like outdoor, you know, like camping chairs. So anyway, like this wasn't super expensive. So I was like, I have plenty of outdoor seating. And then people always tend to bring like chairs when they know they're coming to like a Labor Day barbecue type situation. So I was like, why don't I move the glider up front? And I did. I put it on my front porch, I put like two fake topiaries outside and my porch goose. And then I picked up two like outdoor throw pillows, changed the entire look off my front, changed the entire look. I moving the glider from the backyard to the front yard was a game changer. Game changer. Changed my whole, my whole porch. Now I sit outside with coffee in the morning all the time and listen to my birds because I put bird feeders up, and it is so peaceful. Or Glenn and I all sit out there at night and we'll, you know, like we're have a drink and just hang out or like cup of decaf coffee because I'm old. But that was free. I literally moved it from the backyard to the front yard and it changed the way the front of my house looked. So this doesn't have to be expensive, but I want you to be intentional about your home so it reflects who you are as a leader, as a woman, as somebody who is making a community impact. So I will talk to you all next week. Tootaloo, my friends.