There is no home that is perfectly designed to accommodate all the things we might want to put in it. This cottage is mostly right angles, and most of the stuff we put here is not, which means nothing fits just right. That is to say, this cottage refuses to completely bend to our wishes.

Which means that we adjust to it. When things don’t go where we want them, we learn to adjust our expectations for where things will go. When there isn’t enough closet space for all of the closet-things, we learn to be okay with closet-things becoming living-room-things.

But in this way, Cottage does adjust to us. As we adjust to Cottage, it takes on something of our particular personalities; in fact, Cottage begins to look like us, displaying our interests and character. That’s the process of a house becoming a cottage-home: we love it enough to adjust ourselves to it, and it returns love by weaving our things into a personal display, adjusting to us. And it gives our dog a place to sit.

Cottage is Home. This is Cottage.