My Apartment Isn't "Temporary" Just Because There Are No Kids In It
I've started noticing this annoying little pattern where people come into my apartment, look around for half a minute, and somehow decide I'm living in a waiting room for my "real" life. Not because the place is bare either. It isn't some random mattress-on-the-floor setup. I put real time into it. I picked furniture I actually wanted, not whatever was on sale and good enough. I have a desk that fits how I work, lighting that doesn't make the place feel like a dentist office, a couch I can actually fall asleep on, shelves with stuff I use all the time. The whole apartment is set up around my life being easier and calmer. And still, some people act like it's just a placeholder because there isn't a nursery shoved into one of the rooms. Like if a home isn't built around kids, then it must be some kind of trial version of adulthood. That part always gets me.
What really bugs me is how casual they are about it. They'll say stuff like "Oh you'll probably redo all this later anyway" or "This is cute for now" and just keep talking like they didn't say something insanely dumb. Cute for what exactly. For paying my bills, working, coming home, cooking in a kitchen I actually like, and enjoying the fact that nothing in here is sticky or screaming. I like that my second room is mine. Not a future kid room, not a holding area for some imaginary family plan, just mine. I like that I buy things because I want them and because they fit my actual life, not because they need to survive being thrown at a wall by a toddler. And I'm not trying to make some dramatic statement with the apartment either. I'm just living like a normal adult woman who knows what she likes. Somehow that still short-circuits people. The second they hear I don't want kids, every choice becomes "for now" in their head. My routine is temporary, the layout is temporary, the comfort is temporary. As if the only way a home becomes legitimate is if you eventually turn it into a daycare with nicer cabinets. The funniest part is a lot of these comments come from people whose houses are full of random plastic junk and noise and stuff piled in corners, and they're standing in my very normal clean apartment acting like I'm the confused one. I had somebody in my kitchen not long ago tell me the place would make more sense "later" while I was literally making coffee in a kitchen designed exactly how I wanted it. That was kind of the whole answer right there , and she still didn't get it.