What Homes Hold
What the Junk Drawer Knows About Us
Nobody curates a junk drawer. That is precisely why it tells the truth about a household — and why it is the hardest thing to sort.
August 17, 2026Home & Life6 min read
A field note from Huntington Beach
Stories about home, change & what comes next.
Real estate is the lens. People are the story. Writing about downsizing and rightsizing, aging in place, and the conversations families have about a house.
Photograph: Huntington Beach Pier — Bamsb900 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The featured story
The House Is Rarely the Whole Story
A house is measured in square feet. A home is measured in everything else.
Real estate has a vocabulary for the parts of a house that can be counted, and almost none for the parts that can't. This is an attempt at the second vocabulary.
August 24, 2026Home & Life7 min read
Editor’s note
Why this exists
I’ve spent much of my career around homes, first in property management and now in real estate here in Huntington Beach. Most of my work is with homeowners 55+ and the adult children thinking alongside them: downsizing, rightsizing, aging in place or moving, 55+ communities, accessibility and single-level living. The longer I do it, the less I believe any of it is really about square footage. It is about who we were in a place, who we became there, and what a next chapter should actually feel like. This is where I write about that — slowly, and without a pitch.
Lori Anderson · Huntington Beach
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Recurring columns
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Huntington Beach neighborhoods, people and place.
A slow, observational column about Huntington Beach neighborhoods — the light, the walkability, the 55+ pockets and single-level streets, the way a place holds its history while quietly becoming something else.
What Homes Hold
Memory, identity and the objects we keep.
Stories about what accumulates inside a house over a life: drawers, doorframes, habits, the small archaeology of ordinary days — and what it asks of us when it is time to choose what comes along.
The Next Chapter
Rightsizing, aging in place and family conversations, without the sales pitch.
Writing about transitions for homeowners 55+ and the adult children who love them: downsizing and rightsizing, aging in place versus moving, 55+ communities, accessibility, single-level living and full-service real-estate guidance. Guidance first, pressure never.
A low-pressure invitation
If a story sounds like your situation
You’re welcome to write. Some people want to think out loud about a house. Some want to share a story from their own street. Both are good reasons, and neither obligates you to anything.
“Downsizing isn’t about living with less. It’s about living with what matters most.”
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