I didn’t know that color mattered so much to me. But it turns out, it does.

I realized it when the painter had finished covering my beautiful, deep plum wall with the institutional grey that the property manager had recommended.

As I’ve said before, we decided to move to Portland, Ore. Because the housing market is only starting to defrost, we chose to rent out our home. That meant we needed to get the place ready for tenants, shampooing carpets, deep cleaning and fixing up a few things. Then what started out as a wall-patching-fingerprint-removing project turned into a de-Melanie-ing of our home.

Looking back, it seems like ages ago that one of my besties and I took a lot of care and time at Home Depot to pick out the perfect yellow hue for the living room…

 And the muddy green of my kitchen…

I also simply loved my deep red accent wall in the dining room.

I always figured it was just color, right? That is, until it was gone. Our home didn’t feel like our home anymore. When it came to breaking the news of our move to my friends, I was OK. When the movers came and packed up all of our belongings, I was OK. Even when we were sleeping in our empty house in sleeping bags and eating dinner off a camping table, I was OK.

But when I became surrounded by institutional grey walls, I got bummed. It no longer felt like our warm home and it was hard to be excited about our new adventure to explore the Pacific Northwest because we were still in Illinois.

I’m not really one for living in limbo and I’m apparently also one who cares about color. Thankfully, the loss of bright hues it was just temporary since the color that fills my life has come with me to Portland.