12 People Who Went Back to Their Childhood Home, Including a Playhouse Untouched for 25 Years

“22 years difference. We were visiting our old hometown and noticed these poles were still in front of our childhood home. The tree grew up good too”

Plot Twist — I AM THE SISTER.

We didn’t have a lot of time to plan and couldn’t recruit a cyclist in time.

We practiced real hard, really put ourselves in our old shoes.

We couldn’t believe it ourselves, like how the heck did that twig become such a big tree.

My grandfather went to visit the house he grew up in fifty plus years after he left for college. The owners let him in to look around the place. He went to the fire place and found a loose brick and pulled out some trinkets hidden behind the brick from when he was a little boy.

I had this happen, and I let her in. She was about my age. She had pictures of the house when it was being built. She knew all kinds of stuff about the house. We’ve stayed in touch. She sends me old pics when she finds them. I send her pics of the renovations I’ve done.

“Visited my childhood home. My playhouse was virtually untouched.”

I’m 36 now. It’s been about 25 years since my sisters and I played in there.

My parents sold the farm a little over ten years ago. Before that, it had been in the family for about 100 years. The new owners have been very gracious about letting my siblings and me visit whenever we’re in the area.

In 2010, my father went with my brother to see the house that he had built in 1950, and that we all (7 of us) lived in until 1970. They saw a woman outside tending to some plants, and went up to her to explain who he was, and would she mind letting them look around. She said “George....is that you?” It was the woman to whom he had sold the house to 40 years earlier....and amazingly, she remembered his name. They got a complete tour, see the changes, the things that had not changed (the laundry chute from the master bedroom to the basement), etc. My dad’s biggest observation was how small everything looked.

“Former owners’ family visiting”

In October, I bought an 1886 Queen Anne in my hometown because I missed my family and had had enough of big city life. Then, on Sunday, my aunt brought over the four granddaughters of the former owners (she’s friends with them). They spent more than two hours walking through the house with me, telling stories about growing up here, and it was magical.

After this weekend’s visit, so many quirks suddenly made sense. The angled ceiling under the coat closet? Their grandfather removed the servants’ stairs and that was the underside of the staircase. The sidewalk that disappears under the garage? It used to lead to their grandmother’s vegetable garden.

They described the original flowery Victorian wallpaper that covered the walls—and even the ceilings. They told me where the furniture sat. One sister sewed her wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses in what’s now my living room. They bathed in a metal tub in the kitchen as kids. Their grandmother made donuts every morning, and the town’s police officers and factory workers would stop by for coffee and donuts, parking on the side lawn because there was no driveway and no curb.

They even brought me banana bread made from their grandmother’s recipe.

And now, I don’t just live in this house...I feel connected to it.

A few months ago I was back in the town in which I grew up. I decided to go see my old house. Looked different from the outside — yard was better maintained, new fence around the pool. Walked up the driveway and a man came out to ask if he could help me. I said, "Weird story, but I grew up in this house and left in 1981. We started talking, his wife came outside to see what was going on. They ended up giving me a tour of the house and showing some changes to the inside. Told me they had to remove a rickety old tree fort in the back yard. I told them I built it and it was rickety even then. It was weird seeing it, as the yards all around were fenced, which wasn’t that way when I grew up.

“We met a 99 yo woman who grew up in our house”

We live in Vermont where it seems like everyone has some sort of connection to everyone else, and a friend happens to take care of one of the previous residents of our house. She’s 99 years old and moved into this house when she was about 8 years old. We went to talk to her and she told us stories about playing under the one street lamp on the street, skiing down the road, having competitions of who could spot the rare car as they came down the road into town, getting ration cards and saving up their meat rations for when her brother came home from WWII.

I showed her some pictures I took of what it looks like now, the porch where they used to eat dinner where we now do the same...

Her childhood bedroom is now our daughter’s nursery. She was delighted that she got to hold the baby, and it seems so remarkable that two people who did and will grow up in the same house, separated by nearly 100 years, got to meet!

She told us how happy she is that “happy people” are living in the house and it made it feel all the more special and important to lovingly restore and maintain it. She evidently has pictures of the house from back then that she hasn’t found yet but I can’t wait to see when she does.

Our house is over 175 years old. The previous family bought it in 1941. The only living child, born here in 1942, is a lovely woman. She has visited several times.

We preserved the wallpaper in her childhood bedroom (it’s quite unique). She was so happy to see we also kept the wall sconce. She sat down on the bed, closed her eyes and turned the switch, smiling at the familiar click. I nearly cried.

“Got to revisit the old house I grew up in”

Built in 1910. My grandparents owned this place between ‘94-06 and I had some of the most cherished memories of my childhood here. It’s had various renovations over the last 20 years, but a handful of the more charming parts remain such as antique doorknobs, dark wood, and stained glass. It’s for sale and I was able to snag a tour thanks to a very kind realtor. It was emotional, but such a treat.

Also, it used to be a burgundy red like a barn with white trim.

The doorknobs squeaked the same way and the wood on the staircase felt the same. Very surreal.

The house had been in their family for generations, but the kids had all moved away and nobody wanted it, so it went up for sale and we got it. One of the kids (now in their forties) was in town briefly and wanted to take a peek at the house she grew up in. We happened to be home and invited her in. She told us which rooms used to be whose and how they used to slide down the banister. Pretty harmless and it made her day.

I did that a few years ago when the house was for sale! Some chalk writing my brothers had written in the garage in 1961! It was wild! Even my parents old washer & dryer were sitting in the basement. A wire hanging basket where my mom hung potatoes & onions was still hanging. Crazy!