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Writing (and Righting) the Unwritten Homeowner’s Code
Perfection is not expected by neighbors, but minimum standards are.

Writing (and Righting) the Unwritten Homeowner’s Code

I became a homeowner 20 years ago, and though, my parents raised me to have a healthy respect for neighbors, over these two decades, I realized not everyone had my parents. Or respect. Or decency. Or sometimes, brains. While both homes I have owned have been outside city limits, thus leaving them in the jurisdiction of no civil rules, one does not have to require certain things written on paper for the certain things to be necessary for the act of living near another person. There’s a code, or should be, which lead me to develop a mental list of homeowner tenets that should be common sense, but unfortunately are uncommon. Perhaps listing these common items should be committed to paper, a means to permanently record the way to live in a neighborhood that is ruled by no civil covenants. Let’s face, even those neighborhoods with written civil covenants would benefit from these.

7 Tenets of the Homeowner

  1. Remember you do not live in a cave anymore. Your home is equipped with a plumbing facilities that allow you to relieve yourself inside. Please refrain from relieving yourself in the back yard, especially while your neighbors, who are in full view, are simultaneously having a barbecue party. Waving “hello” with one hand while directing your stream with the other does not help matters. (This is, of course, directed at men, but could be equally directed to women who have an unusual biological talent.)
  2. If your neighborhood allows for burning of debris, keep the fire in a controllable state and refrain from building it to the size of a school bus. If the flames of your burn pile reach higher than the roof line of the house, you’ve gone too far.
  3. The look of your house affects my house, and vice versa. I’m not talking about personal style here or modern versus vintage architecture. I’m addressing basic upkeep. When you commit to own a home, you commit to keep the exterior presentable and unoffensive to neighbors. This means you need to trim the weeds and mow the yard as well as fix the dangling shutter and pick up the trash. I once had a neighbor with six-foot tall weeds growing along our common fence tell me, “I really don’t like yard work.” Thank you, Captain Obvious, but as a homeowner, you don’t get a choice. Tend to the yard or hire someone to do it for you. If you are unwilling or unable to do either, do not buy a house (or at least buy one so far out in the country that you have no neighbors to subject to your dislike of yard work).
  4. Keep your stuff on your property, and I’ll do the same. This includes pets, livestock, vehicles, yard debris, garbage, children, random relatives, and friends. I awoke one morning to look into my quiet backyard while enjoying a cup of coffee and saw a man’s skivvies laying in the yard. This was an apparent escapee of the laundry the neighbor hung over my fence to dry. Really. Just no.
  5. Refrain from allowing down-on-their-luck relatives to live in your backyard. You may not have a problem with the ramshackle abode Junior just moved into the yard, but your next door neighbor may be less than enthused to have a homeless camp 30 feet away from their back door.
  6. Clean up after yourself. I have several trees that stand on the edges of my property. Consequently, when storms blow through and send branches falling, they don’t always land on my property. However, I pick up the branches from my tree that land on my neighbor’s property. The tree is mine, and therefore, my responsibility, which includes cleaning up any mess it makes. Now, if I could only get that dog’s owner to understand this every time his precious canine leaves a huge steaming offering in my front yard. (Baby steps, baby steps.)
  7. Look out for one another. You thought all of these points would be rants, well, they are not. Pay attention to your neighbors and note any out-of-the-ordinary behavior. If a moving van shows up next door while you know your neighbor is out of town, that might mean they are being robbed. If you see a nefarious character lurking outside a window where he doesn’t belong, speak up. When a shipment is delivered to the an incorrect address across the street, walk it over there in a timely manner. Don’t wait a week and then meander over to say, “Oh, yeah, last week this was delivered to my house by mistake.”

A Responsibility that Has Further Responsibility

Owning a home is a goal for many people, but one that comes with responsibility. The responsibility does not rest solely on making the mortgage payment or furnishing the interior. The unwritten responsibility is that you join a small community of people in a neighborhood who all expect certain behavior from you as a homeowner. If you are not willing or able to fulfill that responsibility, home ownership is not for you.

Perfection is not expected by neighbors, but minimum standards are. Keep the yard mowed. Trim the weeds when necessary. Don’t be excessively loud or messy or pesky. Be aware but not nosy. If you put forth an effort to be conscientious, most neighbors will overlook the minor stuff. All in all, remember you are not the only one out there. Respect yourself, and your property, enough that it in turn shows respect to your neighbors.

Share Your Experience

What strange things have your neighbors done? Tell me in the comments.

Rita Herrmann lives in the Ozark Mountains with her two dogs and Netflix subscription. A lifelong writer, she's learned to draw deep thoughts from the simplest of observations. Through her work on She Wears Red Shoes, she inspires others to be the best version of themselves, even though she often eats too much chocolate. A good road trip with a great playlist is how she rolls. Her core beliefs include dancing spontaneously, singing randomly, laughing often, living simply, and learning to forgive.

2 thoughts on “Writing (and Righting) the Unwritten Homeowner’s Code

  1. You wrote it! Good for you!! I read it this morning, but then got wrapped up in the neverending chores of a homeowner and here I am…9:30 pm and finally getting to comment. First of all, you painted a lovely picture with your words. I felt like I was right there in your backyard watching “Junior” take care of business. So, thanks for that. Seriously, though, lol funny, my friend. I can also empathize. We had some neighbors up north of the Mason-Dixon that tried our patience. Most were fine or completely unknown to us, a handful were fantastic, but, there were two households that pushed my buttons. Directly across the street lived a family with a revolving number of adult children that came and went. They LOVED to throw barbecues for all their extended family…LOUD music, LOUD talking, LOUD fighting after a few beverages were consumed…it was extremely annoying. These would go on regularly all summer. They also liked to park on the street directly across from our driveway which made it tricky for us to back out…especially with our teenagers and their buddies all being new drivers. The neighbors finally got ticketed for it when they persisted in doing it during the winter months and caused problems with the snowplows. We rejoiced.
    Neighbor number 2 lived behind us with kind of a pie shaped lot. They bordered our backyard and when THEIR trees that hung over our fence would lose limbs not only did we get to clean up the ones that fell on our side, but we discovered on several occasions that the neighbors had tossed all the debris from their side over to ours. (Keep in mind, the town maintenance service would carry it all away…you just had to take it to your curb. Guess it was a lot easier to pitch it over our fence. Another neighbor told us that these guys were dumping all their grass clippings over the fence onto his yard and that they had managed to clog the creek that ran on his land. They had words…
    So far, we’ve been in our new place (back in our beloved South) for a year now with no neighbor problems…just trying to clean up the gigantic messes that the former owners left behind. That would be a whole blog series all by itself!!

    1. With this post, I am reading many words of empathy from so many! I had no idea that so many people had these annoyances, so I don’t feel so alone now. Who knew?!? Wouldn’t it be great if everyone just did what they were supposed to do? Fantasy-land, I know, but I’d pay extra for that utopia. 🙂

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"Two things define you. Your patience when you have nothing, and your attitude when you have everything. "
Imam Ali