What did the house you grew up in look, sound and smell like?

Why this question works

A house is the easiest thing in the world to describe, and it holds everything else. Once your grandparent is standing in the kitchen in their mind, the people walk in on their own: a mother at the sink, a father taking his boots off at the door, a sister practicing piano in the next room. You asked about a building and received a family.

Asking how it sounded and smelled matters more than it seems. Sight gives you the layout, but sound and smell give you the life in it: the creak of the third stair, coffee on the stove before dawn, laundry on the line, a radio turned low. Those are the details that make your grandparent smile as they talk, and the ones that make the written answer feel like a real place to anyone who reads it later.

How to ask it

Hand over a pencil and a sheet of paper and ask for a floor plan. It does not need to be neat. Drawing the rooms slows the memory down and gives your grandparent something to do with their hands, and each room they sketch comes with a story. Keep the drawing; it belongs with the answer.

Then walk through it together. Start at the front door and ask what you would see, hear and smell as you came in. Go room by room and let them linger wherever they like. Your job is simply to be a curious visitor. If they jump to a different house, follow them there. Many families moved, and the second house may be where the best stories live.

Other ways to word it

• If I walked in the front door of your childhood home, what would I see first?
• Which room did the family spend the most time in?
• Where did you sleep, and who did you share with?
• What did the house smell like when you came home from school?

Follow-up ideas

• What was outside: a yard, a street, a barn, a porch?
• How was the house heated, and whose job was it to keep it going?
• Where did everyone sit at the table?
• Was there a spot that was yours alone?
• What did you hear at night when you were in bed?
• What is one object from that house you would love to hold again?
• Who were the neighbors, and did you just walk in or knock?

An example answer

This is an invented example, written to show the kind of detail to listen for. Your grandma’s answer will be her own.

"It was a narrow white house with a green porch swing, and you always came in through the kitchen because the front door was for company. The first thing you would smell was coffee and bacon grease, and in the summer the tomato plants through the open window. The linoleum was yellow and worn through in front of the sink where my mother stood."

"Upstairs there were two bedrooms for six of us. I shared a bed with my sister and we drew a line down the middle with our feet. At night you could hear the freight train a mile off and my father winding the clock in the hall. I can still hear that clock. I have looked for one with the same tick my whole life."

What to write down

Keep the address, or the nearest road if there was no number, along with the years the family lived there. Save the floor plan if your grandparent drew one and label each room in their words. Write down the sounds and smells they named, where each person slept and the one object they would like to hold again. If the house still stands, note that too; it may be worth a visit together.

A question like this one has its own page in the opening chapter of the Tell Me Your Story journals for grandparents, with room to write. If your grandparent draws a floor plan, tuck it in beside the answer; the journals also have photo pages for a picture of the house itself.

See the Tell Me Your Story, Grandpa journal or the Tell Me Your Story, Grandma journal. For more ideas, read questions to ask your grandparents or browse childhood questions.