The Writers' Lounge

Good topic! Homes and cars are both very telling about whoever owns them, I find.

In my universe, there are several houses that are major locations -- Tomhause even has a name. That's a rotting bulk of a plantation mansion that overlooks sugarcane fields down to the sea. It's an evil place, and the witch who inhabits it is making sure the process of its rotting doesn't poison the hills around it. The few rooms she lives in are carefully kept up to livable standards, but they are still plagued with leaks, mold, animal interlopers, and structural breakdown as the rest of the structure disintegrates.

On a smaller scale, one of my soldier-knights -- Melisande -- lives in a two-room apartment for some time. She travels enough that there's always an air of transience to the space. It's not messy so much as ruffled -- a "things out of order to be put into place when the owner returns in a few days" kind of business. The furniture and decor are the same as when she moved in.

And then Urooa happens. He's from a culture where there are two categories of ownership: "things we don't bother to have" and "things that are ours". As such, within a few months her apartment becomes a repository for random crap that he thoughtlessly leaves behind -- since her space is his space. "Random crap" includes scarves, foodstuff, top-secret documents, and probably a skull on at least one occasion.